To test out the new songs from their last album, 2008’s Accelerate, REM had some “working rehersals” that they played for packed crowds in Dublin a year before. They thought those shows went pretty well and turned it into a movie. The result is an hour long concert film called This is Not a Show: Live at the Olympia in Dublin. Said film is screening for three nights this weekend (all at 8pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday) at the Northwest Film Forum.
We also have a pair of tickets to give a TIG reader to one of the screenings. If you want to go, just e-mail us at tig@threeimaginarygirls.com before 9am on Wednesday morning, October 21 with “accelerate” in the subject line and the screening you want to go to in the body (either Friday, Saturday or Sunday).
About the movie (from the press materials):
The film includes concert and backstage footage from July 2007 when the band tested new material over five nights before fired-up, capacity crowds comprised of fan-club members, friends, family and fans from all over the world who were privy to R.E.M.’s so-called “experiment in terror,” as guitarist Peter Buck put it. “We were just trying to do something we hadn’t done before,” Buck says, “which meant there was no relaxing during the set. Every second we were playing something we didn’t know all that well. Which was kind of good—there were all kinds of terror elements going on during that show.”