| J-Card Comment | 28 September 1986
UCSD Gymnasium
San Diego, CA ?
Disc 1
1. These Days
2. Moral Kiosk
3. We Walk - Behind Closed Doors Medley
4. The One I Love
5. Driver 8
6. Shaking Through
7. Feeling Gravitys Pull
8. Stipe Talking
9. Gardening At Night (cut)
10. Mills Talking
11. The Flowers Of Guatemala
12. Maps And Legends
13. I Believe
14. Swan Swan H
Disc 2
15. Superman
16. Can't Get There From Here
17. Seven Chinese Brothers
18. Pretty Persuasion
19. Auctioneer (Another Engine)
20. Little America ?
encore 1:
21. Fall On Me
22. Cuyahoga
23. 1,000,000 ?
encore 2:
24. Finest Working-King Of Birds-Strange
25. Funtime
26. Just A Touch
There are a few moments in R.E.M.'s that are worth noting if not for the extracurricular activities that went on during the show. The top two performances, at least on tape are August 17, 1985 at Barrymores in Ottawa and December 6, 1985 at Washington and Lee University.
The trifecta show might just be this particular show.
From a quality standpoint, outside of early microphone issues the show is pretty solid. For a point of reference, I believe that the same person that recorded this show also recorded the September 30, 1986 performance that you might still be able to find at your local record store with the Rolling Stone Cover as the front side of the LP. The Infamous, "America's Best Band" or something like that.
Ahh, the memories.
For this particular show, at UCSD, the Ruffian Capital of the west coast, the typical student there has no care for his neighbor, or at least that is the impression that I got from this show. I am just so happy that I never went there for school, however, I do hear it is a particular hotspot to find Warner Brothers Executives.
Before the band launched into a version of "The One I Love" Michael, stood and reminded, very politely, mind you, to the crowd that things were getting awfully crowded up front and he informed them of their need to be polite to their neighbors. I am stating this for the record because as it is the case of any situation, the polite response would have been that the crowd would have handled the situation fine and my review of this show would have been limited to the need to blow my load over "Auctioneer" once again.
However, what would have been more fun would have been reading Bertis's account of said show on REMHQ. Luckily, however, the internet had not been invented by Al Gore by this point and thus they were spared the grief of having to write this up.
Picture the moment, the band just launches into Feeling Gravitys Pull as Peter starts the the feedback portion of Feeling Gravitys Pull, a staple in the mid-80s and all of a sudden about a minute 1:30 into the song you hear Stipe miss his cue for the chorus.
Yes, sir, something quite ain't right.
"This is the easiest task I ever had to do."
"Alright, Listen we have a problem here."
"You fucker with the shirt, you do that one more time and you are out of here! Listen, you cannot see it 10 feet back but there is about a 5 feet drop and there is a bunch of steel poles and if anyone gets their mouth broken open in front of me I am not going to like it very much so don't do it shit stupid! And I don't like to have to talk like that. I am not a school teacher, you know, this is bullshit. Stand there and enjoy it or leave. "
And then about 2:15 minutes into it after Gardening at Night the song is cut short once again and the comments by Mike Mills were much more diplomatic about the subject.
Whether or not the song was the next to play or not, the band launched into a very intelligent choice, 'Flowers of the Guatemala', a perfect song to play considering some of the situations that were occurring on the floor. This was followed by a somber 'Maps and Legends."
The show goes on without very many incidents until right before Funtime when Michael ran into another crazy fan. . .
"The only thing worse than an old facist Nazi is a young one. SUCK!
The band then launched into a powerful version of 'Just a Touch' and Stipe changed the lyrics midway through the song . . . .
"Don't you remember in Tyrones when you couldn't breathe . . . "
If anything the band carried on despite the times . . . and pulled off an amazing show.
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