By the time 1997 hit October, I had already started calling it the Year from Hell. I had graduated from Fordham and already found myself foundering professionally. I had compiled a jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none resume that left me unsure of what field to pursue and without the confidence to sell myself in interviews. I was about to leave my second job since graduation, my apartment in New York was a disaster waiting to happen, and I often supplied the disaster. Friendships strained as my fellow grads and I adjusted to “the real world†and its new demands on us. Wherever my happy place was, it was pretty vacant.
And then I read that Bill Berry was quitting R.E.M. Clearly, the universe had quit playing fair.
I can’t say I was surprised. The poor guy had an aneurysm on stage. If he wanted to go take it easy for life, he was more than entitled. Still, it was one more signal. The glory days of high school and college were over. Time to start moving on. Except, of course, I didn’t. I went to the library, checked out a book collecting all of Rolling Stone’s articles about the band, and served myself a crash course of R.E.M. history as it happened. And I waited for the next album, to see what Berry, Buck, Mills, and Stipe minus Berry would produce.
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