Date: Fri 06-Oct-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-12

Quick Words:

R.E.M.-Stipe-Meadows-Monster

Full Text:

Concert Review-

A Monster of a Show!

(with photo)

By Shannon Hicks

HARTFORD - If the date on the calendar and recent dropping temperatures

weren't enough of a convincer that fall had indeed returned for a three-month

visit last week, then Sunday's concert by R.E.M. should have done the trick

for concert fans. The October 1 show at the Meadows Music Theatre in Hartford

officially marked the end of the amphitheatre's inaugural summer concert

season.

The Meadows hosted 25 concerts on its stage since July 9's unofficial opening

concert by rock group Hootie & The Blowfish (followed a week later by the

"official" opening, with Michael Bolton and his flowing locks). Attendance

figures of nearly 400,000 this first season alone is 40 percent higher than

was expected, with shows averaging 12,000 audience members per. This amounts

to $6-7 million in ticket sales alone for the 30,000-seat (22,500 lawn seats

available, 7,500 indoor/pavilion seats) capacity theatre, which started its

season more than a full month later than most amphitheatres get going each

year.

Most shows were able to go without a hitch, although two - Anita Baker and

Diana Ross - were scratched due to lack of ticket sales. Initially, the

pavilion's tin roof caused a number of ticket holders to complain about the

"tinny" sound for the highest-priced seats in the venue, and unusually high

concession prices caused an overload of complaints to flood into the office of

Jim Koplik, who, along with the Nederlander Organization, owns the

amphitheatre.

But by the end of this first season, over $100,000 had been spent on baffles,

banners from the ceiling and heavy black curtains to cover the bare brick

walls, all in an attempt to help the acoustics. Additionally, the pavilion may

have carpet laid down by the end of the upcoming indoor season, which will

also help improve the amphitheatre's sound.

As far as the high prices for a beer, soda, pizza slice and the like, beer is

now $3.75 a cup (down from $4.50 at the first concerts), sodas are down to $3

for a large, $2 for a small, and pizza slices are down to $2 a pop. In other

words, prices have been slashed in response to what Koplik heard from his

paying customers.

That's all bright and good for the theatre, but what about R.E.M., who is

touring on the strength of an album that has already been out well over a year

- Monster debuted at No. 1 a year ago this week - and is still up there on the

charts? Well, more good news: for the band's first return to Connecticut in

over six years, no one in the quintet - lead singer Michael Stipe, drummer

Bill Berry, bassist Mike Mills and guitarist Bill Berry - was sick Sunday

night.

No hernias, no brain aneurysms, not even a hangnail... the band, which has

been plagued with turmoil and illness since this tour began last March, looked

fine and sounded, simply, fantastic.

On tour, R.E.M. has always liked to increase its already huge library of

songs. Songs seem to roll out of a pen better while on the road than under the

pressure of a recording contract, so Stipe & Co. use some of whatever free

time they can find to do just that: write notebooks of songs while on the

road, which they also try out while touring. In fact, on-tour interviews

reveal that the band's game plan this time around is to write and record

another complete album before finishing this tour, sort of a la U2's Auchtung

Baby and its successor, Zooropa .

So in between the stuff from Monster on Sunday - including "What's the

Frequency, Kenneth?" "Crush with Eyeliner," "Strange Currencies" and "Star 69"

- Michael Stipe introduced five new songs the band has been trying out, but

hasn't yet recorded, like "Binky the Doorman," "Wake Up Bomb" and

"Revolution." This last song is a great rocker, and a ripoff of the Beatles

only in the sense of its title.

There were also juicy tidbits like "The One I Love" - R.E.M.'s misunderstood

ballad, but also the band's first No. 1 single - "Losing My Religion," and,

from the group's previous tour, "Everybody Hurts" and "Man on the Moon."

After two largely acoustic albums ( Out of Time and Automatic For The People

), R.E.M. returned to a hipper, more electric sound for Monster , which hasn't

disrupted its fan base one iota (just don't mention R.E.M.'s first crossover

hit, "The One I Love," and the words "selling out" or "mainstream" at the same

time). These guys have been around for more than ten years, and their sound

changes more often than a chameleon in a paint store, so R.E.M.-heads know to

expect different areas of interest with each new album.

Michael Stipe had his T-shirt thing going Sunday night, unveiling shirt after

shirt he had piled on (the singer is so painfully thin these days, he could

probably layer eight shirts on top of each other and still look underweight)

and Mike Mills had a suit thing going - as in what looked like a green

polyester suit adorned with an interesting array of glittery designs - and the

band had a great concert-thing going.

This was undoubtedly one of, if not the , best concerts performed at the

Meadows this year. Whether it was the cooler air creating better acoustics

combined with R.E.M.'s already fantastic presentation, or just lucky

coincidence, the 18,000 who attended Sunday's concert were treated to quite an

End of Summer Monster Bash.