As America celebrates its 250th birthday, remember the founder who rallied the people against British and American oligarchs.

Here's another great concert by R.E.M. Like the other one I posted a few days ago, this one only became publicly available in December 2025. The sound quality is excellent. This concert first became available through Rob, who runs the dB's Repercussion music blog, at: dbs-repercussion.blogspot.com It's an excellent blog, I recommend you check it out. I've included Rob's original notes to the recording. That explains how it was recorded and got into his hands. The bottom line is this is a soundboard. The only snag is that six songs are missing. Those include the first four songs: "These Days," "Begin the Begin," "1,000,000," and "The One I Love." Also missing are "Just a Touch" and "Femme Fatale" from the middle of the concert. (Specifically, they came after "Little America.") This was the very first concert of the band's 1986 tour, which supported their recently released album "Lifes Rich Pageant," which had been released two months earlier. As a result, many of the songs were performed in public for the first time: "These Days," "Begin the Begin," "The One I Love," "Cuyahoga," "The Flowers of Guatemala," "I Believe," "Superman," "Strange," and "Lightnin' Hopkins." (Too bad that the first three of those aren't included here.) It's interesting that two of those songs, "The One I Love" and "Lightnin' Hopkins," wouldn't be released until the band's next album, "Document," in 1987. Rob has this to say about this recording: "It is the finest-sounding 1986 live recording [from the band] now in circulation, and the first concert-length soundboard recording to emerge so far." This album is an hour and 22 minutes long. 01 Cuyahoga (R.E.M.) 02 talk (R.E.M.) 03 Fall on Me (R.E.M.) 04 Shaking Through (R.E.M.) 05 The Flowers of Guatemala (R.E.M.) 06 Driver 8 (R.E.M.) 07 talk (R.E.M.) 08 I Believe (R.E.M.) 09 talk (R.E.M.) 10 Swan Swan H (R.E.M.) 11 talk (R.E.M.) 12 Can't Get There from Here (R.E.M.) 13 7 Chinese Bros (R.E.M.) 14 talk (R.E.M.) 15 Superman (R.E.M.) 16 talk (R.E.M.) 17 Pretty Persuasion (R.E.M.) 18 Little America (R.E.M.) 19 Feeling Gravitys Pull (R.E.M.) 20 Strange (R.E.M.) 21 So. Central Rain [I'm Sorry] (R.E.M.) 22 Auctioneer [Another Engine] (R.E.M.) 23 Lightnin' Hopkins (R.E.M.) 24 Old Man Kensey (R.E.M.) 25 Life and How to Live It (R.E.M.) 26 talk (R.E.M.) 27 Time Was (R.E.M.) 28 Second Guessing (R.E.M.) https://bestfile.io/en/XI9TOlV8nbNdMRZ/file The cover of the band's lead singer Michael Stipe is from a concert at the Northern Illinois University Arena in DeKalb, Illinois, on October 26, 1986.

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On January 1, 1863 Boston’s abolitionist community gathered on a cold, cloudy, and gloomy day in anticipation of the news that Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

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How? Don't ask.