"There's a sucker born every minute" -- David Hannum

Yawn...the last few releases in R.E.M.'s 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition series have been extremely lackluster and the band's new EP, "Live in Greensboro", which is a companion piece to the forthcoming Green reissue (out May 14th), doesn't fail to disappoint.

"Live in Greensboro" is being marketed as "featur[ing] a handful of performances from the Greensboro show that, due to space constraints, are not found on the [Green] Deluxe Edition". While the implication is that this EP contains all the missing tracks from the Deluxe Edition's bonus disc, the reality is that only five of the missing eight tracks are included, in seemingly randomly order no less.

Below is the full set list from the Greensboro show:

Stand
The One I Love
So. Central Rain ["Live In Greensboro" - Track 1]
Turn You Inside-Out
Belong
Exhuming McCarthy
Good Advices
Orange Crush
Feeling Gravitys Pull ["Live In Greensboro" - Track 2]
Cuyahoga
These Days
World Leader Pretend
I Believe
I Remember California ["Live In Greensboro" - Track 5]
Get Up
Life and How to Live It
It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Encore:
Pop Song '89
Fall on Me
You Are the Everything

Encore 2:
Harpers(Hugo Largo cover) [still unreleased]
Begin the Begin
King of Birds ["Live In Greensboro" - Track 4]
Strange(Wire cover) ["Live In Greensboro" - Track 3]

Encore 3:
Low
Finest Worksong
Perfect Circle
Dark Globe(Syd Barrett cover) [still unreleased]
After Hours (Velvet Underground cover) [still unreleased]

As this show was recorded for the "Tourfilm" video, the recording is stellar and one can clearly hear the drums and keyboards in the mix. The song performances are all 'by the book' - while they run a bit longer than the studio versions, R.E.M. was a polished touring band by 1989 so there are no off-kilter stories from Stipe or drunken covers. While these straight-forward renditions aren't an issue, the reordering of the songs is a bit jarring as "Strange" really doesn't work being sequenced between "Feeling Gravitys Pull" and "King of Birds".



While there may not be much here for the long-time fans, this disc appears to have been a 'flippers' goldmine. "Live in Greensboro" was released two weeks ago for $7.98 and seems to be consistently selling on eBay for $30 - $40.

Links:
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