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From a 50,000 seater venue to a 7,500 one- oh dear REM. Oh dear.

And from the sound of it, neither can the people of South Wales.

Bill Berry. Had a nasty knock on the head and knew it was all over.

Not dead, as far as I know. Gave up playing after a health scare.

AIB, Leaving New York was from a previous album---three or four years back.

To be fair to REM they were pretty much on the slippery slope a long time before they released their killer tracks in the late 80's and 90's but they had to move the goalposts a lot to achieve this thus becoming very untrue to their goals and beliefs.
I think the huge amount of money and success that REM have had have sadly left them back in the situation where they can make the music that THEY want to make but unfortunately very litte of the paying public want to hear it ... of course I could be wrong and REM will reinvent themselves once again - but I very much doubt it.

Yes but Dire Straits pretty much exited stage right when they were at the very peak of their powers - basically the biggest selling band on the planet at the time.

Then of course you could add in the amount of cash coming in via their world class sell out concerts. Ok they reached their summit with "Brothers In Arms" an album which probably won't be repeated for sheer quality, durability & depth in my lifetime imho but they then followed it up with the less commercialised "On Every Street" which harked back to the music THEY wanted to give to the world.

The question is how can you go from one great album full of songs to having pretty much an empty hymn book and think that the latter is the best choice.