On January 26th, 1989, R.E.M. kicked off the Green World Tour at MZA Stadium in Tokyo, Japan. Unsurprisingly, the set list skewed heavily toward the band’s latest album, 1988’s Green: The Athens, Georgia, band opened the show with “Pop Song 89,” and performed eight of the album’s 11 tracks overall omitting only “The Wrong Child,” “Hairshirt” and “Orange Crush.”
The rest of the setlist leaned heavily on 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant (“I Believe,” “Begin The Begin,” “Cuyahoga,” “Just a Touch”) and 1987’s Document (“Finest Worksong,” “Exhuming McCarthy,” “Welcome To The Occupation,” “Disturbance At The Heron House”), with a scattering of older tunes—notably, 1984’s “Pretty Persuasion”—thrown in for good measure.
As the Green tour progressed and traveled to New Zealand, Australia, the U.S., U.K. and Europe throughout 1989, the shows followed a similar template, with tunes from 1982’s Chronic Town EP (“Wolves, Lower,” “1,000,000”) being particularly welcome chestnuts. There were other surprises scattered throughout, of course. Vocalist Michael Stipe occasionally prefaced “World Leader Pretend” with some lines from Gang of Four‘s “We Live As We Dream Alone,” while prior to “I Believe,” he recited lyrics from Syd Straw’s “Future 40’s (String Of Pearls)” or the band’s own rarity “Tired Of Singing Trouble.”
In fact, covers were a staple of the tour: Hugo Largo’s “Harpers,” Velvet Underground’s “After Hours,” George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” Television’s “See No Evil” and Syd Barrett’s “Dark Globe” rotated in and out of the setlist. So did the Golden Palominos’ “Boy (Go),” on which Stipe contributed lead vocals. Perhaps the most well-known re-do, however—likely because it ended up on the band’s 1989 fan club holiday singlewas a rip-roaring take on Mission of Burma’s “Academy Fight Song.”
The Green tour marked many firsts for the band. For example, the trek featured auxiliary musician Peter Holsapple (late of the dB’s) adding guitar and keyboards, marking the first time R.E.M. expanded beyond a four-piece onstage. Although the band played a mix of U.S. auditoriums, college venues and arenas on 1987’s Work Tour, it stuck to the latter for Green tour, and played larger spaces overseas as well. This was partly due to popularity—Green was the band’s first major label album, recorded for Warner Bros.—and partly out of necessity.
The tour featured the group’s first forays into major video productions on stage, and these took the form of song-appropriate clips (e.g., trees and nature for “Fall On Me”), emphasis projections (words such as “HELLO” and “GOVERNMENT” flashing during “Pop Song 89″) and deliberately detached “participation” banter moments. According to the R.E.M. Timeline, at a March 1, 1989, show in Louisville, Stipe read these three rules aloud: “No. 1: Don’t stand on your seat as you may fall. No. 2 Don’t hurtle missiles or throw things. No 3. Don’t rush the stage as Peter doesn’t like that.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlxnkQ5d8vw
Their first show of several in the year 1989 The Green Tour (Audio Only with photo accompaniment) At this point Green had just hit Gold (over 500,000 copies sold) two months after release, and it would go on to sell over 5 million copies as of 2015. Audio isnt great Quality 5/10 (the audio comes in through the right channel only during Get Up)
Not a spectactular show, and certainly lacking the spectacle of some of their later performances on the Green tour, but it’s still a decent concert. Also, only (mostly) complete R.E.M. show in Japan .
REM live Pop Song 89 Tourfilm 1989
Stage-wise, Stipe did some of the shimmies he exhibited during the videos for “Pop Song 89″ and “Stand” during those songs, and sported a white suit, which drew comparisons to the boxier, large suit David Byrne sported during Talking Heads‘ Stop Making Sense. The attire was camera-ready: In 1990, R.E.M. released the Green tour-focused concert film “Tourfilm” which was filmed over five shows near the end of the tour—and the black-and-white footage of the performances was striking.
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On November 13th, 1989—the day after the Green tour officially concluded R.E.M. performed all of Green and 1983’s Murmur albums back to back, during a benefit show at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. It would be the last time to catch R.E.M. for a while: The Green tour was the group’s last major, extended batch of concerts until 1995’s Monster tour. R.E.M. had spent much of the ’80s on the road, and the band needed an extended break. “We were physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally spent,” Stipe told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. “I thought I would never tour again. The idea to stop touring wasn’t any strategy. It was survival.”
R.E.M. playing live at The Omni in Atlanta, GA on April 1st, 1989.
The Fat Angel Sings 