Tom Dunne: I'm starting a campaign to get REM to reform 

“It’s for your own good lads,” we’d tell them, “Just get back up on that stage. You’ll be happy up there. It’s where you belong.” Imagine the planet’s collective happiness, at a time when we need all the happiness we can get!

I’m quite sure that when Michael Stipe’s toys are back in the pram they’d settle into it. In fact, I think they would soon be thanking us. “We are back using our talents again,” they would eventually say.

I tell you this against the backdrop of Michael Shannon and Friends’ continued success playing the music of REM (August 27). What started as a one-off fun gig in Chicago is now returning for an international tour with the Irish date upgraded to Vicar Street.

On the initial tour they played the Murmur album in full, Rolling Stone’s album of 1983, same year as Thriller. It culminated in a gig at REM’s home venue, the 40-Watt Club in Athens Georgia.

REM attended: Michael Stipe, Bill Berry, Peter Buck and Mike Mills. Stipe later pointed out that he had never really heard these songs before. When you’re in the middle of it, performing, you don’t.

Then, despite all the claims that REM would never again perform they went on stage and performed. One minute there was no REM, then there were two. It was, witnesses said, a night of “jubilant disbelief”.

Encouraged by this, Shannon and his friends are back, this time performing REM’s third album, Fables of the Reconstruction. Demand is off the clock. Audience reaction to them performing Driver 8 on Jimmy Fallon was hysterical.

Why is Shannon doing this? He has two Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations under his belt, made his first screen appearance in Groundhog Day, played Elvis in Elvis and Nixon, and George Jones in George and Tammy. He doesn’t need it.

He is, however, also a member of an indie band. Most indie bands would see REM as godlike figures, especially from those early IRS albums. They were romantic and clever, the kings of US college radio.

It isn’t a tribute band. “I am not playing Michael,” Shannon says repeatedly. Shannon is just himself on stage. It works, wonderfully.

Fables is a great album to choose. It was their third album, recorded in the UK with producer Joe Boyd of Richard Thompson and Nick Drake fame. The band hated making it. They were worn out from touring and England was freezing.

Stipe, in particular, was in poor spirits, on the edge of what he called later a “debilitating depression.” He was broke, hungry, tired and worried. It was the early days of the yet unnamed HIV virus. People he knew were falling ill. The fear was palpable.

Against all that, he believed he also needed to develop a more narrative writing style.

They succeeded more than they realised. Fables is a glorious album. It has an identity to it, a uniqueness. It plainly carries its English folk influence and has aged magnificently. Driver 8, Green Grow the Rushes and Can’t Get There from Here remain some of their best loved songs.

But it begs the question: if someone else can bring such joy mining the REM back catalogue, why not REM themselves? And if they can’t see the benefits of this themselves is there no way we cajole/entice/ force them into it?

Our possibilities are:

1. Therapy: Bands fall out for the most nebulous of reasons. Actual grievances, when held up in the cold light of day are often startlingly petty. A less than enthusiastic reaction to a new riff or lyric, an imagined slight.

2. Finance: It took a dodgy accountant to get Leonard Cohen back on stage, whilst the Tax Man motivated Willie Nelson. REM, sadly, after years touring in a van could live happily on handfuls of rice.

3. God: Our best bet I reckon. The Parable of the Talents. God, when we pass, will apparently ask us all how we used ours. So, REM, specifically since 2011, how have you used yours?