The first words out of Stipe’s mouth? “The enduring legacy of punk rock is Christmas lights year-round.” As to the charge of the first-degree crime of making things up about videos he once supposedly saw, the jury of the Internet finds the defendant, Mr. Sturdevant, not guilty!
Or less guilty, at least. I mean, Stipe doesn’t claim to have been the actual person that first strung up Christmas lights year-round. He claims punk rock created it, collectively.
However, it is a valuable clue that he may have, in the past, made similar assertions to the one I claimed to have seen him make. So if I did misremember the unlikely assertion in question — and most likely I did — it’s more of a misquote than an outright hallucination. Which is fine with me. Maybe Stipe didn’t invent Christmas lights year-round, but he was there when it was invented.
