While discussing the joys of the independent record store and how before the internet it was the “campfire” where like minded music fans could meet and share ideas on their favorite records and bands as well as introduce one another to new music, Eddie tells Matt Vaughn, owner of Easy Street Records in Seattle, and Kevin Cole of KEPX Seattle, his thoughts on R.E.M. members Michael Stipe and Peter Buck meeting in a record store…
“When you hear the story of Stipe and Buck meeting in a record store in Georgia talking about a Patti Smith record? That band (R.E.M.) wouldn’t exist but because of a record store! I don’t think of music in a certain way if that band doesn’t exist.
So, I know that there’s a ‘campfire’ (Eddie’s term for the record store experience) on the internet with people talking, and sharing their music, and ideas, and critiques, but that feels like kind of an LED campfire, and I don’t know…it gives you light, but I don’t know if you feel the warmth.”
Couldn’t agree with you more Eddie…
Wikipedia states: In January 1980, Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in Wuxtry Records, the Athens record store where Buck worked. The pair discovered that they shared similar tastes in music, particularly in punk rock and protopunk artists like Patti Smith, Television, and the Velvet Underground. Stipe said, “It turns out that I was buying all the records that [Buck] was saving for himself.” Through mutual friend Kathleen O’Brien, Stipe and Buck then met fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills and Bill Berry, who had played music together since high school and lived together in Georgia. The quartet agreed to collaborate on several songs; Stipe later commented that “there was never any grand plan behind any of it.”
