As the music critic of The Baltimore Evening Sun from 1986 until 1992, Nestor Aparicio interviewed dozens of Rock And Rock Hall of Fame musicians in their prime and is unearthing these magical lost tapes with legends here via Music Classic at Baltimore Positive. This is guitarist Peter Buck of R.E.M. who joined him in 1991 before a small gig at Max’s On Broadway in Fell’s Point with Kevn Kinney of Drivin N Cryin. At the time, Buck, along with Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Bill Berry comprised one of the biggest acts in the world and discussed the evolution, concerts, fame and success of one of the greatest American bands in music history.
In a 1991 interview, Peter Buck of R.E.M. discussed the band’s global tour, highlighting new songs and covers in their setlist. Buck explained their decision to avoid playing hits like “Radio Free Europe” to maintain creative integrity and their preference for smaller venues. He criticized the U.S. political climate and emphasized the band’s evolution, financial management, and future plans, including potential acoustic tours. Buck also reflected on the band’s early days, their touring experiences, and their commitment to playing music that resonates with them. He mentioned the band’s financial challenges and their dedication to maintaining a sustainable business model.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
REM evolution, global tour, new songs, creative integrity, smaller venues, political climate, future plans, acoustic tours, setlist changes, fan expectations, touring expenses, financial management, musical influences, recording technology, political views
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Peter Buck
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are wnst am 1570 towns of Baltimore and Baltimore positive. We are presenting our music Classic series. You can find that at Baltimore positive.com. For those, you know, I was a music critic for several years back in the late 1980s and early 1990s I have unearthed a trove of now Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artist. This one is Peter Buck, legendary guitars from the band REM ailing from Athens, Georgia. I had a 29 minute chat with Peter Buck back in the 1990 era. I knew Peter a little bit. He had toured with Kevin Kenny from driving and crying and it come through. I was a huge REM fan, and when they moved to Warner Brothers from IRS, their their publicist, Karen Moss, was a wonderful gal, and she would invite me to do really cool things, including, at one point, I drove to Charleston, West Virginia to see them do something called mountain stage. You can Google that it was in a church. There’s actually a video for that on YouTube. Either way, in the modern era, I can throw the transcript of this conversation, all 29 minutes of it into into a transcription service, and find out that Peter Buck discussed the band’s recent global tour, highlighting new songs and covers in their set list. He explained the decision to avoid playing songs like Radio Free Europe to maintain creative integrity. Buck also touched on the band SEC list, creative process, which varies nightly, and their preference for smaller venues. He reflected on the band’s evolution and the financial management and the impact of touring on REM. Buck criticized the current political climate, the US emphasizing issues like racism and government inefficiency. He also mentioned the band’s future plans, including potential acoustic tours and smaller venue performances from my Almost Famous trove of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, one of my favorite dudes I loved, loved, loved, loved REM. Still love REM Peter Buck, the legendary guitarist from REM with me calling in though less on the little Radio Shack recorder that I had at the Baltimore Sun in the early 1990s Hello, Hi, Peter. Yeah. Nestor from Baltimore, how are you good? How are you all right? Yeah, time now,
02:18
yeah. Super, super. Again.
Peter Buck 02:19
That’s good.
Nestor Aparicio 02:20
Excuse me,
Peter Buck 02:21
you got squeezed in. That’s good.
Nestor Aparicio 02:24
You’re on a break. I assume how long you been home now, little
Peter Buck 02:27
bit less.
Nestor Aparicio 02:29
Where were you before this?
Peter Buck 02:30
Where was, you know, it’s easy to ask where I wasn’t we were pretty much everywhere we went, all over the world, basically, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and all of America and some of Canada. And then I leave tomorrow to start America again.
Nestor Aparicio 02:43
So what kind of changes do you have planned that we didn’t see in April, different songs. We
Peter Buck 02:49
got some new songs in the set. We’ll probably work up some new covers,
Nestor Aparicio 02:54
new songs, meaning real new songs or new different songs, new
Peter Buck 02:56
songs that we’ve just written. You know, we’ll have at least two or three, I guess we’ve got like, eight or something, but we’re still kind of working, you know, the bridge isn’t good enough, or we don’t know how to end it, or something like that. But, you know, see, we change the set a fair amount anyway. And you know, if you saw us in April, and you came back and saw us now, you know, we might not think that we’re doing anything brand new, but if you’d see stuff you hadn’t seen the time before,
Nestor Aparicio 03:22
right? Why did you have the fill in the city video? The fill in the city, your city here, you know, just the
Peter Buck 03:29
fact that everyone was kind of going well, they’re playing stadiums or arenas or whatever, and you know, what are they going to do? We feel, let’s kind of short circuit all those expectations when making it, you know, kind of a fun you know. I mean, everyone seemed to enjoy it. It was a funny little poke. It’s at a, you know, big celebrities on stage yelling at that same bullshit that they always yell at, right and ourselves. And it kind of short circuits all this convention.
Nestor Aparicio 03:51
I thought it was very tongue in cheek. Everyone, I
Peter Buck 03:54
mean, all the kids laughed. And, you know, we never would got it. It wasn’t like we were being mean, and people were, you know, that we were being snotty. I mean, they everyone got the joke. It was a fun little thing. It was nice. We got a 10 second time. Take a breath too.
Nestor Aparicio 04:09
Right now, I saw you did a lot of songs off life, search, pageant, which is another one of my favorite albums. You’re gonna keep that up or, well,
Peter Buck 04:15
it depends what night you saw us. I mean, sometimes, I mean, usually, what we do is we do the stuff from the last two records. And then it just depends, you know? I mean, we don’t remember. We did one show where we did five songs from murmur, you know? And it was just like, why do we do that? Well, that’s how the set list turned out. Well, it
Nestor Aparicio 04:32
seemed that, I mean, I read a few reviews from different places, and you pretty much had left the hits off of all the shows. I read reviews like South Central rain, follow me radio for Europe. Can’t get there. We didn’t
Peter Buck 04:44
do can’t get there from here. We didn’t we only did radio for Europe like twice, but we did following me probably every other night, every third night. We did one I love, maybe every fifth night. And
Nestor Aparicio 04:53
why would you leave the biggest city or in your whole catalog out? I mean, especially early in the tour.
Peter Buck 04:59
We. I don’t really think of it like that. I mean, well, I
Nestor Aparicio 05:01
mean, are you not thinking that people are paying money to see what they want to see?
Peter Buck 05:08
No, I don’t think they are, actually. I mean, I think that if we gave them what they wanted to hear and see, it would be a great service to ourselves and to them, you know, what they were coming to see as a band, and not a hit record. I mean, the only just hit a hit record for, you know, I think that we can put on a better show, and by playing stuff that means more to us, and having and shaping the song towards kind of a something like one I love doesn’t really fit in, in a lot of ways, with the songs that mean the most to us now.
Nestor Aparicio 05:36
Well, see, seem to me, a lot of people, especially the younger crowd that you generated with document, thought that was a love song and that was not a love song, no.
Peter Buck 05:46
But then, you know, sometimes if we say, well, we never even play anything successful stand was like, you know, top six, or whatever the hell it was, and we played that every day. Just when things get a little bit older, we play them because they mean something to us still. So radio for Europe really doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I mean, it’s, it’s eight years old, but we play perfect circle off that record and sitting still now and again.
Nestor Aparicio 06:08
Why did you drop? Can’t get there. Um, it was
Peter Buck 06:12
fun. But we, you know, we did it every day for two, two and a half years. And, you know, it just kind of wore itself out. It also just the way the material is going. It didn’t fit in thematically or musically with the set, you know? I mean, we can do it every once in musically, but anywhere you put something like, can get there from here or Superman attention, just put a break in the set like, Well, okay, here’s here’s your hit here, and it doesn’t relate to the rest of the material around it. I do the setlist at this again, think, well, you know, what’s this song about? What key is it in? What’s the tempo? You don’t want to do a bunch of slow, sad ones all in a row. If you’re doing as a set of kind of angry material, you don’t want to throw Superman in the middle and kind of blow the emotion for us, right? So
Nestor Aparicio 06:57
you do the setlist every night, yeah. What time the night do you do this? And
Peter Buck 07:02
it depends on, I usually the beginning of tour. I usually start about five o’clock in the middle with it, for an hour at the end of the tour. I’m usually so sick of seeing the goddamn thing, I just sit there and look at it like 15 minutes we’re going, I scribble anything, don’t think about it.
Nestor Aparicio 07:15
So it’s, it’s different every night, for sure. Yeah.
Peter Buck 07:18
I mean, it’s not like 100% different. You’re, you know,
Nestor Aparicio 07:21
we see a lot of bands that do the same exact thing because the way their show is structured, you know, they have those, you know, operatic kind of things where they have to do the same thing every night, or else the light people are gonna be all
Peter Buck 07:31
fucked up. Or, usually, what happens is that we will open the set with the same song whole tour, although this last year we didn’t do that. But it just because it’s so hard to get in for that many people, if you know that a certain song is going to be first, it’s real easy to get into the groove of it. And then you’ve gotten over the nervous system, the fear, and then you just do whatever you want to. And then usually end with the same song. So that, you know, we know, because it helps end the set. But then, you know, that’s two songs out of what, 19, or something. And then we work around that. And then the encores are always we have no idea
Nestor Aparicio 08:01
what we’re gonna do. Are you gonna open with pop song again? We haven’t decided open with these days. That was great back on the life.
Peter Buck 08:07
It’s funny, each record seems to come up with one song. It’s really a good open. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 08:12
begin to begin. I swore to sworn you would open with that on that tour, and when I got there, you didn’t even play the song. But, you know,
Peter Buck 08:18
it’s funny, we didn’t play it on the tour that we we wrote it, but we played it all the next two tours. So I don’t ask me, it isn’t I thought we should open with it too. It just didn’t seem right. I think we know we opened up it once or something, but work song was a bit opener too. I don’t really know. We might, you know, it just depends. We haven’t decided we start with the first date is Friday. We don’t know we’re gonna open with so it’s not like we have 50 people waiting around, you know, biting your fingernails, right, right? We do whatever we feel like, and the lighting guy has to east.
Nestor Aparicio 08:51
It’s your show, not his.
Peter Buck 08:53
We don’t have like, you know, big inflatable pigs or cars right around the stage or anything. The lighting stuff is fairly simple, and all, I think, has been with us for got six years now. So he knows that we don’t follow the set list, and it makes his job hard. But
Nestor Aparicio 09:09
right? Do you ever listen to the greatest hits album that came out on IRS? I listened
Peter Buck 09:14
to the master to make sure what didn’t pop or click or anything other than that? Yeah. I mean, I don’t play around records anyway, so
Nestor Aparicio 09:21
you don’t play any records at all. No,
Peter Buck 09:22
I mean, well, no. I mean, it’s funny, when I work on a project, I just It doesn’t give me any pleasure to hear it again. It gives me pleasure to do it. But even when I sit in on someone else’s record that I really like that, I don’t really play that record ever.
Nestor Aparicio 09:37
How often do you listen music? Oh, I’m
Peter Buck 09:39
all day. I mean, not all day, but now probably listen to three or four or five records a day when I’m home,
Nestor Aparicio 09:44
but it’s all more current things. You wouldn’t pick up an old Boston album and put it
Peter Buck 09:49
on, well, that wasn’t one of my hits, even when it was old. I’ll, you know, I’ll put on, you know, stuff from the 80s, mostly. And then, you know, some stuff, some old stuff. I’ll play an old jazz record. Maybe or old blues or something, or, you know, maybe even two in the morning from the stones record, yeah, but, I mean, I don’t, I don’t really want to sit around with them, the
Nestor Aparicio 10:08
deals or anything, right? Dead letter office. So where the world that come from, and are we ever going to get another one?
Peter Buck 10:13
If you’re lucky, you won’t. That was just B sides, and the record company wanted us to compile them. And rather than just let them do it, we decided we’d do it ourselves. And, you know, you ever
Nestor Aparicio 10:25
do king of the road live? I
Peter Buck 10:27
think we did it live twice. You know, we certainly vague memory of doing it one night at some bar, you know, one of those places when we started out, when we had to do three sets a night, you know, and it’s two in the morning. There’s only 20 people there. I seen, remember sitting down doing king of the road, pretty much ended the set.
Nestor Aparicio 10:44
I remember when, when document was pretty much winding down, rolling into the cover story, and you guys, and you said, you know, this is it. You’re not going to go out on the road for a while. While, to me, probably meant three or four years. And a while to you guys, meant about nine months.
Peter Buck 10:59
We stayed up the road a year and, well, when
Nestor Aparicio 11:03
I saw your album out, I didn’t, I didn’t. I was very shocked. I mean, I thought you guys had had about had enough with the exhaustion, and you were gonna pipe down for a little while. But, you
Peter Buck 11:12
know, the idea was that we were going to take a year off the road, and that translated to everyone else’s meaning, a year not working. And, you know, as a matter of fact, we finished, guys, I think at the end of November, I guess beginning of December, December 1 or second. And we started back working january 4.
Nestor Aparicio 11:29
This is your job. You mean, you feel like you got to be doing it. What are you going to be doing at home? If you’re not, I like doing
Peter Buck 11:34
this. Yeah, we all like to travel, but if we’re not traveling, we might as well practice, because you never know when a good song is gonna appear, you know. And if you open yourself to kind of inspiration every single day, you tend to get more songs. I mean, you know, you can’t use, can’t predict when you’re gonna be hot. And there, you know, We will rehearse for two weeks trying to write new stuff, and nothing will come and everyone gets depressed. And one day will come in and write three songs. So just by, you know, the process of going in and being there saying, Okay, we’re going at seven every night, and stayed until nine, even if all we do is read magazines and look at each other. That’s, you know, that happens. Sure. I mean, there are days we go in and nobody is excited, or, you know, someone’s hung over, or just we’re so sick of struggling against, you know, writing songs that we can’t come up with, that we just sit there and we’ll talk and, you know, tell stories, and, you know, maybe I’ll have the guitar on, but I won’t play it much. And that’s, you know, you’re a writer. I mean, you’ve got to sit there and kind of wait for inspiration. Mostly,
Nestor Aparicio 12:26
I generally go get a coke or something like that. You know, you guys didn’t want big halls. You got them.
Peter Buck 12:33
You can’t go back. Oh, we still actually want to. Why
Nestor Aparicio 12:38
don’t you, why don’t you say what Springsteen said, you know, once he got his biggest stadiums. I’m coming to your town, I’m doing one show in your regular sized arena. Why don’t you go back and say we’re going to play a theater? You know, 20 days. That’s
Peter Buck 12:51
a good I mean, that’s a good possibility in the future. This year, we felt was the year that we should work a lot. We should get the record out there and get people to hear it. Because, you know, I doubt we’ll ever tour like this again for eight months. So we’re making the most of it. I mean, we it would be, I think, a service at this point for people who like us to go out and do they fuck it. We’re gonna play for a month. We’re gonna play in 4000 seat halls, and people can’t see the show tough, get scalped next time around. Who knows? I mean, there’s no guarantee that we’ll go out as a rock and roll band whenever we tour next. We might do acoustic stuff. We’ve really enjoyed playing acoustic set lately. Maybe go out with more people, go out with four or five extra musicians, you know? And there’s a million things we can do. And
Nestor Aparicio 13:32
was that the beauty of being as the superstar status that you can do what you want now? Yeah, and not star, yeah, that’s
Peter Buck 13:40
a nice little sideline we could, you know, we’ve always been, been kind of reminded, as far as then, what we felt like, but when touring was paying the rent, which it did up until, you know, last year, really, that that recently? Well, you know, we make, like, money off the records and stuff, but we’ve always, rather than just having, like, a small office with no one in it. And, you know, we had a fan club, which we hire two people to work, and it loses money. And we have, you know, I mean, we take out more sound and lights than we need to, because it’s important that it sounds well. And, you know, we pay our employees a lot, and we have health plans, what kind of shit we bought a building rather than renting. So for us, it’s been, you know, a lot of money goes out when a lot of money comes in. And, you know, the four of us have done fine, but it’s not like we’ve got, you know, a million dollars stacked up in gold ingots in the bank or anything. So the touring was the way out of that too, and was the way to pay the bills, and it was fun.
Nestor Aparicio 14:35
So do you make more money than touring now than or on records? Oh, I mean, touring is expenses. I mean, it just is. We make a lot
Peter Buck 14:41
of money tour. Now, we’ve always been and we’ve toured. You know, when it used to be the four of us and our manager in a van playing for $100 a night, we still made money. We just, we could, we can play anywhere for just as cheap as we need to and make it we, you know, we don’t get hotel rooms and we don’t
Nestor Aparicio 14:55
get to eat, but that’s what we did it. You can just take the amp and plug it in, yeah, and
Peter Buck 14:59
we get. Set up ourselves, change the strings, and then drive overnight to the next place, you know. Are you
Nestor Aparicio 15:04
kind of sorry? Did it all happen and there is a certain amount of compromising to make? Well,
Peter Buck 15:08
no, I mean, I did that for nine years or eight years, seven whatever, you know. We started touring in 1980 and we and up until 1985 we played, you know, and we played some big colleges and stuff in 1985 but we also played a couple really dumpy little places, you know, played 200 people, and that was great. It’s a great experience. I’m glad I did it, you know, I think that bands like guns and roses or whatever, they get very successful very fast, and miss out on something that’s really important in the formation of the band. You know, we grew as players into the band doing it. And I’m glad I don’t have to do it anymore. You know, I’m 32 and I just don’t want to be sleeping on anyone’s floor, you know, for eight months. But not glamorous, yeah. I mean, it was, it’s glamorous in retrospect. And I’ve got a whole collection of great road stories that, you know. I mean, if my friends are over, we’re talking about what it was like. I can, you know, I can make people laugh for hours over
Nestor Aparicio 15:55
at night in El Paso, you
Peter Buck 15:56
know, we’re, you know. I mean, basically the spinal tap that we’re American, we’re not that stupid, you know, it’s funny, you know, back. And it really is kind of really romantic. And at my age, you know, I just, I want to do it like that. But that doesn’t mean that we have to play big places all the time. I mean, we can really do whatever we feel like on the next tour, whenever that will be. And if we so desire, you know. I mean, I’d like to do it a little bit different. And I think if if I was going right, lean towards playing smaller places with a more musician, you know, hire like a really interesting percussionist, and, you know, we’ve got Peter Hall zeppel With this on this tour, keep him and maybe a couple other people so that we don’t aren’t really tied to the bass, drums, guitar structure.
Nestor Aparicio 16:38
Okay, off the road. Now, you said you were off the road for a month. What kind of things do you do to pass the time when you’re you’re home for that, that long period of time? What’s happens? Like, I mean, first off, how much has that changed in 10 years? I assume you all still live there. Yeah, yeah.
Peter Buck 16:53
Athens kind of, when we, when I moved here in like, 77 or whatever it was, a kind of, I was a neat, quiet, little southern town, and there was just a little small handful, maybe about 100 and or 150 of us who were into anything other than just, you know, your average college fraternity life, right? You know, like these 50 twos were part of that circle. And pylon, the method actors, you know, a lot of people, a lot of my real friends. We’d all go to the shows, you know, we’d go see we’d all meet each other at the French films at the school, you know, everyone was broke, so we’d just sit around the street and, you know, talk. And now it’s, you know, it’s a rock and roll haven in a lot of people’s eyes. So as much as it’s still a pleasant place, it’s kind of like lots of kids move here to form bands. And, you know, people know that, well, gee, you can get on the road and make your own record and tour and get a record deal and make a million dollars to buy a mansion on the hill. You know, you don’t live in a mansion on a hill. No, I live on flat ground, and it’s not quite a mansion myself. You know, it’s like near the center town, I’m married. I need a nice
Nestor Aparicio 17:54
house, but it’s not people in Athens know who you are, know where you are, and they don’t bother me. Yeah, well,
Peter Buck 17:58
they don’t really care. I mean, I’ve been here for 12 years now, or something 13 years. And by and large, to them, I’m just, yeah, I’m this guy who’s successful at what he does. But, you know, I mean, there, if you know someone before they’re really successful, a lot of glamor doesn’t attach itself to them, you know, right? I mean, the kids here, the young ones that come to college, they kind of look at me for about a week. But by and large, you know, I go into the taco stand, and they know me, and I go into the record store, I used to work, and they all know me, and I get discounts there, and I can write checks in if I want to
Nestor Aparicio 18:27
right. What about the fabled church? It’s
Peter Buck 18:31
still standing in some some guys trying to sell it to turn into condos, but it’s in such horrible shape. I
Nestor Aparicio 18:36
mean, Rem began here raise the rent.
Peter Buck 18:38
It’s just, it’s a jump. I mean, it’s a fucking dumb like, three different times, and they’re trying to sell it a lot because they think the land is really nice, but it’s not Jefferson or manager was thinking of buying it just to have it. But, I mean, I went and looked at it and it’s falling apart. Is structurally unsound. Really, the only thing you could do with it would be bulldozed at that raise it. I just don’t want to be some condo lamb, developer, dude, you know the horrible stuff, so wave goodbye when they turn down again.
Nestor Aparicio 19:06
What kind of things has the band allowed you to obtain in the last year and a half that you never thought you would get when you were broke and sitting in the middle of the street with 150 other your drunken buddies 10 years ago? You know, did you ever think you would get this position?
Peter Buck 19:20
No. I mean, this is pretty far from what I thought would happen. What did you think would happen? I would thought we knew we were good, you know, from pretty much the beginning, and we just figured we’d do it for a while, and, you know, play a couple times a month, and maybe make a local record for DB or something. But, you know, when it came down to it, we were really enjoying playing. And we said, What’s rather than working in a newspaper, and, you know, deliver papers, let’s go out of town to Nashville. And, you know, it wasn’t real lucrative, but we all kind of decided at a certain point that it was something we wanted to do, and we’d rather tour and do it and stay home and do it once in a while. And since then, it’s been kind of, oh, gee, we gotta direct the contract. That’s great. You know, it’s. Um, you know, it’s kind of surprising
Nestor Aparicio 20:02
we’ll be able to buy groceries next week. Yeah,
Peter Buck 20:04
we went a bunch of years without buying groceries. It’s funny, I guess, because we were so broke for so long. I mean, just like, really, you know, poverty level, and there’s one year. I mean, $2,000 we’re all fairly, you know, simple in the taste that we have. I mean, I’ve got a nice house and, you know, a Jeep, and that’s about it. I mean, I buy guitars, but not a lot. I buy all the records I want and all the books I want, and that’s really
Nestor Aparicio 20:27
about it. You buy records or CDs. Records. Don’t own any CDs.
Peter Buck 20:32
I have a few, but mostly I figure, might as well support the record industry while there’s still records. I mean, because
Nestor Aparicio 20:38
they’re not gonna whether you buy them or not, gonna die,
Peter Buck 20:41
yeah, pretty much. But, I mean, I’ve got, you know, 5000 records. I mean, so, you know, I mean, why switch now? I mean, I’ve got a bunch of CDs that either are unavailable on record, the things that people have given me, but I’m not, I mean, I think CDs just started setting decent last two years. I mean, I think that the original CD technology was real bad.
Nestor Aparicio 21:04
Well, I mean, I’ve got some real, real good stuff that’s a couple years old, you know, might dispute that. If it seems like record you play it 1000 times and the symbols are gonna drop off. Well, you
Peter Buck 21:13
know, I mean, I’ve had CDs that don’t function after the two or three play, you know. I mean, they’re not they don’t last forever. No matter what anyone tells you, I’ve
Nestor Aparicio 21:22
got a few that skip, and when they skip, it sounds like real turd. I mean, it’s pretty bad.
Peter Buck 21:27
I’ve have a couple things I’ve played several times, as they don’t their high end is really, really fucked up. So I don’t know, and I just don’t, I don’t think they’re there to be on end all, like a lot of people
Nestor Aparicio 21:37
believe they could be. I mean, if there was a better mastering. I mean, when you’re pumping about 5 million at a time, something’s down to get lost somewhere.
Peter Buck 21:46
I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t notice. I can tell a little bit of difference in this last couple years, but I swear, I’ve first, I wouldn’t buy anything that’s over three years old or four years old, because the recording technique has changed so, you know, to accommodate CDs, you know, like I was looking to a stone CD. It’s horrible. The new one, no, not that, nothing, singles compilation. It was Exile on Main Street. It’s just, it’s horrible. You know, there’s no point in buying that, because it’s not the same record. I
Nestor Aparicio 22:14
haven’t rewind and I and some of was the, you know, the earlier stuff was was bad, and the newer stuff was good. It was just nature of the beast, I guess. Now, getting back to your fans a little bit, though, how do you try to accommodate fans, you know, the murmur, and then the green, and there’s got, there’s some kind of clash, because they’re people that are your age, that have been listening to you since, since murmur, and then there are people that are, you know, 15, that have just picked up green, and think it’s the be all and all of rock and roll music. I mean, how do you think these fans meet at shows, and how do you try to accommodate that?
Peter Buck 22:47
Oh, you know, I know. I know a lot of my friends who are close to my age that have been all the shows get kind of amazed when they come to like this last tour and see 15 year old kids that only know the new record. But I mean, hopefully they’ll learn from coming to see us. I mean, much rather they haven’t come see us than most of the crap that plays around, you know? And we don’t even try to accommodate them. I mean, we just would play songs, you know. We play whatever songs we feel like and and, you know, the 15 year old kids go, gosh, they didn’t do, you know, the hit single from last record, I’m never gonna see them again. That’s totally acceptable to me, you know. And if, if the older fans go, gosh, they’re gonna play mostly new stuff. They don’t play murmur anymore. I’m not going to assume that’s acceptable to you know, we do whatever we feel like, and, you know, I don’t really worry about it all
Nestor Aparicio 23:27
right. Now, the political angles seem to be coming out a little more. Maybe that’s because we can understand the words a little more lately, you know, how do you feel about the politics of the country, and is that going to take more of a forefront in your writing.
Peter Buck 23:41
You know, it’s hard to tell, but, I mean, we’re certainly not political writers. I mean, we’re not like Jackson Browne that make kind of concept records about that stuff. It comes into our music, just it comes into our
Nestor Aparicio 23:53
life. What’s wrong with the United States? And as far as you can tell, from Athens Georgia and from going around,
Peter Buck 23:59
gosh, the fact that racism is hip again this year, rather than just wine and sleep in the streets, you have entire families. The government just, oh, you know that can raise taxes, will just cut personal services to the bones so that kids don’t get any kind of education. The Drug Program is a fucking joke, and that’s like, oh, well, we’re not gonna put a lot of money, but we’re putting a lot of heart into it.
Nestor Aparicio 24:20
Great. That works. Meanwhile, Bucha norieger shaking hands, yeah,
Peter Buck 24:24
you know, I mean, we’ve got a president who’s helped siphon cocaine into the country through, you know, the CIA, through keeping the CIA Kingpin, cocaine Kingpin, in in office. It’s,
Nestor Aparicio 24:35
you know, keep talking. I’m a Democrat. It’s
Peter Buck 24:39
fine. You know, in the other main questions are things like, you know, environment stuff, which is, you know, I mean,
Nestor Aparicio 24:46
I wake up every morning and I think, How the fuck did we get this guy in here? You know? I mean, you know, I
Peter Buck 24:51
have nothing against him. I mean, he’s probably a nice fellow and everything. But, I mean, you know, he’s just gonna sit on his ass for four years and he’s afraid to do and what has he done? He has even a point. Did all this cabinet members yet it takes you one force in the terminal system do their job. Of course, you’re not gonna do anything. He talks a lot. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 25:08
the last one, they did it kind of quickly, and indeed, all of them. So I
Peter Buck 25:13
think it’s great though. You know he hasn’t done anything yet. He takes a three week vacation while he does fish every day.
Nestor Aparicio 25:18
And we hear about the kind of fish he catches, yeah, isn’t it? Isn’t it like a, really a poor showing on the press, that flag burning and the fish that George Bush catches and Kenneth bunk Porter or the lead items on the newscast? I mean that things
Peter Buck 25:30
that, you know, Exxon is already saying, Well, gee, we’re not going to go back and clean up Alaska. Fuck y’all and the president and everyone’s kind of,
Nestor Aparicio 25:37
well, gee. And meanwhile, people fall into the gas station local Exxon and by the products. But,
Peter Buck 25:44
you know, I mean, I mean, all oil companies are kind of pretty bad. I mean, I try to drive as little as possible. I ride my bike and walk a
Nestor Aparicio 25:52
lot. Way to fight it.
Peter Buck 25:54
Every person that drove when they didn’t need to, didn’t drive, you know, because I think I really enjoy driving, unless you get out in the country and drive around. I feel guilty doing that accidents. Don’t want to put money in those guys hands. So, you know, I mean, sit down, take
Nestor Aparicio 26:08
a long walk. Better for you anyway. Well, I really appreciate your time, and I’m sorry I tracked you down for weeks on end, but it was just well worth it to me to interview. So we
Peter Buck 26:17
just passed, you know, I know how that is, and the days we did the interview, but I already half an hour behind schedule, so it’s okay when I’m glad we finally got to do it. It would
Nestor Aparicio 26:26
totally bad if we didn’t give anyone I can catch up with you to show or do you meet people?
Peter Buck 26:30
Call the office together. We pass it. You say that sounds appreciated. Aparicio, is it like related to Louis? He’s
Nestor Aparicio 26:36
my cousin. Yeah. Really, I get that question 1000 times. Aren’t many of them? Yeah, one Venezuelan, and I get to go down there. And when I go down there, it’s, it’s kind of neat to see all the other people that are related to him. But I’m like, one of actually, my cousin was in Atlanta, and he’s another cousin of Louis, but that we the only two people United States related to him. So we
Peter Buck 26:58
get that question. We have another cousin that played too, another apparition.
Nestor Aparicio 27:02
No, his son played in the minor leagues, but that that was in, I thought
Peter Buck 27:06
he heard another appreciation. Yeah, I heard that. I thought about that. Meant to ask,
Nestor Aparicio 27:11
well, good, you’re a baseball fan. Maybe by the time you get here, the oils will be hot in that pennant race.
Peter Buck 27:16
So I think it’s great. I think Mike is gonna sing at one of the games. Think of the national anthem and the Royal games. I think so. No kidding, that’s what someone asked him to I guess you could do it.
Nestor Aparicio 27:24
Are you going to go to the same game?
Peter Buck 27:26
I don’t know. I’ll probably watch it on TV. I mean, I like baseball, but, you know, I guess I’m a brave there.
Nestor Aparicio 27:32
Oh boy, 1500 last night. Yeah, well,
Peter Buck 27:36
it’s pretty great. I remember being on TV. I think they set the record for these people at a major league game in the 20 cent was like, 348 that was like,
Nestor Aparicio 27:47
Yeah, well, Ted gets them either way. If you stand watching on TV, or if you go, you know,
Peter Buck 27:53
like, the Braves are America’s team. I mean, everybody watches them because, like, fucks. Nothing else to do. I’ve got a brave pad. I’ll sit around. It’s so sad, but
Nestor Aparicio 28:02
they can’t play a little better. I mean, well,
Peter Buck 28:03
you know, there’s something to be said. I mean, anyone can like a front runner, but it takes a real fan to like a team that’s always the worst team in the league,
Nestor Aparicio 28:10
like the Indians are, right? Well, thanks a lot for talking to me and catch up with your interview schedule. All right, and maybe I’ll see you when you get here. Thanks a lot. Bye, bye, you.
