Rhino Factoids: R.E.M. headlines “Charlotte’s First Gay New Wave Disco and Costume Party”

On August 25, 1981, R.E.M. appeared at The Scorpio, a dance club in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a show which was billed as "Charlotte's First Gay New Wave Disco and Costume Party,” with the funds from the price of admission – which was a whopping $3.00 per ticket – benefitting various gay and lesbian charities.

While the collaboration between club and band was clearly done for a good cause, it’s possible that the person or persons responsible for putting together the advertisements for the event didn’t really know a lot about R.E.M., as they prominently reference the band’s “irresistible dance beat.” Fortunately, they had a few other factoids to reference in order to fill the rest of the space, including that the they’d opened for The Police at Atlanta’s Fox Theater, toured the east coast with Gang of Four, and had been voted Newcomer Band of the Month in New York Rocker. In conclusion, the declaration was made that “if you like the Police, you’ll love R.E.M.,” which is the sort of blanket statement that can lead to fistfights.

Thankfully, in this case, there was apparently no bloodshed, though we’d guess that had a lot to do with the fact that the majority of the people who came to The Scorpio that night probably had little or no interest in seeing R.E.M., anyway. And why would they? Even setting aside the fact that they were effectively an unknown quantity at that point, the big selling points for the evening – band or no band – were the fact that there would be three costume contests (most original, most p.o.p., and most mod), and “Sam Baker’s Great Disco” would be keeping the joint jumping both before R.E.M.’s performance and during the break between their sets.

Come on now: we love R.E.M. as much as anybody, but even we might be looking at our watches and giving them the “wrap it up” signal if it meant that we might have a shot at winning a costume contest.

Sadly, we can’t close this factoid by offering you the opportunity to listen to an album’s worth of R.E.M. playing live in ’81, but at least we can provide you with a chance to listen to the guys a bit later in their career. Just imagine if they were way sloppier and probably more than a little bit intoxicated, and it’ll be like you were right there at The Scorpio.