During a break from sessions for R.E.M.’s next album, Mike Mills contributed a cover of Billy Bragg’s ‘Sing Their Souls Back Home’ — off the agit-folkie’s 2008’s album ‘Mr. Love & Justice’ — to The Voice Project.

Thirty years ago today, R.E.M. played its first-ever concert — reportedly billed as Twisted Kites — performing to several hundred friends and Athens townsfolk at a birthday party inside St. Mary’s Episcopal Church.

[tweetmeme]Members of R.E.M.’s fan club have begun receiving their annual Christmas single from the band, and this year’s disc features a surprise: an appearance by retired drummer Bill Berry on a cover of “Crazy Like a Fox,” a hippie protest song Lenny Kaye recorded in 1966 under the pseudonym Link Cromwell.
Although Berry has performed live [...]

Retired drummer Bill Berry and bassman Mike Mills jumped onstage last night with Peter Buck and the rest of The Minus 5 for a near-reunion of R.E.M.’s classic lineup in Athens, Ga. — a get-together that could have spawned a full reunion, since Michael Stipe was in the audience at the 40 Watt Club, according [...]

With touring and promotion of 2008’s Accelerate now finished, R.E.M. this year will issue, at a minimum, a pair of archival releases, hitting both ends of its long and fruitful career.
According to a post on the band’s Web site, R.E.M. is preparing a deluxe edition of 1984’s Reckoning that “will be done in the same [...]

This week’s star-studded Carnegie Hall tribute to legendary college-rock grads R.E.M. was capped off with an appearance by the band itself, performing “E-Bow the Letter” with Patti Smith.
The unbilled appearance by Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills wrapped up  a night of tribute performances by the likes of Bob Mould, The dB’s, The Apples [...]