06 "Doesn't R.E.M. stand for 'rapid eye movement'?"
Description
This article is from the R.E.M. FAQ, by Ron Henry (rgh3@cornell.edu) with numerous contributions by others.
06 "Doesn't R.E.M. stand for 'rapid eye movement'?"
In the scientific field of sleep research, the acronym r.e.m. indeed stands
for "rapid eye movement," and refers to the stage of sleep in which, among
other things, dreaming occurs. But, in the case of the band, no, it
doesn't. The story related by Peter Buck on the band's early 1983 Late
Night with David Letterman appearance is that they picked it out of the
dictionary (not all dictionaries include scientific terms like "r.e.m.," so
don't be disappointed if you don't find it) and they liked it because it
was so ambiguous.
From It Crawled from the South:
"'We sat up one night,' says Michael, 'and we just got completely
drunk and rolled around the floor. We had all this chalk, and we
took every name anyone could think of and we wrote it on the wall
in the living room. When morning rolled around, we pointed and
erased, and it was between R.E.M. and Negro Eyes, and we thought
*that* probably wouldn't go over too well outside our immediate
circle of friends!'" (p. 24).
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