The fact that U2 has sold out a 26-date, two-month American tour, starting next week, can be rather unsettling. Especially if you’re R.E.M., easily the only rock outfit to rival Bono and mates in the world’s biggest and most respected rock band rankings for more than two decades. Then came the news-line reports and images of U2 being inducted to the 20th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York last week, and this coming only six days before R.E.M. arrived in Hong Kong for its only Asian concert, outside a few Japanese dates. 

So what future awaits R.E.M., once the indie soundtrack to many a college dorm in the 1980s and later pushing the alt-rock cause to the mainstream in the 1990s? Who really cares? For some reason, R.E.M. doesn’t.