That’s REM. Trust me.

So, I’m at the REM concert last night with my friend Jamil, and after a solid rendition of “Hollow Man” Michael Stipe says, “That’s our take on ‘Better Man’ by Pearl Jam. Hey, isn’t it cool that Pearl Jam’s here tonight?” And then he just moves on to some other topic of conversation like he just said, “Hey, isn’t it cool that my Aunt Agnes is here tonight?”

They do the next song. No Pearl Jam. They do the song after that. No Pearl Jam. We’re beginning to think Stipe’s just fucking with us. On the other hand, we know for a fact that Pearl Jam is playing a show in Camden, not far from our venue, the following night. Stipe’s story is plausible.

Finally we get to the encore and sure enough, second song in, Mike says, “Ladies and gentlemen, Eddie Vedder!” Crowd. Goes. Ape. Shit.

Understand, we’re in the way back in one of those weird sections where half the people decided to stand and half decided to sit. For this part, every motherfucker got on his/her feet.

Also understand my second and third favorite bands in the world are REM and Pearl Jam. So if Bono had walked out on stage at that moment, my head would have exploded like fucking Scanners.

Now, which song would you imagine Vedder would sing? I honestly had no idea. Stipe and Vedder’s voices are so different, it’s hard to imagine what they would blend on.

The answer is “Begin the Begin.” Would not have been my first guess but holy crap did it work! You have not lived until you’ve heard Eddie Vedder croon “Miles Standish prooouuuud!”

At this point, Jamil turned to me and said that if they had done that and only that, it would have been worth the price of admission. In fact, we were both saying afterwards we felt like we still owed money to the band. “No, really, we didn’t realize Eddie Vedder would be there. Here’s another ten bucks! Can I Paypal it to you or something?”

The entire concert, it turns out, was made of awesome. They opened with “These Days” and later completed the first three songs off of Life’s Rich Pageant trifecta in the encore. They reached back as far as Chronictown, playing “Wolves, Lower” for the first time in God knows how long.

All of the songs they played off the new album (six total, I believe) were fantastic, although I’m surprised they didn’t just play the whole damn thing seeing as it’s approximately nine minutes long. I was most surprised by how well I Wanna DJ worked, though I shouldn’t have been given how hard it rocks on the album.
Other high points: Due to a “request from backstage” (which I can only imagine came from one of the PJ’ers), they performed “Find the River,” which is my favorite song on Automatic for the People and one of my favorite REM songs overall. Never thought I’d hear it live, and it was everything I thought it would be. They followed that up by gathering around the piano in one corner of the stage and doing an achingly beautiful acoustic version of “Let Me In.”

They hit every album except Murmur, Reckoning and Around the Sun, and did a good job of not always hitting the obvious choice on each. For Green, for example, they hit “Orange Crush” but they hit “Turn You Inside Out,” too.

I could have done with some tuneage off of Murmur and Reckoning in lieu of “Great Beyond” and “Imitation of Life,” but I’m not complaining.

Stipe asked the audience how many of them were seeing the band for the first time and like half the sold out crowd raised their hand. And I have to say I saw a fair amount of kids and teens in the crowd.

REM is still one of the greatest rock bands in the world. Period.