Peter Buck's signature Rickenbacker guitar was stolen from the stage immediately following R.E.M. 's performance at Finnair Stadium in Helsinki, Finland. The guitar has been the staple of his axe arsenal since 1982. The band is offering a generous reward, no questions asked. Email tips to fanclub@remtour.com or call (001) 706-353-6689.   

R.E.M. opened their tour in support of "Accelerate" on Friday in Vancouver, B.C. at Deer Lake Park. Here's a positive review from the Vancouver Sun. Band's official site is here.
They played:

Living Well Is The Best Revenge / What's The Frequency, Kenneth? / Ignoreland / Second Guessing / Gardening At Night / Man Sized Wreath / Disturbance At The Heron House / Hollowman / Accelerate / West Of The Fields / Houston / Electrolite / Losing My Religion / Time After Time / Let Me In / The One I Love / Country Feedback / Bad Day / Walk Unafraid / Horse To Water / Supernatural Superserious / Sweetness Follows / Get Up / I'm Gonna DJ / Man On The Moon

R.E.M. has released the video for "Supernatural Serious," the first single from their next album, "Accelerate," due April 1. The band is going the full transparency route on this release, even encouraging fans to edit their own version of the video.

Michael Stipe appeared on Jane Pratt’s Friday night Sirius Satellite Radio show and discussed his love of the band Interpol, a songwriting trick from Bono and the brilliance of Sean Penn's "Into the Wild."
Most importantly, there are 14 songs recorded for the next R.E.M. album, which might be released in March.
"It’s been a really tough 10 years for us," Stipe told Pratt. "We at times, we’re not communicating on the level that we should have been and we were trying to keep a real brave face publicly, and kind of hold through it, but I have to say I think we finally found a place of communication. We’re talking to each other, we’ve written a bunch of great songs, we’ve recorded 14, I’ve written 14,  I’ve got another four songs to present to the guys next week when we go back in the studio and one of those is really going to surprise them.  I can’t wait to see them."
Stipe, who will head to Europe for an October press tour supporting the band's live DVD, credits Bono with showing him to use voice memo on the phone. "If you have a melody idea or a lyric idea, a melody idea really, you can go to voice memo and you can just sing into your phone. And then later you can transfer it to whatever you need to, or remember the melody like that. So that helps out a lot."
Stipe was in New York hoping to catch Interpol's performance at Madison square Garden. 
Earlier int he week he had seen
"Into the Wild," which Penn wrote and directed.
"I was completely blown away by this film. It’s one of the heaviest. ... This film has not left me in a week, I am still thinking about it.  I wake up and think of the different levels of what was going on in this movie and the story itself, which is pretty arresting, but there’s all this other stuff. It’s a masterful film and I would recommend it to anyone."