I might have you beat on early REM. I saw them for free - in the daytime! - at the Piedmont Arts Festival in Atlanta. Radio Free Europe was just really catching on. Still have an early 45 of that somewhere. Later saw them at the old 688 Club on Spring Street. I think they had the first EP out.
REM was great before you could actually understand their lyrics.
What year?
My wife followed them very early too and saw them frequently in Murfreesboro Tennessee where they played a very small club near the college before they had a record deal and her boyfriend who was a musician knew some of them she always said Michael Stipe was a weirdo but Peter Buck was fun