I was getting concerned that Pitchfork would not give 'Reckoning' its due, but it came through just before the July 4th holiday, and never too late.
Pitchfork exploded again with giving Reckoning a perfect 10 rating, making plenty of great arguments as to its place as one of R.E.M.'s best albums:
 
Declaring Reckoning to be R.E.M.'s "best" album sells short just how many different kinds of great albums R.E.M. have released. But, more so than any other R.E.M. record, Reckoning is unified and energized by the very restlessness that has driven the band to explore so many different ideas and identities. It is this paradoxical engine of transparency and mystery that has made the band so unique, regardless of the particular approach they choose to take for a given record. Any way you look at it, this is R.E.M.
 
While they surely do not have to sell me on this news, a definitive review and perfect score continue to sell the premise of the importance of this album on rock music.
 
 
 

I thought that as I was designing the information and forms for the Articles Archive, that I pull this juicy article from the past. This was written by Elizabeth Phillip for the Summer Northwestern. She interviewed the band the same date of the Aragon Ballroom show that will be included on the second disc of the Reckoning Deluxe Edition.
A great interview for some of the extra curricular happenings backstage regarding Buck's confrontation with Cynthia Plaster Caster.
I have posted another Article from the past that is also included, in the articles archive from 1984.
 

As an R.E.M.-Centric shareholder in REMChronicle, the idea of Songkick is fascinating as it's use of data-driven methods attempt to find for you concerts that you would enjoy. If you are like me and wrap a couple of headphones around your ears and allow last.fm to do its thing, you will be provided with a slew of concert events as well as create an official site for every possible concert event in the history of music.
As if that is it's primary goal, Songkick has a long way to go, whether they will try to be the "Wiki" of concert data; if fans decide to flock in droves in order to do just that. My couple of moments were reviewing the concert data for R.E.M. It would seem that of course the busy workers at Songkick visited the Chronicle as well as remtimeline to acquire the full-fledged concert history of R.E.M., missing of course the most vital component, the songs! I could imagine that such an endeavor would take a long time, considering how much time I spent data-entering this information-most likely sitting in my boxers listening to music as I dutifully spent that time making sure that every setlist was entered.
I have to look at this from two different perspectives. As a music fan I find it fascinating. If the site gathers enough fans that find it's pages attractive then I would surely deem it as a source.

From Blogcritics

Rock and Roll Hall of Famers R.E.M. are releasing a remastered, expanded edition of their second album Reckoning on June 23 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the album's release.
The original 10-track album has been expanded to two discs and is the second album to get the deluxe treatment, following last year's release of a deluxe edition of their debut Murmur.  Disc One of the set will feature the original album, remastered.
DIsc Two will be a live show from the band's tour in support of the album, preformed at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom on July 7, 1984 and broadcast on WXRT.  The full tracklisting for this second disc has not been released so it's not clear if the show is being released in its entirety or if it has been abbreviated.  

Testing this function in REMRing.
At this point, it would seem that we are functional to the point of being able to add news items/spreading the word of Stipe but obviously much more functionality is necessary before I feel compelled to state accurately that this site is once again up. For that reason you might see a story or ten here looking at some of the various methods at which are going to be necessary in order to see how things are looking, plus looking at menu design, etc.
To give you a quick update as to why the site was down, I was getting tired of Joomla, my content management system as it had reached an apex of frustration on top of being attacked every week or so by this or that person.
The site had run it's course in my head when trying to migrate to a new version of Joomla proved more frustrating than ever as it seemed some of the comments were going to be lost.
Once I figured out that Joomla had run it's course I started looking for alternatives and thus chose Drupal instead. Lately, inbetween living the hectic life and trying to plan a wedding I have been reading up on all the functionality of Drupal, essentially doing a little homework before the site came into existence.