Today, REM’s front man, Michael Stipe, mouths platitudes in clown make-up while Peter Buck, hunched over his guitar far away stadium stage left, attempts to balance this absurdity with desperate punk gestures. But the young REM, captured here, was a mysterious and revolutionary proposition. It crawled from the South with unfashionable 1960s folk-rock licks, hickory-smoked harmonies, telepathic musical interplay and impenetrable lyrics, grafting the angular structures of Wire and Gang of Four onto a homespun yet visionary American sensibility. REM opened post-punk ears to the treasures of the past and paved the way for Nirvana, anticipating the globalisation of underground rock. Remember them this way.