Yeah, that’s really something.

One of my favorite REM songs already, but wowza...

though I do miss the... y’know... feedback.

That's an odd way to spell Automatic for the People... :p


Yeah, there's a bunch of live ATS stuff on the (just released!) BBC box set, and it's much better than I remember. Not disputing it's their worst album, but it's quite good.

I do love Up and (especially) Accelerate, both of which I would say are underrated.

Also, the Live at the Olympia double album is great. 39 songs, most of which are lesser known,* played at a rocking pace.



*They play a combined two songs from Out of Time, Automatic, and Monster, and one of them is 'Circus Envy'.

Do you know anything about a instrumental EP that was recorded at the same time as Daysleeper? I remember hearing about it before UP was released, but I’ve never seen anything else about it?

I can't think of anything around that time, but a look at Wikipedia suggests r.e.m.IX might be what you're thinking of? It was a bunch of remixes from Reveal that was available as a free download, but I haven't heard it.

Band just dropped a BBC live box set that I’m interested in.

Spent all of Saturday listening to it on Spotify just after it was released. It's really good, although I've now heard way more versions of 'Walk Unafraid' than I'd ever have expected to.

Check out the version of 'E-Bow the Letter' with Thom Yorke on backing vocals.

My little contribution to this thread (part one, anyway. Part two is where I tell you you're all nuts. We can leave the latter for later.) Back in 1992, as part of a cover feature, Pulse! magazine printed Peter Buck and Mike Mills' Desert Island Discs lists. You guys remember Pulse!, dontcha? It was free, for starters! They gave it away at Tower Records, it had a lot of content (some of it pretty good) and excellent contributors like Ira Robbins and Jackson Griffith. And the pictures were very cool, so you could use them to make artwork for your cassettes. That's how we rolled back then, motherfuckers!

I don't have the magazine anymore (idiot) but I memorized the lists and I'm pretty sure the albums were mentioned "in no particular order". The surprises, if any, are due to the absences: no Byrds, no Velvets, no Patti, no Television, no Soft Boys. (I imagine Horses may be on Stipe's list —after his favorite album, Entertainment!— but he wasn't talking back then. :D) Also, none of the British "folk-rock" that made the band (Buck in particular) want to hook up with Joe Boyd for Fables Of The Reconstruction: Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Richard & Linda Thompson. But enough about what's not there, let's review what is:

Pete Buck

Eli And The Thirteenth Confession — Laura Nyro
Exile On Main St. — The Rolling Stones
Third/Sister Lovers — Big Star
London Calling — The Clash
The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society — The Kinks
There's A Riot Goin' On — Sly & The Family Stone
The Sun Sessions CD — Elvis Presley
Dirty Mind — Prince
Pet Sounds — The Beach Boys
Star Time — James Brown
Blood On The Tracks — Bob Dylan
Physical Graffiti — Led Zeppelin
New York Dolls/Too Much Too Soon — New York Dolls (*)
Sketches Of Spain — Miles Davis

* In 1977, Mercury released the Dolls' two studio albums as one double LP, so I guess this doesn't qualify as "cheating". ;)

Mike Mills

Dirty Mind — Prince
Pet Sounds — The Beach Boys
The Man In Black: 1954-1958 (Bear Family 5CD box) — Johnny Cash
#1 Record/Radio City — Big Star (**)
L.A.M.F. Revisited — Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers (***)
Verdi: Aida ("any recording")
Highway 61 Revisited — Bob Dylan
Led Zeppelin — Led Zeppelin (****)
Star Time — James Brown

** In 1978, Stax did the same with these two albums that Mercury did in 1977 with * ... but you knew that.

*** In 1992, this 1984 release would have been the only way to listen to L.A.M.F. without the mastering fuckup that drowned the album in (the bad kind of) noise. But with the release, just two years later, of "the lost '77 mixes", I doubt Mike would stick with the "Revisited" version. Just sayin'.

**** Mills didn't specify whether he meant I or IV. I'm thinking he was going for a ZoSo thing, though...

Wait. Published in '92, but did you read it recently? Or have you carried around that list in your brain for 26 years?!?

The latter.

ETA: I can also remember Robyn Hitchcock's list, Morrissey's, etc.

ETA 2: I can also remember entire conversations, or where exactly in a book is a bit of information that I need to revisit... But it sounds like a bigger deal than it actually is, really. I think.

Oh. Think. I've heard good things about that.

I just hope you use your powers for good and not evil.

Now, awaiting the promised part II, where I find out why I'm nuts.

Well, any thoughts on part one first? :confused:

By the way, I forget shit just like any other mook. It's not like I'm that guy from Criminal Minds. Some things I can recollect verbatim is all. Unless my lawyer recommends otherwise.

I see. I'm good with conversations. I guess everyone has their memory strengths.

The list was unsurprising. I mean, I appreciate the effort, but nothing on the list stood out to me as strange, other than AIDA.

My REM phase is over. It comes every few years, last two weeks, then vanishes. I don't have much bad to say about them, but I somehow don't get any uplift from listening to them anymore.

Haha, the IT work we're doing references R.E.M..

'It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)' has reached #41 on the global iTunes chart, 33 years after its release.

Guess these are the times we live in...

“Time I Had Some Time Alone” is the mantra we must live by!