R.E.M. Offer "Stirling" DVD

R.E.M. are hunkered down in their hometown of Athens, Georgia, working on their fourteenth album, with plans for a release this fall. In the meantime, the band will offer Perfect Square, their first concert film in almost twenty years. The DVD, due March 16th, is culled from a Wiesbaden, Germany, performance on last year's world tour.

The set list spans the group's career, from the mid-Eighties tracks like "Maps and Legends" and "Begin the Begin" to "Bad Day" and "Animal," the two new tracks included on last fall's In Time: The Best of R.E.M. Bonus material will include A Stirling Performance, a behind-the-scenes documentary that follows the band over a three-night stand in Stirling, Scotland.

As for the new material, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills are still writing and demoing new material in addition to dusting off songs they recorded last year during sessions in Vancouver, according to manager Bertis Downs. Downs describes some of the newer songs as "lush and atmospheric," and offered "Magnetic North," "I Wanted to Be Wrong," "Around the Sun" and "Wanderlust" as some of the working titles. The band plans to enter the studio in the next few weeks to continue recording sessions. In addition to the fall release, the group also plans to line up a new set of tour dates.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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