Michaelangelo Matos has a beautiful post about his own history and R.E.M.:
Then the guy, a mean alcoholic who lived at the hostel when he wasn’t in Alaska fishing, lean down and said, “If you move another muscle, I swear to God I’m going to beat the living shit out of you.” I silently gripped a loose plank above my mattress, intending to bash his face in if he came near me. A day later, I moved into a house near 100th and Aurora, with a short, black dominatrix who got us all kicked out after not paying the rent for the three months I lived there.
The reason I bring all this up is that I’m playing, for the first time in probably ten years, R.E.M.’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi.
It’s worth your time.