R.E.M. - Live in Greensboro CD EP Review (Record Store Day Release)

"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.

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R.E.M. - "Document" (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)

The 25th Anniversary Edition of R.E.M.'s 1987 disc Document came out last month and, like the previous R.E.M. "deluxe editions", offers little of value to the serious fan. This two disc set includes the original 11-track version of Document along with a second disc which contains a twenty-track live recording of the band performing in Utrecht, Holland on Sept., 14, 1987.

Similar to my complaint about the Fables reissue, the six b-sides ("Finest Worksong (Other Mix)", "Last Date", "The One I Love" (Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop), "Time After Time, Etc.", "Disturbance at the Heron House" (Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop) and "Finest Worksong" (Lengthy Club Mix)) which were bonus tracks on the 1993 reissue of Document have been dropped. There was also a 5.1 mix of the album released in 2005 which would have seemed to have made sense to be included as part of this 'deluxe edition'.

The live show is a nice recording and the energy and drive of these sorts of shows propelled the band into the coliseums when they toured two years later in support of Green. The problem is that this show has been commonly available as a soundboard bootleg for a number of years and the 'deluxe edition' edits out five tracks from the show ("Superman", "Strange", "Funtime", "Harpers" and "Time After Time - Red Rain". Given this, $23.51 (Amazon's price) seems like a steep price to pay when the only new material is a partial live show.

R.E.M. - "Funtime" (YouTube link)

For the long-time fan looking to upgrade from their vinyl version of Document, I'd suggest chasing down the 2005 dual-disc edition. If you have been in a cave for the last 25 years and haven't heard this disc, go chase down the IRS reissue which you can probably find cheap in a used CD shop. If you need the live show, the 25-track "Red Rain" bootleg seems pretty easy to find.

Links:
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R.E.M. Shutters Fan Club with Low Key 2011 Christmas Single

R.E.M. Fan-Club Holiday Single 2011 by Slicing Up Eyeballs

Way back in the pre-Internet dark ages, it used to be the epitome of indie record-geek cool to be a member of R.E.M.’s fan club as the club put out an annual limited-edition Christmas single containing exclusive material. The original fan club releases were vinyl singles which contained (generally) a unique, one-off cover along with a holiday-themed song. The first few singles contained covers of songs by Television, Mission of Burma and Flipper along with ‘goofy’ holiday covers that included ‘Parade of the Wooden Soldiers’, ‘Toyland’, and ‘Good King Wenceslas’.

I lost interest in R.E.M. in the middle-90’s and dropped my fan club membership but got back involved this year as I expected the band’s final holiday single (the fan club is now disbanded now that the band has broken up) would prove interesting. Unfortunately, the final release from the fan club is unremarkable…it is a two song CD which contains live performances of “Perfect Circle” (Twickenham 8/30/08) and “Life and How to Live It” (from R.E.M.’s final show, Mexico City 11/18/08). While the recording and performances sound great – there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason as to why these tracks from these shows were chosen. In fact, R.E.M. had previously posted the six song encore from their final show in Mexico City to YouTube.



As R.E.M.’s final holiday single is pretty unremarkable, it is disappointing to see the fan club go out with a whimper rather than bang.

Links:
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R.E.M. - Fables of the Reconstruction 25th Anniversary Edition CD Review

STREAM: R.E.M. - "Throw Those Trolls Away" aka "When I Was Young"

"Legacy" and "anniversary" edition releases seem to be the latest cash-in effort from the major labels and I've found these discs, in general, to be either spot-on or rubbish (with very little middle ground). Unfortunately, the reissue of R.E.M.'s third disc, Fables of the Reconstruction, falls into this later category. This two disc set includes a remastered version of Fables of the Reconstruction along with a second disc which contains fourteen tracks recorded at an Athens rehearsal in February 1985 prior to the band's heading off to England to record Fables.

R.E.M. always seemed to attract both the record collectors and the tapers as they released numerous non-LP b-sides and were still playing a number of eclectic cover tunes in concert so there is a lot of material that could have been included on this release. At a minimum, I would have expected the non-LP singles ("Crazy" (Pylon Cover), "Burning Hell", "Bandwagon" and "Driver 8" (live)) that were on the 90's IRS reissue of Fables to be used to flesh out the 40 minute studio disc. Unfortunately, Disc One has no bonus tracks.

The Athens rehearsals on Disc Two are interesting but non-essential and incomplete. The fourteen tracks cover all eleven tracks from Fables plus "Bandwagon", "Hyena" and "Throw Those Trolls Away" (which was originally known as "When I Was Young" and later morphed into "I Believe"). While played at a bit slower tempo, these rehearsal versions aren't radically different from the final LP versions. Where I get a bit grumpy is that the original rehearsal was seventeen tracks and "Just A Touch", "Theme from Two Steps Onward" and "Burning Hell" aren't included on Disc 2.

For the long-time fan looking to upgrade from their vinyl version of Fables of the Reconstruction, this might be an interesting (yet somewhat expensive) option. I don't see this appealing to the casual fan...if you have been in a cave for the last 25 years and haven't heard this disc, go chase down the IRS reissue which you can probably find cheap in a used CD shop.

Links:
R.E.M.