Tar Heel Harmony

Forgive me as I momentarily stretch the Toggle Switch geographic focus a few miles to the south.

When R.E.M. played Raleigh, N.C., earlier this week, they invited some old friends up on stage with them: Mitch Easter and Don Dixon. As you can see from this video, they provided guitar and backing vocals on "Sitting Still," which was the b-side to the band's Hib-Tone Records debut single. If you know your R.E.M. history, you know that Mitch and Don -- both giants on the N.C. rock scene -- produced and engineered the bands early recordings. So, it was a nice, full circle kind of thing seeing them performing together -- even if you can't really hear their guitars or singing in the mix.

Here's the link where I found the video. I found out about it from Mitch's MySpace page.