SFBG: Was it because you weren't hearing a certain rock sound out there, or something was missing?

PB: It's missing from our part of the corner of the world, anyway. It just felt like this is the kind of record we needed to make this year - kind of short and sharp and spontaneous.

SFBG: Did commercial concerns play into it at all? REM was known for getting that huge advance from Warner Bros. You didn't feel any pressure?

PB: This was pretty much for ourselves. For me I just wanted to make record that would kind of reflect who we were when we play live. Kind of aggressive and focused. I don’t listen to the radio so I have no idea how that kind of thing works or what sells records nowadays.

SFBG: So what are you listening to now?

PB: Y'know, I just buy records. I really try not be in the position where I have to listen to music that I don't want to listen to. And that’s pretty much the definition of radio so…

Like everyone else, I just buy what comes out. Every Tuesday, I walk to the record store. Y'know the Nick Cave record is great. I've been listening to the Stephen Malkmus record. I like the Black Keys record a lot, and I buy the older stuff a lot if it gets reissued or I just discover it. So it's just the process of listening to whatever's coming out and focusing on it.

SFBG: What reissues have you liked?

PB: Y'know, there was a company called Dust to Digital in Georgia that’s been packaging a lot of early 20th century blues and gospel and folk music - that stuff is always pretty interesting.

SFBG: Well, just going back to the new album - do you see the energy of it coming out of the tension between the band and the rest of the world? You get that sense listening to it. And one thing about REM's early music is that it sort of created its own little world apart from the rest.

PB: Yeah. [Sigh] And there's always midlife dissatisfaction and anger and various things. So all that kind of stuff seemed to work its way in. There's the political and the personal and there's a reaction to all that.

SFBG: You have a lot to be angry about?

PB: Well for me, anger can be a positive kind of energy thing. I don’t think any of us are the type of people who run around screaming at drivers in traffic. But…it can be quite a frustrating world to live in, whether it's us being a world that we shouldn’t be in and people dying, or the economy going down the toilet for no particular reason, or sometimes walking down the sidewalk and having people walk really slow in front of you. It can make you angry.

But it can be used in a positive way. You don’t want to walk around the world really pissed off. But I have to say, I don’t really trust people who aren’t angry about life in general or particular issues. Y'know, if you just want to accept the way things are that’s fine, but it's kind of depressing.

SFBG: Road rage is not a problem?

PB: People are bad drivers. But I find it amusing so I don’t really care.

SFBG: Considering the band seems to be living all around the country, is it hard to get on the same page?

PB: They live in different places. But we pretty much almost lived in same house for 10 years, it seemed like. It would be easier if we all lived in same town, but when we work, we work 18 hours a day, 15 hours a day, seven days a week, and when we don’t work, we’re free. So it's kind of good for us to all scatter and live our own lives.

SFBG: What's an average day like for you?

PB: Thankfully for me I don’t really have an average day. But it divides up. When I'm here in Seattle, I get up at 6 and take the kids to school and then feel tired all day and then hang out with them at night. And when I'm on the road, I'm playing music or writing music, and if it’s a day when I'm not with the kids or traveling, I just walk a lot of places and read books. I wish I did something really interesting like climb mountains or collect rare butterflies, but really it's either playing music or nothing, really.

SFBG: You wish you were climbing mountains?

PB: Nope! I wouldn’t mind having an interesting hobby, but I do travel a lot. Basically if I want to go someplace, I just try to get a job to work there, y'know. When we’re touring I'll be, "Hey, guys, why don’t we go to Turkey or Greece - I've never been there," and then we get to go to Turkey. I don’t have to go fly there myself.

SFBG: Which sounds pretty awesome.

PB: It is great, y'know. I hardly stay any one place for two weeks - it drives me nuts. So I always like to have work lined up to do something. It's like, "Y'know, Santa Fe for Christmas would be nice - I can always make a record there." I'm trying to figure out a way to make a record in Baja, California, but I haven’t worked it out yet.

SFBG: You have a lot of side projects, right?

PB: Yeah, I play bass in Minus Five, and we’re just putting the finishing touches on another record. I played with Robyn Hitchcock - we’ve got about two records recorded that Robyn was responsible for finishing up. Probably when we finish this tour we’ll tour next year. I put out two records with Tuatara, my kind of instrumental band. We did a rock record with various singers: Mark Eitzel, Scott McCaughey, Gary Louris, a bunch of people.

I just finished a spoken-word record with the Tuatara guys and Coleman Barks - he's the world's premier translator of Rumi, the Sufi poet. You know Rumi - pretty much if you’ve been to a wedding in last 10 years, you’ve heard someone read Rumi. That’s the way that works. His translation of Rumi is the biggest-selling poetry book in the history of the United States.

What else? Me and Scott McCoy and Steve Wynn made a baseball-themed record. I don’t knoiw anything about baseball so I just played on it. They're into baseball. I don’t watch baseball or read about it or anything. But y'know, music is music. The songs were good songs - I just didn’t know the people they were singing about.

I've toured through San Francisco - I played with Robert Fripp doing this improv thing that was pretty ambient and long and basically for men only, it sure seemed like. That was a year and half ago, I guess. Where did we play? Great American Music Hall. It was really fascinating. It was just a 45-minute piece of music, Totally improvised, no directions - there was five or six of us. Mostly what I try to do musically is learn new things or play music with my friends or do things that I find interesting.

SFBG: You sound pretty busy.

PB: It's not that busy. If you have a day job and you work 40 hours a week, you probably work more than I do. A lot of stuff I do - it'll pop up here and there, and people will go, "Wow, he made four records a year." But, y'know, if you spend a week making a record it's not that long.

SFBG: Do you tell people no.

PB: I'm not really on that kind of list, where I get offered to back up the latest pop idol, or that kind of stuff. Pretty much everything I do is with people I know. I'm always really willing to work with folks. It would have to be someone I really know well to tour with. But as far as going into the studio, gimme a call - I'll drop by and bring my mandolin.

SFBG: REM has been so influential over the years, particularly early on when college rock was just coming into its own - turning people onto other bands and spurring the alternative rock movement. How do you feel about that time now?

PB: Y'know, it was a great time. It was pretty much the last call before the rock music business got very professional. Now you go out into the clubs and they're run by people who have run clubs and they know what they're doing. There are tiny little record labels that will put out the most obscure band. And there's the Internet to get your stuff heard. When we were coming up, you'd drive in your van to a city, and no one would show up - maybe eight people - and you'd realize there was this little group of like-minded people all around the country. We’d play informal places. San Francisco had good clubs, but outside the big cities, we were playing pizza parlors.

SFBG: Any thoughts about the future?

PB: I just realized in the year 2100 I'm going to be 144 years old, so I really got to get it together if I'm going to be any use for the people of the future.

SFBG: Sounds like you feel a sense of responsibility.

PB: Yeah, I think I'm going to be best 144-year-old that the world has ever seen.

REM
Sat/31, 6 p.m.; Sun/1, 5 p.m.
$39.50–$89.50
Greek Theatre
UC Berkeley, Berk.