Sadly, R.E.M. have decided to call it  a day. What’s left is a lot of good music and — to me — a lot of good memories — not least of a great July 4th concert in Berlin’s Waldbühne one year with the band wondering whether “it ever gets dark here” and Michael Stipe sharing that it was his grandmother’s birthday. Or of the time they “crashed” a Patti Smith concert here only last summer.