R.E.M. have broken up

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The Panther said:
One nice thing about R.E.M. is that their releases were very consistent from 1983 to 1996 (or even later). So, I don't really care which album is "the best", I just enjoy the catalogue.
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This. This. This.

I will argue for Eponymous, but really, I can pop in any CD of that era and be happy.
(Well, no I can't because they are on my iPod now and the CDs boxed-up in my basement.)
 
Here are a few boxscores from R.E.M.'s tour in 2008 which is now their final tour.

May 31, June 1, 2008
Berkeley California
Hearst Greek Theatre
GROSS: $829,239
ATTENDANCE: 14,600
SHOWS: 2
SELLOUTS: 2
Average Ticket Price: $56.80

June 19, 2008
New York, New York
Madison Square Garden
GROSS: $941,347
ATTENDANCE: 13,446
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 1
Average Ticket Price: $70.01

June 21, 2008
Atlanta Georgia
Lakewood Amphitheatre
GROSS: $702,555
ATTENDANCE: 13,317
CAPACITY: 18,849
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $52.76
 
Here is the set list for what has become R.E.M.'s last concert ever. (provided they don't do a reunion tour)

18 November 2008 - Auditorio Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico
support: Los Concorde
set: Living Well Is The Best Revenge / I Took Your Name / What's The Frequency, Kenneth? / Fall On Me / Drive / Man-Sized Wreath / Ignoreland / Disturbance At The Heron House / Hollow Man / Imitation Of Life / Electrolite / The Great Beyond / Everybody Hurts / The One I Love / Find The River / Let Me In / Bad Day / Horse To Water / Orange Crush / It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
encore: Supernatural Superserious / Losing My Religion / I Believe / Country Feedback / Life And How To Live It / Man On The Moon
 
MrPryck2U said:
Not even close. They didn't play the Garden in 2011. And if MSG were sold out, the attendance wouldn't be 13,000 plus. It would be closer to 20,000 in attendance.


Plus, obviously, the dates are wrong anyway.
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Um, did you look at the boxscores again? The 2011 dates were corrected to 2008.

A concert is marked as soldout on Billboard Boxscores Boxscore chart IF the number of tickets put on sell to the public are all sold. Does not matter if its 2,000 , 5,000 or 20,000, as long as all the tickets that were released to be sold to the public are sold, it is marked as a sellout. It does not matter if there are 5,000 empty seats in the venue. This is the official way it has been done since Amusement Business and Billboard began tracking the concert industry in 1976.

The dates are correct. R.E.M. played the Garden on June 19 and Lakewood on June 21, as well as Berkeley theater on May 31 and June 1.

But if you think I'm making this up, you can go here Music News, Reviews, Articles, Information, News Online & Free Music | Billboard.com . Go to the July 19, 2008 issue of Billboard and scroll down to the blue boxscore chart. The Garden and Berkley shows are near the bottom. The August 2, 2008 issue has the Lakewood show.

For the Madison Square Garden show, R.E.M. probably did not use behind stage seating which is normal. Attendance probably should have been 14,000 for every physical seat to have been sold in that configeration, but again, its not the number of seats filled in the venue which counts towards a sellout, but the number of tickets released to the public which are sold. Any tickets held back or not printed up don't count in measuring whether the show is soldout or not. Thats the way the industry has done it since 1976.

The Cure actually played Madison Square Garden the day after R.E.M. . Here is how they did with their boxscore:

The Cure
June 20, 2008
New York, New York
Madison Square Garden
GROSS: $808,014
ATTENDANCE: 13,486
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 1
Average Ticket Price: $59.92

Very similar to R.E.M.'s show except the Cure charged less for tickets. The number of tickets they released was also 40 more than R.E.M. and all were sold to the public achieving in industry terms what is considered a "sellout".

Oh and here is Iron Maiden 4 days before R.E.M. at the Garden.

Iron Maiden
June 15, 2008
New York, New York
Madison Square Garden
GROSS: $906,003
ATTENDANCE: 13,766
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 1
Average Ticket Price: $65.82
 
statistics are great. bend them to say whatever you want, but someone can always just interpret them as the exact opposite to prove their point using the same numbers. the bible is fun like that, too. of course, in order to know what that point is, i'd have to actually read those posts. now where is the ignore feature?
 
Well, you just had a typo. No biggie. I've been to the Garden for plenty of shows and usually the attendance is close to 20K. Guess it just didn't seem accurate.
 
Also it should be noted that REM played a show at the 15,000 capacity Jones Beach Amphitheater (or whatever corporate name it has now) in the NYC area in June of 2008, which was supposedly nearly full. Sadly, they just weren't a big concert draw. Which is strange, because they were so popular in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. In 2003 I saw them at a 20,000 seat amphitheater outside of Cleveland, and it was probably half full.

It's a shame, because they really were an awesome live band. They rotated their setlists so that each concert was different, and they really would play just about anything from their back catalog. Of course they have their own set of "warhorses", but The R.E.M. Timeline will show you that they truly put thought into their setlists and live shows. I'm so sad I'll never see them again!
 
The_acrobat said:
Also it should be noted that REM played a show at the 15,000 capacity Jones Beach Amphitheater (or whatever corporate name it has now) in the NYC area in June of 2008, which was supposedly nearly full. Sadly, they just weren't a big concert draw. Which is strange, because they were so popular in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. In 2003 I saw them at a 20,000 seat amphitheater outside of Cleveland, and it was probably half full.
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I was at that show at Jones Beach. The show was delayed due to lightning. It rained the whole night, but REM were full throttle. Michael's voice was in vintage form. The only thing that sucked was the rain. Especially since I wear glasses. Despite the weather, the place was packed to capacity. I also saw them at MSG in 2003. Great show and they sold the place out.
 
The_acrobat said:
Also it should be noted that REM played a show at the 15,000 capacity Jones Beach Amphitheater (or whatever corporate name it has now) in the NYC area in June of 2008, which was supposedly nearly full. Sadly, they just weren't a big concert draw. Which is strange, because they were so popular in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. !
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Thats true, but then again it is New York where the level of business you do there is usually double that of other big cities like Philadelphia, Washington DC, Miami, San Francisco etc. I don't think the Cure or Iron Maiden had second shows in the area like R.E.M. so that Jones Beach show is an important distinction.


In 2003 I saw them at a 20,000 seat amphitheater outside of Cleveland, and it was probably half full.

It's a shame, because they really were an awesome live band. They rotated their setlists so that each concert was different, and they really would play just about anything from their back catalog. Of course they have their own set of "warhorses", but The R.E.M. Timeline will show you that they truly put thought into their setlists and live shows. I'm so sad I'll never see them again
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I agree, the change from the position they were at in 1994-1995 when they released Monster is stunning. They were red hot from a commercial stand point around the world at that time. The Monster tour was what everyone was talking about. First chance to see R.E.M. since 1989. The majority of fans at that point had never seen the band live given the massive surge in popularity that started in 1991.

What the hell happened to the fan base, especially in the United States? Collapse Into Now only sold 118,000 copies before it dropped out of the Billboard 200 chart in the United States after just 7 weeks. That means there are probably some states in the US where the album only sold a few hundred copies at best.

Of course, more people have the album than that, but unfortunately these days, the majority of people don't actually PAY for music because its so easy to obtain for free.
 
Yeah, their fall from commercial grace (in the US, at least) is interesting, isn't it? It sort of reminds me of how 60s' generation stars were commercially washed up in the immediate post-punk / early-MTV era (the 80s, basically). From about 1982 to the mid-1990s, it was common for new albums by Dylan, McCartney, Joni Mitchell, etc. to chart around #30 or #40 and fade quickly. This, despite the fact that they'd been multi-generational platinum best-sellers just ten years earlier. It seems to rarely happen nowadays when everything is 100% post-modern retro recycled crap (and fools will pay $300 to see some washed-up band reproduced their greatest hits in the flesh), but back in the 80s this was common. R.E.M. seemed to be suffering that sort of "this-generation-doesn't-give-a-shit-about-us-and-neither-do-most-of-our-old-fans" thing.
 
Well, it probably didn't help that the majority of those albums were awful. The 60s and 70s icons did not know what to do with synthesizers.
 
MrPryck2U said:
. I also saw them at MSG in 2003. Great show and they sold the place out.
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Actually there were more people at the MSG show in 2008 than in 2003, and the 2003 show did not sellout, even by the industry definition of the term.

R.E.M.
October 4, 2003
New York, New York
Madison Square Garden
GROSS: $759,228
ATTENDANCE: 12,842
CAPACITY: 13,801
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $59.12

Here is the Jones Beach show they played the day before the Garden

R.E.M.
October 3, 2003
Wantagh, New York
Tommy Hilfiger at Jones Beach Theater
GROSS: $378,690
ATTENDANCE: 8,853
CAPACITY: 14,105
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $42.78



Here are a few other US shows from that tour:

R.E.M.
September 6, 2003
Mountain View California
Shoreline Amphitheatre
GROSS: $332,786
ATTENDANCE: 9,380
CAPACITY: 22,000
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $35.48

R.E.M.
September 13-14, 2003
Morrison Colorado
Red Rocks Amphitheatre
GROSS: $560,914
ATTENDANCE: 10,823
CAPACITY: 18,900
SHOWS: 2
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $51.83

R.E.M.
September 16, 2003
St. Paul Minnesota
Xcel Energy Center
GROSS: $393,401
ATTENDANCE: 6,306
CAPACITY: 10,000
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $62.39

R.E.M.
September 26, 2003
Chicago Illinois
United Center
GROSS: $623,695
ATTENDANCE: 10,641
CAPACITY: 12,500
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $58.61

R.E.M.
September 28, 2003
Auburn Hills Michigan
Palace Of Auburn Hills
GROSS: $223,783
ATTENDANCE: 8,216
CAPACITY: 15,064
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $27.24

R.E.M.
October 1, 2003
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Liacouras Center
GROSS: $343,512
ATTENDANCE: 6,262
CAPACITY: 9,105
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $54.86

R.E.M.
October 5, 2003
Mansfield Massachusetts
Tweeter Center For Performing Arts
GROSS: $385,685
ATTENDANCE: 8,490
CAPACITY: 19,900
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $45.43

R.E.M.
October 8, 2003
Fairfax Virginia
Patriot Center
GROSS: $287,204
ATTENDANCE: 5,330
CAPACITY: 8,124
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $53.88

R.E.M.
October 11, 2003
Atlanta Georgia
Philips Arena
GROSS: $620,838
ATTENDANCE: 9,988
CAPACITY: 12,788
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 0
Average Ticket Price: $62.16


Seems like they actually did better on the tour in 2008 in the USA than they did back in 2003 in the USA.
 
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