World leader pretend

About this time 24 years ago I picked up a copy of R.E.M.'s Out Of Time from a record store in Arvika, Sweden. I was there as part of SK Sifhälla's P77 football team playing in a tournament (which we won). I'd come across the Losing My Religion video on MTV a few months earlier and was simply blown away. Whatta tune, whatta man, whatta bonkers video. Buying the album was a no brainer, and boy did I reap the rewards. By the time Automatic For The People was released the following year I was hooked. I mopped up their entire back catalogue, bar Chronic Town, couldn't quite get my monthly parental allowance to stretch that far. I searched high and low for rarities, video recordings, bootlegs, posters, whatever I could get my hands on. No magazine rack was safe, literally. My sixth form library quite generously subscribed to NME, and most editions had a nasty habit of finding a convenient hiding place in my bag.

I saw them live for the first time during the Monster tour, at Stockholm's Maritime Museum, with The Bends-era Radiohead providing support. Possibly the best live gig double whammy ever. Thom Yorke's vocal causing time to stand still during Street Spirit, Michael Stipe going nuts in It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). Seriously unreal. In total I went to 10 R.E.M. concerts in 7 different countries, and only the very last one, at Berlin's Waldbuhne, was a bit of a dud. Not even Stipe could get enthused by Around The Sun.

R.E.M. have provided an omnipresent soundtrack to the vast majority of my life, from compiling mix tapes for my portable cassette player at GCSE to streaming tunes through Swift-less Spotify as a responsible adult. As a result, listing an R.E.M. top 10 is a tricky proposition but I'd say these are the ones I've played the most:

Wolves, Lower
Perfect Circle
So. Central Rain
Pretty Persuasion
Feeling Gravitys Pull
Begin The Begin
Losing My Religion
Country Feedback
Drive
Bang And Blame

My tastes have fluctuated since my first introduction to music in the form of Wham's Make It Big, courtesy of my sister. Had a proper grunge phase in the early 90s, long hair, flannel shirts, the lot. A few things remain constant though - Swedish pop, Kent, Madonna and R.E.M.

And Michael Stipe is pretty much god. As a precocious teen I was proper obsessed. Couldn't get enough of the man. Even tried to dress like him. Inspired by the What's The Frequency Kenneth? video I acquired a pair of black boots and baggy black jeans in Stockholm, and ordered an original red star t shirt from the US of A. Coolness personified, world leader pretend.

I've since discarded the red star t shirt, unceremoniously dumped on the scrap heap as I briefly embraced 'club wear' no doubt. So as a way of coercing myself to pick up the screen printing gear, I decided to recreate the iconic t shirt, but in black to stay true to the Kenneth video.

I've not done any screen printing for years, which shows. At least close up. Anticipating the potential for a printing disaster, I went all out and spent £2.50 on the t shirt from Primark. Good move. Believing in your ability is one thing, preparing for eventualities is always sensible. Or what say thee Kenneth?