R.E.M. - VH-1 Storytellers, Grand Ballroom, Manhattan Center, New York City, 10-23-1998

Once again, it's time for another "VH-1 Storytellers" episode. This time, it's the band R.E.M. Luckily, this one happens to be twice as long as the usual episodes.

In 1998, R.E.M. released the album "Up." It was their first as a trio, since drummer Bill Berry retired. It was considered a relative commercial and critical disappointment compared to their previous albums. For instance, it only went gold in the U.S. (meaning sales of 500,000 or more) while their previous six albums went platinum (sales of a million or more) or multi-platinum.

A bunch of the songs performed were from the new album: "Daysleeper," "Sad Professor," "I'm Not Over You," "The Apologist," "Suspicion," "Parakeet," "Walk Unafraid," and "At My Most Beautiful." That's eight out of the 15 songs performed.

I found an audio bootleg of this, which as I mentioned above is twice the usual length of these episodes. I don't know if it's a soundboard bootleg that was leaked of the full performance, or it was a double episode, which happened very occasionally for the show. Either way, the sound is excellent. However, the lead vocals were low in the mix, so I boosted them using the UVR5 audio editing program.

As usual for the show, the first song started halfway through. That's strong evidence that this was a double episode, because it wouldn't make sense that a bootleg would cut the first song off in that same way. In any case, I found a BBC version of that song, "Electrolite," from 1998, and used that to fill in this missing part. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in the title.

This album is an hour and 26 minutes long.

01 Electrolite [Edit] (R.E.M.)
02 talk (R.E.M.)
03 Daysleeper (R.E.M.)
04 talk (R.E.M.)
05 Losing My Religion (R.E.M.)
06 talk (R.E.M.)
07 Perfect Circle (R.E.M.)
08 talk (R.E.M.)
09 Sad Professor (R.E.M.)
10 talk (R.E.M.)
11 Fall on Me (R.E.M.)
12 I'm Not Over You (R.E.M.)
13 talk (R.E.M.)
14 The Apologist (R.E.M.)
15 talk (R.E.M.)
16 Man on the Moon (R.E.M.)
17 talk (R.E.M.)
18 New Test Leper (R.E.M.)
19 talk (R.E.M.)
20 Parakeet (R.E.M.)
21 talk (R.E.M.)
22 [Don't Go Back To] Rockville (R.E.M.)
23 talk (R.E.M.)
24 Suspicion (R.E.M.)
25 talk (R.E.M.)
26 Walk Unafraid (R.E.M.)
27 talk (R.E.M.)
28 At My Most Beautiful (R.E.M.)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17172260/REEEM1998StrytllrsGrndBllromMnhttanCntrNwYrkC__10-23-1998_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wg6tXRSB

The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact concert. I upgraded the detail using the Krea AI program.