chestnut.

5/4/85, Williamstown, MA.

June 19, 1981. That's not the date of the photo above, but is the date I saw R.E.M. play for the first time. The way I always remembered it, this was a Sunday night, the day I graduated high school, but the calendar tells me it was a Friday night. There was a club in Mount Vernon, NY, that was an old converted bank; it was called the Left Bank, and opened my senior year of college. By virtue of not actually being in New York City, but rather in Westchester, I was...