REM!!!!!

Well a 15 year dream has been realized! REM has been one of my favorite bands since I was a teenager and on Friday night I finally got to see them perform live for the first time! A good friend came over and watched the boys and I headed off to Seattle for my night of freedom. By time I got around to buying my ticket, there were only single seats left, so I took it as a sign and just went on my own.

IT WAS SOOOOO COOL!!!

The ferry ride over was so incredibly peaceful. It was just a beautiful night with the moon reflecting off the water and the city completely lit up. Seattle has a stunning skyline at night! I made my way to McCaw hall and got settled in. You know you're a mom when the opening act doesn't start til 8 and you're already yawning!! I paid my cash for the obligatory t-shirt and found my seat. The hall was just beautiful, but i really would have liked a stand up and dance kind of place and it was obvious that this would be a mostly sit down show. Just the vibe of the place. Turns out REM did lots of slower songs anyway, so it fit the mood.

By time they finally came on stage (well after 9...phew!) they got everything started right away! The light show was fabulous and just seeing Michael Stipe do his thing live was awesome. I realize that a lot of their recent music is pretty political minded, but they left it in the lyrics and didn't do much social commentary on the side, which I appreciated. They sounded awesome!

They have such a huge library of songs, but this show was obviously promoting their new album, since they did 6 or 7 songs from it. Which is quite a few for a two hour show. But they played some of my old favorites too. I was just content to sing along---whether I knew all the words or not!

My only complaint was that they seemed to do a real up number, get everyone going and then drop it down to a slower song. It made it hard to really get into a groove. They just didn't ride the wave of crowd enthusiasm. But oh well....they were fantastic performers and they could have just walked around on stage and talked to each other and I would have been happy :-)

Overall...it was pretty frickin awesome! Makes for my third pregnancy concert (Sparky got to "see" REO Speedwagon and Styx, Catfish "saw" Elton John, so I'm improving with each baby!) . This one will be hard to top!