July 10, 2025
Podfellows Local 151
Guest appearance
July 7, 2020
Snowflakes in a Blizzard
Book Profile: Begin the Begin
November 04, 2019
Modern Age
Big Men on Campus: How R.E.M. became one of rock's greatest accidental legends
October 23, 2019
Phoenix New Times
Can’t Get There From Here: Arizona Author Robert Dean Lurie Explores R.E.M.’s Early Days
October 09, 2019
Rock & Roll Globe
Why You Trying To Second Guess It?: R.E.M.'s Reckoning at 35
September 04, 2019
The Current (Minnesota Public Radio)
Rock and Roll Book Club: "Begin the Begin: R.E.M.'s Early Years"
September 02, 2019
Limited Engagement: Talking R.E.M. and everything else
Listen here.
August 20, 2019
America Magazine
Review: The birth (and birthplace) of R.E.M.
August 07, 2019
Rockin' the Suburbs: "Begin the Begin" Reading and Q&A at The Mansion on O Street
August 08, 2019
Rockin' the Suburbs: "Begin the Begin" Reading and Q&A pt. 2
August 09, 2019
Rockin' the Suburbs: "Begin the Begin" Reading and Q&A pt. 3
August 04, 2019
The American Spectator
The Band That Time Forgot: A New Biography of R.E.M.'s Early Years
July 31, 2019
Rolling Stone (Germany)
What does REM actually mean?
July 19, 2019
Dangerous Minds
A Heckler Stirs Up R.E.M. During Fabled 1985 Gig
July 17, 2019
Fantastic Beats Podcast
R.E.M. / The Go! Team / Jlin (with Robert Dean Lurie)
July 15, 2019
Louder Than War
There's much to learn about R.E.M.'s early years. Though there have been many books about them in the past, there has never been a biography like this. It takes you back to their roots in Athens, Georgia, in the 1980s and shines a light on the local bands who boosted them in the early days. Surrounded by a thriving music scene and pioneering groups like Pylon, the B-52s, and Love Tractor, R.E.M. were seen as a pretty average band at first. From Michael Stipe's first performance at a high school battle of the bands, to Bill Berry always wanting to be a farmer, there's stuff in this book that even the biggest fans won't have heard about. Outside of R.E.M., Stipe was always interested in experimental music and Begin the Begin also delves into his many side projects. In 1981, he played solo under the name 1066 Gaggle O' Sound, with looped dub sounds. A very well written and detailed account of one of America's biggest college rock bands. - Alfie Taylor
July 11, 2019
The Wire
R.E.M. were always a more interesting proposition than their later career chart success might suggest, and for many fans, the Athens, Georgia band were a portal into everything from post-punk and psychedelia to surrealism and folk art. Robert Dean Lurie's Begin the Begin is a timely contribution to the literature on R.E.M., tracing their rise from student party band to the cusp of major label stardom. - Stewart Smith (read the complete review in the print edition)
June 26, 2019
The American Conservative
R.E.M. in the USA
June 21, 2019
Biff Bam Pop
Robert Dean Lurie Takes Us Back to the Early Days of R.E.M.
June 13, 2019
No Recess
Begin the Begin: R.E.M.'s Early Years is Freewheeling and Full of Heart
June 12, 2019
Record Collector
Four Star Review
As late as the 1992 release of their eighth album Automatic for the People, all four members of REM were still living in or around Athens, Georgia, the moderately small college town where they played their first gigs just over a decade earlier. This engrossing book largely focuses on the band's formative years and first footholds towards global success, up to and including the last of their "indie" LPs, Document, before the megabucks Warners deal, and is as much an examination of Athens itself as it is the stadium superstars-to-be.
Geography informs much of the material contained in those first five albums on IRS Records, an ever-broadening campus rock template imbued with the atmosphere of a both real and mythic American South. Author Lurie (who went to college in Athens in the 90s) evocatively draws upon specific local history and Georgia folklore generally as a backdrop for his detailed portrait of an unassuming quartet who strived to stay "normal" once fame came calling.
Though he doesn't speak to band members themselves, he still unearths revealing details of them as younger men through interviews with old girlfriends, roommates, key figures in the town's music scene, and lifelong Athens inhabitants. What becomes clear is just how much the time and place seeped into the songs that set REM on the path to global dominance. -Terry Staunton
June 10, 2019
"Begin the Begin" interview/feature on Barstool Rockers (iHeart Radio)
June 06, 2019
"Begin the Begin" conversation with Arroe Collins (iHeart Radio)
June 06, 2019
Library Journal
Described by some as the South’s Greenwich Village, the tree-lined college town of Athens, GA, has produced influential alternative rock bands including the B-52s, Neutral Milk Hotel, Of Montreal, and, most famously, R.E.M. Lurie (No Certainty Attached) has written the definitive biography of R.E.M.’s early years, from its formation in a converted church in 1980 to its last independent label release, 1987’s Document. Although Lurie didn’t interview group members for the book (quotes are taken from past interviews), he presents a valuable record of the band’s Athens tenure by seeking local sources untapped by most biographers, such as historian William Orten Carlton and scenesters Paul Butchart and Keith Joyner.
VERDICT: Lurie’s investigation of R.E.M.’s beginnings challenges established myths about the group that will interest fans, and provides a valuable history of Athens’s arts scene in the early 1980s, when R.E.M shared the spotlight with bands such as Pylon, Side Effects, and Love Tractor.
Reviewed by Amanda Westfall, Emmet O’Neal P.L., Mountain Brook, AL , Jun 06, 2019
June 06, 2019
The University Bookman
I saw R.E.M. twice back in 1982 at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, though my initial enthusiasm—I’m a sucker for jangly guitars, muddy mixes, and cut-and-paste lyrics—wilted once lead singer Michael Stipe’s unendurability bloomed. But I’m enjoying the hell out of Robert Dean Lurie’s Begin the Begin, his new book on the band’s early years. I don’t care if you love or loathe or exist in blissful ignorance of R.E.M., this book is a gem. It’s as much about a place and a time and a milieu as it is about this Athens, Georgia–nurtured quartet. Lurie recreates the Athens of the late ’70s and early ’80s with an eye and an ear for the Beat and the offbeat. He writes with a relaxed confidence and a sure command of the material; I can’t imagine a better guide. The band’s prelapsarian records were sonic artifacts of the old weird Athens, and by extension the localist and populist DIY music scenes in Buffalo, Minneapolis, Hoboken … ah, the memories. Read Lurie, then put Chronic Town on the turntable and drift away. -Bill Kauffman
May 30, 2019
Splice Today
Collapse Into R.E.M.
May 28, 2019
Michael Doherty's Music Log
Begin the Begin: R.E.M.'s Early Years Book Review
June 07, 2019
Front Porch Republic
Without Athens, there is no R.E.M.: The Loss of Local Cultures
May 18, 2019
All About Jazz
Begin the Begin: R.E.M.'s Early Years
May 17, 2019
Athens Banner-Herald
Release Party for R.E.M. Book Doubles as Fundraiser for Veterans
May 16, 2019
WUGA Athens
Author Robert Dean Lurie Returns for Begin the Begin
May 15, 2019
Pitchfork
Early Myths about R.E.M. Debunked: What We Learned From a New Biography
May 07, 2019
The Big Takeover
The start of R.E.M and the rise of the Athens, GA music scene has been the subject of countless books, but few crackle with the ring of truth of Robert Dean Lurie’s fascinating new volume Begin the Begin. Lurie, author of the great look at The Church No Certainly Attached from a few years ago goes back in time to look at the influences that shaped Michael Stipe, Pete Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry. I recognized elements of the band's upbringing that Lurie describes. Like Stipe, I was born in Decatur, Georgia (although he and his family moved frequently in his youth), and I worked in the same record stores in Atlanta as Pete Buck. Small world.
It was this “small world” – Athens, Georgia – that Lurie brings to life. Prior to the early ‘80s, if anyone outside of the south knew about Athens it was because of the university’s beloved football team, “The Dawgs”. 60 miles northeast of Atlanta, it was the town at the end of Atlanta Highway. When I was in high school in the late ‘70s, the notion that a musical revolution would spring up from this sleepy, humid college town was absurd. Until it did.
Begin the Begin vividly shows the artistic environment that spawned the “Athens Sound” (many of the early bands, including R.E.M., had dropouts from the college’s art school in their ranks). The drive to create and explore drove bands such as Pylon, The Method Actors, Love Tractor and of course, R.E.M. R.E.M.'s early performances at university parties – consisting of covers from The Monkees, among others, got them pegged as a dance band for frat parties, but that soon changed as Stipe developed as a lyricist, and Buck improved on guitar. After that came history.
Frequently, reading biographies of musical heroes can be hazardous. Notions cultivated from ignorance can loom large and mysterious, only to be dashed by cruel reality when confronted by the truth. Somehow Lurie avoids this, such as when you learn that “Gardening at Night”, from the band's 1982 EP Chronic Town could refer to a late night pee break on side of the road. It was Stipe’s and R.E.M.’s genius that made the mundane magical, in the same way that an abandoned railroad trestle, used on the cover of the band’s debut LP Murmur still beckons the faithful to explore for it in Athens.
For those of us who experienced the early days of R.E.M., Lurie’s book brings it all back. I can clearly recall the amazement when the band – unsigned at this point – opened for The Police at Atlanta’s grand Fox Theater. To see people we knew, barely older than ourselves on that stage was incredible. Lurie captures this, and shows that behind the mystery, R.E.M. worked incredibly hard, answering only to themselves and their devoted fans. Our area – and the world – have never seen the likes of them again. They were, in some fashion, “our band”. And we loved them. If this sounds like you, you’ll treasure Begin the Begin: R.E.M.s Early Years, and Robert Dean Lurie is to be commended for a welcome addition to the lore. -James Mann
March 21, 2019
Dangerous Minds
Legendary R.E.M. Performances Captured Before They Were Famous, 1981 (With a DM Exclusive)