Making a Monster Part 4: Grocery Shopping for REM

After about a week, (I can’t remember exactly how long, but that seems about right), I got a call from Microwave telling me that Mike was out of the hospital, and that recording session was going to resume tomorrow. Mike might be out a day or 2 longer, but the other members were going to do some rehearsals and maybe some guitar tracks. That meant that we had to lay in supplies for the days ahead.

The culture of Rock music is rich with tales of spoiled musicians making outlandish requests. I remember hearing a story once about a band that required a bowl of peanut M&Ms, with specific colors eliminated from the bowl. No doubt, some poor production assistant was given the job of sorting through the different colors a bag at a time. I am happy to say, that REM is not one of these bands.

While they did have a very particular list of items that they wanted on a daily basis, all their requests were pretty reasonable, easy to find items. The key to success as the production assistant/gopher/part time tech/whatever I was called was to never let those items run out. If a member of the band wanted it, it had to be there. To some, this might seem silly, but when you are on the road for weeks or months at a time, having familiar items around that you can count on makes your life more comfortable. Here then, is the remarkably simple list of items that REM wanted on hand at all times:

- Coke.
Simple. But it had to be very specific Coke... First off, Classic Coke (certainly never diet or caffeine free). It couldn't be in a can, and it couldn't be in a plastic bottle. The Coke had to be in a glass bottle. But not just any glass bottle... it had to be in a traditionally shaped classic Coke bottle, like you see in old pop art paintings. Size mattered too. It couldn't be a big bottle... it had to be the little glass bottles.

- YooHoo. That's right, YooHoo. Chocolate. This also could not be in cans or plastic bottles. It had to be glass bottles. Peter Buck was the primary consumer of the YooHoo... he downed quite a bit of it too.

- Pete's Wicked Ale. I don't remember the flavor, but I do remember that it had to be in a glass bottle. The band didn’t drink much during the sessions. They would usually have a beer at the end of the day. The crew drank a little more, but alcohol consumption was pretty low overall.

- A USA today newspaper.

Michael Stipe required lemonade. Sounds simple, but It had to be a specific brand of organic lemonade that I can't remember the name of now. (In a glass bottle of course). I had to go to an organic food store to find it, and that store only had a couple of bottles. I bought the 2 bottles that were on the shelf, and asked the store manager to order more, and let me know when it came in, so that I could buy all of it.

Aside from the lemonade, all the other items were consumed by the band and crew, which meant keeping a supply big supply was critical. The first couple of days, I had a few close calls. We almost ran out of coke one day. Those little bottles go pretty fast. I went to the nearby store, and of course, they had nothing but plastic liter bottles. No glass. I had bought all the small glass bottles a couple of days earlier, and they hadn't received a new shipment. Then another store had the glass, but it was to big. Finally, I found it at another store, but they only had a small 6 pack of bottles. From that point forward, if I found it, I would buy everything on the shelf, and whatever they had in back to make sure that we had enough.

Lunch was whatever the band wanted. They like Mexican and Indian food. Atlanta has plenty of good restaurants, so lunch was always easy. Michael Stipe was more particular… he usually liked a veggie burger from a specific little diner in Decatur. This was about a 30 minute drive one way, so I had to plan it out just right to make sure the Peter, Mike and Bill’s food didn’t get cold.

Overall, REM was always very nice and polite. If you got something wrong, they didn’t really get upset. The staff around them, however, did get upset from time to time, (see coffee filter incident from an earlier post).

After I had stocked up on supplies, it was back to the warehouse turned studio. Techs for both live and recorded sound were busy checking equipment. Microwave was changing strings on several guitars that Peter Buck would be using the next day. Bill Berry’s drum tech was busily working changing drum heads. The room had a cool atmosphere about it, like the way it feels in a concert hall right before a big show.

That's all for now. Check back soon for the next installment of "Making a Monster" called "Charles Cote on stage with REM.... It really happened, well sort of..."

Oh, and when you get a chance, stop by and listen to some sound clips for our new CD, Max Q at http://www.theReverseEngineers.com. If you want to hear what we sound like, here is a clip: Sunshine with the Shade wma | mp3

Charles Cote
Bassist -- The Reverse Engineers