R.E.M. - Perfect Square

Yesterday I watched R.E.M - Perfect Square on DVD for the first time. What a pleasure! What a great show!

I've known of R.E.M. for a long time of course, heard some of their stuff, read of them here and there and generally liked them, but I didn't pay much attention and wasn't much of a fan. There are probably hundreds of bands of whom I could say the same. With respect to R.E.M., though, that changed yesterday. I appreciate R.E.M. much more today than the day before yesterday.

While Perfect Square contains separate documentary features (and the feature about putting on a concert at Scottland's Stirling Castle was interesting and enjoyable), Perfect Square is mainly a straightforward concert shot of a group of great musicians. I intensely dislike some music DVDs that feature artists yaking about things I couldn't care less about between songs, or clowning like asses for an audience apparently programmed into a reality-TV mindmode that I can't stand. None of that stuff in Perfect Square.

Unfortunately, the DVD I watched was from Blockbuster, so I added it to my Amazon wish list. Hint hint. ;>)

I would have added another, but also unfortunately, there is apparently no DVD of a performance of Bach's Peasant and Coffee Cantatas. If I could save only one thing from my burning house it just might be my old Telefunken Das Alte Werk LP recording of Concentus musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting, Rotraud Mansmann (Soprano), Kurt Equiluz (Tenor) and Max von Egmond (Bass). I have heard other renditions of the Peasant and Coffee Cantatas, but the old LP I picked up at Kaufhalle in Pirmasens back in 1977 just takes my breath away. I really should rip it to the computer one of these days.

So much music, so little time.