The National "Fake Empire" (13.3 MB) from Boxer United Center Chicago, IL June 6, 2008

Even though I've been disappointed with so much of their material from the past decade, R.E.M. has long been on my list of bands to see if the opportunity came up. It finally did last Friday, and they had some pretty decent support on the bill in the National and Modest Mouse. The only problem is that big arena shows are no good for whipping out a camcorder and microphones, which meant I had to fall back on the old camera for this show. As a result, the sound is pretty good but the video largely stinks, especially from the opening sets before all of R.E.M.'s big lights came on.

We got to the show just as the National began their set, and spent their first three songs wandering around and getting some really bad United Center food. Unfortunately, my two favorite songs of theirs, "Slow Show" and "Mistaken For Strangers," were in those three, but I like this one a lot too. They were really well received by the still-small crowd and got more applause than Modest Mouse did when Michael Stipe thanked them both near the end of the show.