It must have been late spring, 1983. I’d come home (Raleigh) from freshman year at Hampton (Institute) University, an HBCU. Culturally I’d been open to any kind of “good” music my whole life. It’s so subjective, but I’d heard everything from Nancy Wilson to Holst to Rush, Cerrone, Charlie Daniels, Kansas, Parliament, Sweet, Return To Forever, and so much more in my 19 years on earth. But my friend David Burris told me he’d read a good review of this single, “Radio Free Europe,” in Rolling Stone. I was at the Record Bar and purchased it, the Hib-Tone version, and liked it very much. Soon I had Murmur on a cassette and blasted it while I worked away delivering pizzas for Dominos that summer.
The previous couple years I’d been turned on to the likes of Echo and the Bunnymen, XTC, Psychedelic Furs, U2, Peter Gabriel, Prince, the Busboys, X, Gang of Four, and more local or regional flavors like Let’s Active, the Pressure Boys, and the Producers. Also West Coast faves like the Plimsouls, Wall of Voodoo, Oingo Boingo, or fun bands like Joe “King” Carrasco and the Fleshtones. It was a sonic renaissance and I was in music heaven. Little did I know that this would be important over the next several years, especially that I would see Let’s Active open for R.E.M. at Baity’s Back Street in Winston-Salem a couple months later.
Soon I started playing in a punk-funk band called Johnny Quest. Joe Farmer and I had become fast friends after dropping out of college. Now he was frontman and I was drumming. We hung out at Schoolkids Records when we weren’t working. Joe worked there and so did Jack, Johnny Quest’s bass player and co-founder. All we did was talk music and crack jokes.
That fall Joe, Burris, Wayne Taylor, and I drove to NYC to see Echo and Let’s Active. Wayne was dating Let’s Active’s drummer Sara Romweber, and we were surprising her for her birthday. By then I’d seen Let’s Active twice and loved them, but was also fascinated that this guy Mitch Easter was involved with R.E.M.…he must be special! But I’m just this lowly Black boy from Raleigh who wants to rub elbows but is too shy and reticent to get near. Then I’m approached by one Mike Connell after a Johnny Quest show: did I want to come jam with his band sometime? Ok, sure. Eventually we get together, play through some songs, what did I think? I told him he had some good songs, to keep writing. I didn’t know I was auditioning. A month later we’re recording a demo, booking shows, then there is college radio airplay. The Connells are starting to blow up, and R.E.M.’s Reckoning arrives. They did it again! People are talking about R.E.M. non-stop.
A year later or so, it’s time to record the Connells’ first album and we pick none other than Don Dixon to produce…and as much as we weren’t trying to sound like R.E.M., here we were with dual 12-string Rickenbackers and I was lifting Bill Berry’s fills and hooks left and right, this from a drummer who’d played to records by Yes and Kansas and Mahavishnu and…yes, Rick Springfield, .38 Special, Toto…even the Meco Star Wars theme!
We went on to record our second record with Mitch Easter, even had a single mixed by Scott Litt (much later), but never really got to rub elbows with those R.E.M. fellows who’d been so influential, though we did share a bill with them for the NC For Africa benefit in 1986. There are other stories, but it’s unbelievable to me how many they influenced or touched even indirectly. One can hardly understand or identify with that sort of curried favor in one’s own life. Bravo R.E.M. for being who and what you were and are. We needed you for all that you have stood for as artisans and as people.
PEELE WIMBERLEY is a musician and producer who is best known for his many years drumming for the Connells from Raleigh, NC.
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