In the tradition of Ben Gibbard talking about running, we have another example of a veteran alt-rocker talking about enjoying a vigorous physical activity that you might not expect. In this case, the activity is not actually all that vigorous: Mike Mills, late of R.E.M., turns out to be an avid golfer. Mills recently turned up on the Golf Channel talk show Morning Drive to discuss his feelings about the sport, and the motherfucker straight-up just talks about golf and sounds aggressively normal for eight minutes. It’s weirdly inspiring. He also hints that R.E.M. might’ve been approached to perform at a Super Bowl halftime show, which is just about the weirdest thing I could possibly ever picture.

The show’s hosts stole my one good R.E.M. golf pun when they asked if “Driver 8″ had anything to do with the sport. (The official answer is no, which you probably already knew if you’d ever heard the song.) So go ahead and leave your best R.E.M. golf pun in the comments section, since I know how you guys like to do. And watch Mills on Morning Drive here.

Name: R.E.M.
Progress Report: Mike Mills talks greatest hits, covering Big Star, and life after R.E.M.

It’s kind of hard to comment on the progress of a band that just released a career-capping retrospective and officially broke up. Still, it’s hard to turn down the opportunity to speak with any of the members of R.E.M., one of the most profoundly influential American rock bands of our generation. Where do you even begin? Hot on the heels of announcing their retirement a few weeks ago, this week the band released Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982-2011 — a 40-song summation of a career that spans over 30 years. The occasion of R.E.M.’s retirement has generated a veritable tsunami of nostalgia for those of us who grew up with the band, but the band members themselves don’t seem all that sentimental about it. I guess when you’ve sold tons of records, been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and basically soundtracked an entire generation’s coming of age, calling it a day isn’t necessarily such a sad thing, it’s more of a deserved victory lap. I had the pleasure of calling up up (former) R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills to discuss.

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Alex Chilton passed away one year ago today. Big Star was scheduled to play SXSW in 2010, instead the show became a tribute, with friends and fans playing Chilton’s music and remembering his work. We posted a short obituary at the time, but I thought that a year later we could take a closer look at Chilton’s best songs, and, in many fans’ eyes, his greatest songwriting achievement, Big Star’s Third (also known as Sister Lovers).

I talked to several musicians who loved Big Star. And I wanted to make sure they represented the variety of musicians who admired Chilton, whether they were contemporaries and friends of Chilton’s, or young songwriters who weren’t alive when Sister Lovers hit shelves in 1978. Talking to these musicians and gathering their statements about Chilton, two common themes emerged: no matter what age they were, they discovered Sister Lovers (in what now seems like) the old fashioned way: through a friend or fellow musician or fellow record nerd passing them a copy. As Big Star drummer Jody Stephens told me, the band only sold about 4,000 copies of the album at the time. There are so many other ways to discover Big Star (Elliot Smith’s cover of “Thirteen,” The Replacements’ excellent tribute song “Alex Chilton” (now available on Rock Band), or Cheap Trick’s cover of “In The Street,” which was used as the theme song to That Seventies Show). It’s perhaps a testament to the strange beauty of Sister Lovers that it invites one-on-one discovery and understanding.

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We saw a bunch of bands this past week. Not every set was memorable, but there were more than enough highlights to make the stiff necks and barking feet worth it. Here’s Wednesday, Thursday, Gibbarday, and SXSW’s metal shows, and more. This last post contains our notes, and photos from our intrepid photographers — Ryan Muir, Graeme Flegenheimer, Pooneh Ghana (and her polaroids), and Linda Flores — from Friday and Saturday in Austin. As the news cycle speeds up, it’s difficult to hear groups for the first time at events of this sort, but we did stumble upon a few things. Including things we’d like to forget, a la the disappearance of the taco truck on Red River, the unseasonably cold weather, ice tea-flavored vodka, and that people actually use the term “glow-fi.” That, and plenty of unforgettable things that were far from new, like Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and “Hole.”

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The erstwhile R.E.M. drummer made his first public performance since the 2007 R&R HOF induction, last night in Athens. He joined Mike, Peter, and the Minus 5 on “The Ballad of John and Yoko” and “Hang On Sloopy” and you can watch it.

R.E.M. formed in Athens, Georgia almost three decades ago.