Editor’s note: The views expressed in I Am So Popular are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.

The first time I ate dinner with REM’s Michael Stipe—okay so it was also the last time I ate dinner with him—was September 28, 1984. The boys were in Tampa to play at the University of South Florida (my alma mater, a place of such prestige that the dorms had pools behind them and no one took classes during prime tanning hours).

Stipe didn’t invite me, I invited myself. I’d lucked into a phone interview with Pete Buck and Mike Mills a few days prior and I was still high from this unbelievable score—me a twenty year-old fledgling music writer getting to talk to them, some of my biggest musical heroes. They weren’t superstars yet, but they were heading in that direction. It was an outdoor gig and when they pulled up, I watched from a little ways away as Pete and Mike scrutinized my words in The Oracle, our college daily.

Stipe was a vegetarian—probably still is—and vegetarian wasn’t something the caterer had provided, so it fell to my friend Ed, to ferry the singer to a place where he could find something that suited his palate. I like to think Ed invited me along. Or maybe I just shoved my way into his sports car. Either way, there we sat, gathered around healthy food before healthy food was a trend, at the NK Café.

I wasn’t so popular back then, only sort of popular, and on a much smaller scale, so Stipe was hardly impressed. Less so since I peppered him with sophomoric questions (not my fault, I was a sophomore) and stopped just short of leaning across and licking his head in my enthusiasm. This dinner was a pivotal moment in my life, one I’m sure he forgot before it was even over.

At the end of the meal, I had this fantasy working that, when he picked up the bill to look at it, Stipe would magnanimously offer to pay for it. I assigned him great wealth, much as non-book authors assume that all book authors live off of royalty checks (we don’t). It didn’t dawn on me that we should’ve paid for him. I just recall he sat there carefully divvying up the total and that I found that sort of disappointing.

I still remember how the moon looked that night (God’s fingernail, little crescent, with one nearby diamond of a star looking like it had just fallen from moon’s tip). And somewhere I have a photo of Stipe and me in which I am bursting out of my skin with pure joy, beaming hard enough to potentially break the camera lens. He is standing, fists clenched, head bowed, miles of hair (yes, he had it back then) spilling over and obscuring his face.

Their set that night was, of course, excellent, but then, they could’ve farted The Star Spangled Banner and I would’ve given them two thumbs up and then some. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen REM since then, but definitely more than a few. When I heard they were taping an episode of Austin City Limits, I immediately started scheming ticket procurement, imagining this feat would be far more challenging than scoring a seat at the Obama/Clinton debate.

Well, I got in. The idea was, I would review the show for this fine publication you are now reading. I can do that review in a few lines:

It was classic REM, an excellent mix of old and new stuff from Supernatural (the latest) to Man on the Moon (the encore). It was well mixed and well measured and I probably wasn’t the only one wondering if Pete Buck really was that big of an asshole that time on the airplane and even though REM wouldn’t be REM without Mike Mills’ lovely harmonizing, let’s face it, REM—at least the live part of the live shows— is, in a lot of ways Stipe, Stipe, Stipe and, after all these years, he’s still layering his shirts and hiding his hands in his sleeves and flapping those hands like maybe he’s mildly autistic. The original drummer is years gone, replaced by this sort of white-haired Ken doll guy who is nothing to sneeze at but, I confess, I find a bit lacking in Drummer Face technique, which is something I really love—a drummer that makes wild sex faces during a show. Oh, and they have a bonus guitar player now, too, who looks suspiciously like Louis Black, and I wondered if that really was him and this was just another perk of his SXSW lordship.

But as I sat there, waiting for the show to start and eavesdropping, and then watching not just the show but all the people in the room… well I just wanted to review the experience. And there’s no way to do that without sounding all cheesy lovey dovey about this town of ours. And so, shoot me, make me less popular for going all sap, but Austin, Texas? I love you, mama!

I love a city with enough constant, outstanding live and broadcast music that your head could implode if you stopped to really think about it. I love a city with a PBS show that means sometimes some lucky ducks get to have what amounts to the musical equivalent of an audience with the pope. And I love a town filled with so many nice residents that they don’t just tolerate the influx of ninety million balls to the wall music fanatics, they embrace the population swell with relish and do all they can to help the tourists feel more comfy.

So here are some highlights of niceness from the ACL taping. First of all, maybe Stipe really was a cranky bastard back in the ‘80s, but after his performance at ACL, I have to adjust that narrative I created for him back then. Maybe he was just painfully shy. Maybe he was trying to figure out that rock god thing. Whatever happened over the past twenty-four years, he was so ridiculously nice at the taping, so chatty, so kind—to the point he called a couple of kids up onto the stage and took the time to acknowledge another kid, a friend of his, in the audience.

And he talked about his insecurities. And he looked right at us. And Michael Stipe, a man once best known for singing in a way that left all his lyrics open to interpretation, was perfectly comprehensible. Oh, and he thanked us all, at least fifty times, for “giving up a chance to be outside in the sun” and instead coming to see him. Because, you know, we were all so bummed to have free tickets to see this band in a room that only holds around 250 people. And I was thinking, wow, he’d be a great roommate, he’s so nice I wouldn’t be surprised to find him in my kitchen making coffee in the morning and wanting to ask me all about how things went the night before.

Stipe wasn’t the only nice one. Behind me sat two people together. Beside them sat Austin Powell, whose name I know only because he had a SXSW badge on. Austin apparently is a music writer for the Chronicle. The people behind me told Austin (the reporter not the city) they lived in Austin (the city, not the reporter) but didn’t know anything about SXSW. They asked Austin (the reporter, not the city) if he covered the whole thing. They also mentioned their sadness that one of those bands with the word “crow” in its title had cancelled, as if that was a reason to stay home and miss all the other shows.

In these people, Austin Powell had the perfect opportunity to be smarmy or sarcastic or condescending or just abrupt and non-responsive. Instead, he engaged fully, patiently explained that the festival was far too big to be covered by one person, and then clearly and pleasantly laid out the ins and outs of the whole thing. Even after the show he was still chatting with them and I wouldn’t be surprised if he took them home, baked them cookies, and pre-masticated those cookies for them while offering a whiteboard diagram of how best to conquer the ACL Festival.

Meanwhile, the very young, very cute guy next to me decided that he should be a good neighbor and chat. He asked me if I’d seen the band before. And yes, yes, okay, make fun of me, I gave him the old Do you even know the first time I met these guys? (I did stop short of saying, And that was probably before you were born, sonny!) And he checked in with me during the show, too, to make sure I was enjoying myself.

Everywhere I looked around me, everyone was beaming. It was Nice Central. I saw fellow journalists, former coworkers, guys who looked like they might be California house flippers and/or Dallas developers, every one of them joy filled. And I even saw my friend David—he and his wife volunteer for ACL—who also went to USF and who actually read and remembers that long ago story I wrote. David saved me the trouble of having to track the set list by offering me his copy, which let me focus less on notes and more on immersing myself in all that other niceness going on.

Even though now I am very popular, maybe even in part because of that hippie dinner with Stipe so long ago, I am not popular enough to merit another interview or dinner with the band. Which is fine. I don’t jockey for celeb glomming opportunities the way I used to back when probably 70% of my music reviews likened all lead singers to Richard Butler. I’m happy to just kick back and watch the crowd.

Spike Gillespie puts on The Dick Monologues and blogs for LaunchPad Coworking and for her own amusement at www.spikeg.com. She knows who you are.