Fun with Legal Streaming

One little perk of the non-stop "hey, let's remaster and/or re-release our old records and sell them again!" trend in the world of rock and roll is that these little gems do tend to include some new and/or interesting material.

R.E.M.'s contribution to this pattern has so far involved digital remasters of their early albums and pairing them with a bonus disc of live material from the era. But the newest installment, the remastered version of Fables of the Reconstruction, gives us a bunch of demos on the bonus disc. And in a friendly gesture, you can listen to a stream of those demos here (and probably in a bunch of other places too, but that's the place I ran across first.

Fables was about to be released when I saw R.E.M. for the first time, at the University of Wisconsin Stock Pavilion (for all intents and purposes a literal barn, albeit a really really big one). It was a great experience at the time (though I heard somewhere that the band did not appreciate the particular form of "return to your country roots" provided by that venue) and a great music memory now. That album took a critical beating, and even R.E.M. sort of disavowed it at the time, but I was blown away from the get-go: from the ringing minor key hyper-electric guitar opening of "Feeling Gravity's Pull" through the amazing "Driver 8" (still has to be one of R.E.M.'s best songs) and the folky jangle of the whole record.

Love this picture from around that time. For those first few years (till around Green, I think) Michael Stipe would hardly ever look at a camera.

Anyway, sentiment may color my judgment, but enjoy listening to disc 2 if you feel like it, with demo versions of the whole album and a couple b-sides and extra treats as well. Thanks to the good people at KCRW in L.A. for the stream.