I drove to work this morning like me from 1989.  No, not driving like an idiot 13 year-old, everyone knows I drive like an old lady.  I mean listening to a mix of pre-Losing My Religion REM.  My first love, musically speaking.  My parents raised me on a combination of sixties power-pop (mom) and classic country (dad) but REM was my first self-expression of musical interest.  I loved them the way my fellow thirteen-year-old girlfriends loved New Kids On The Block (some still do, Kris, you know I’m talking about you).  I never covered my walls in their posters, maybe because you couldn’t exactly find photos of Michael Stipe in Tiger Beat, but I knew every lyric of every song long before “It’s The End Of The World” hit MTV.

Looking back, I’m sure that R.E.M. was my personal gateway drug into the world of underground/indie/alt/whatever music.  It led to some more main-stream stuff, Counting Crows and Bare Naked Ladies, but it also led me early on to They Might Be Giants and The Smiths.  Maybe I wasn’t introduced to Uncle Tupelo until I met my husband almost nine years ago, but I had a good foundation already.