When Zod sings ‘Driver 8’: Dissecting Michael Shannon’s REM tribute concerts
Back in the autumn of 1985, REM took their Reconstruction tour to the UK, including a gig at The Ritz in Manchester. These were still the indie label days; the somewhat mumbly and mysterious southern gothic days. For some, it was also REM at their creative and energetic peak.
Flash forward 40 years, and some of the Mancunians who attended that show at the Ritz found themselves lining up at a venue directly across the road on Whitworth Street, ostensibly to re-live that original experience. This concert at the Gorilla club last month was the first UK stop on Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy’s ongoing REM tribute tour, which is currently celebrating the 40th anniversary of the album Fables of the Reconstruction, aka Reconstruction of the Fables.
The 51-year-old Shannon, a Chicago theatre veteran who has enjoyed a long career as one of Hollywood’s most reliable and singular character actors, is not your typical tribute band frontman. For one thing, nobody with a face this distinctive and recognisable is going to bother pretending he’s Michael Stipe. This is Agent Van Alden from Boardwalk Empire, Col Strickland from The Shape of Water, President Garfield from Death By Lightning, and General fucking Zod from Man of Steel. He tends to play intimidating authority figures with ruthless vigour and wouldn’t immediately be the guy you’d guess to have a sentimental streak about 1980s college rock.
Shannon and Narducy certainly aren’t upstart fanboys cosplaying as their favourite band either. Both have been part of the Chicago music scene for many years (Narducy is a member of Bob Mould’s current touring band) and have been doing mostly under-the-radar tribute shows based around classic albums for over a decade, including Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead, and Neil Young’s Zuma.
Something changed, however, when the guys decided to perform REM’s debut album, Murmur, at Chicago’s Metro club in 2023. Their obvious love for the material and gloss-free re-creation of the early REM sound generated a big response that soon prompted a wider American tour. This, in turn, led to a decision to keep the ball rolling in 2025 by giving the Fables record a similar track-for-track tribute.
It was earlier this spring, when the original four members of REM actually joined Shannon and Narducy on stage at the famed 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, that the project graduated from a tribute act into a sort of officially endorsed REM nostalgia experience.
And that’s exactly what it felt like at the Gorilla in Manchester, as Shannon and Narducy, along with a band of very capable Chicago pros, turned back the clock to 1985, playing Fables straight through before rallying off 15 more tunes from the REM back catalogue. All but three of them were from the band’s pre-Warner Brothers years on IRS Records in the 1980s.
Shannon’s intensity as an actor translates well to performing these equal-parts punky and folksy jangle-pop songs, which are all played true to their original arrangements, with Shannon capturing a vague Stipe vibe, physical gyrations included, without ever entering into impersonation. Narducy arpeggiates like Peter Buck, ‘Driver 8’ gets the crowd hopping, and ‘Wendell Gee’ is sad and lovely.
All the ingredients are there, and while Shannon does silence an audience member by sternly announcing that there will be “no requests,” it’s the closest to Zod he gets during the night. There is an understanding that this is a concert about channelling something, not just great old songs by a great band, but a sensation, a time period, a youthful outlook that most of the middle-aged performers and attendees know is way back in the rearview mirror outside the walls of the Gorilla.
Is this a healthy use of our collective concert ticket budgets in 2025? Would any of this be happening if Michael Shannon weren’t a famous actor with the cachet to indulge his nostalgic whims?
There was a slight feeling of melancholy at the Gorilla gig, not just during ‘World Leader Pretend’, which Shannon introduced with a sad statement about the song’s new relevance during the Trump era, but throughout the evening. Maybe it was because the joy of the moment also felt like a shared attempt to put lightning back in a bottle, a heartwarming effort when done collectively, but still one requiring a suspension of disbelief more like watching a stage play… which may be why Michael Shannon has been the perfect man for this particular job.
Next year, it’s already been announced that Shannon and Narducy will continue their REM fun by touring the 40th anniversary of Life’s Rich Pageant, which means another chance to spend a few blissful hours in the 1980s, ignoring whatever some young up-and-coming college band might be up to in a cheaper gig down the street.
