Billy Bragg has shared an old video of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe covering The Only Ones’ ‘Another Girl Another Planet’ – check it out below.
Uploading the video to his YouTube channel, Bragg wrote: “Love this clip of Michael Stipe, Natalie Merchant, Wiggy and myself playing ‘Another Girl Another Planet’ backed by Sid Griffin and the Cole Porters.”
The musician went on to say the performance happened during a show in June 1990 at Olomouc’s summer cinema. The musicians were touring Czechoslovakia around the country’s first free elections in decades following the Velvet Revolution.
On Twitter, Bragg then shared an article about how he and Stipe ended up touring Czechoslovakia.
“It was very un-rock’n’roll,” said Bragg. “Me and Stipey shared a room, which neither of us ever did on tour. But we kind of had to work out how to share the space, you know. I had never been to Czechoslovakia, so I was also in that sort of learning space. Everything was new to me about Czechoslovakia.
If you enjoyed the clip of Another Girl Another Planet and were wondering what Michael Stipe @remhq @NatalieMerchant and me were doing playing a gig in a cinema in Olomouc in 1990, here’s the backstory of our Czechoslovakian tourhttps://t.co/hwYxz1Glnw
— Billy Bragg (@billybragg) April 29, 2023
“It was a very special time for all of us. And we often talk about it when we get together, that that trip was something special, that we realised that real change was happening. You don’t often get the privilege of being present when something like that is happening, when a people are invigorated by change,” he added.
Earlier this year, Bragg announced details of a new box set to mark his four decades in music called ‘The Roaring Forty’.
According to a press release, the 300-song CD box set is made up of Bragg’s 12 studio albums to date as well as a host of non-album singles and B-sides, session tracks, rare live recordings, collaborations and previously unreleased material from the past 40 years.
Meanwhile, last year, Stipe confirmed that he was working on his first solo album, which should come together at some point this year.
“I’m collaborating with a bunch of different musicians and each of those songs, if I get my way, which I think I will because I’m paying for it, will be very different,” he explained.
“I have no management. I have no label. For the first time in my adult life, I don’t have a contract with anyone except myself. So I get to do whatever I want.”
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