R. E. M. are my favorite band and I’m gradually becoming convinced that they are slowly being forgotten, as Generation X gets older and older, with that zillion dollar contract they signed at just the wrong time serving as Year Zero of their gradual return to cult-status-at-best. I’m honestly wondering at this point if superstardom was really just kind of bad for them in general, and we’d be happier with them if they had just been this beloved cult band that never broke through, the way people talk about the Replacements (albeit without the hideous alcohol problems and generally acting like shit that ruined that band’s chances.) Stipe is the only band member not old enough to collect social security and there’s no talk of a reunion.

But aside from hearing “End Of The World” in some crappy action-comedy movie trailer (the name of which I mercifully forget), I can’t easily remember the last time I heard any of their big hits, or anything else by them, in public, and their last hit song was a full decade before they broke up. Not even “Lose My Religion” or “Shiny Happy People” or “Stand” or anything else.

Oh wait, there was that miserably sad scene where “What’s The Frequency Kenneth?” played in David Robert Mitchell’s Under The Silver Lake, but that scene is so depressing I don’t even want to talk about it.