Theme From Two Steps Onwards

Theme From Two Steps Onwards is, and always has been, my favourite unreleased R.E.M. song ever since I first heard it when I bought a VHS of the 1985 Rockpalast show back in 2000. Naturally I was delighted when a studio recording appeared on the And I Feel Fine release although, in hindsight, I think the live version is a better performance of the song, for one thing Stipe's singing is frequently off key in the studio version.

Not sure why this song didn't end up on Lifes Rich Pageant as it's classic R.E.M. yet slightly quirky with a fantastic bass line. I've heard rumours from a friend that there is a recording in existence with a horn section during the outro which makes sense because this could be what Stipe is emulating with his strange sounds at the end of the song. I don't know whether it was the song or the spirit of the band at the time but I get the impression Stipe was bored of this one when he remarks "who's clapping and what for?" after the song is played on Rockpalast.

Despite preferring the live version my cover is predominantly based on the studio recording with the dual bass line, which I love, and the little country-style guitar riff in the bridge.

Moral Kiosk

Another difficult Murmur song to cover. I consider it a compliment to Don Dixon, Mitch Easter and the band that I had such difficulty recreating the sound of this song. I also fail hopelessly at recreating, what I refer to as, the second middle 8, I have no idea what Peter Buck is doing here, some kind of variation on a G chord I think.

I consider Moral Kiosk one of the under-rated gems of Murmur, it's hidden away between two classic songs and it's really obscure lyrically and even instrumentally it's quite complex. In fact, there are a lot of really complex songs on Murmur, 9-9 being another one. It's incredible that these complex, mature songs came from a band in their early twenties.

Texarkana

One of those songs where I can't remember why I ever decided to cover it because I've never been a huge fan of Texarkana, although in covering the song I've grown to appreciate it more. I love the strings in the song, they're subtle but give the song real emotional depth and the slide guitar gives the song a nice country feel.

This is one of two songs where the band have recycled the riff from The One I Love, the other being All The Best, here it is featured during the "catch me if I fall part".

Just a quick note about Out Of Time as an album, I consider it as being one of three "messy" albums, the others being Lifes Rich Pageant and Collapse Into Now. But with the first two it works in providing a quirky selection of songs and a fun listen. Lifes Rich Pageant features a cover, a Mike Mills vocal and a general feeling of joyful inconsistency, with Out Of Time you have guest singers, an instrumental and two songs with Mike Mills on lead vocal. Unfortunately with Collapse Into Now the formula of bringing on guest singers feels less joyful and more an attempt to make up for the fact their singer's voice isn't what it used to be. Incidentally, it's ironic with Out Of Time that when Michael Stipe's voice is at it's ultimate peak he steps back and has less involvement with the album than he ever would do with an R.E.M. album again.

Maps And Legends

In time I've grown to love the Athens demos released with the 2010 re-issue of Fables Of The Reconstruction. I just love the fact every song is given the same treatment, and that is four musicians playing live with no overdubs. Maps And Legends struck me as being one song from this collection that seemed least fully realised and in its early stages, whereas a song like Driver 8 sounded near identical to what ended up on the album, albeit a little slower in tempo. Aside from Stipe not having completed the lyrics yet the verses also sounded quieter with less percussion and then they would sort of bounce back into the chorus each time. So it was this recording that inspired this cover version.

I also think this song could feature probably my favourite Mike Mills bass line ever. It's a perfect example of a melodic style of bass playing, the complete opposite to the sort of unimaginative bass line that is simply locked to the guitar chords. A joy to learn to play. But not one of my better covers.

Burning Down

Burning Down was mentioned in the Dead Letter Office liner notes as being a companion piece to Ages Of You and an early song they got tired of. The song was played live as early as 1981 and the studio version we all know was probably recorded around the time of the Reckoning sessions as it has a similar sound albeit inferior mixing quality.

It's a great little song but I'm not disappointed that it didn't end up on an album because it strikes me as rather simple and easily forgetten. Musically it is very basic with a very quietly mixed jangly guitar with the bass guitar leading the melody. During the bridge a grungier guitar is introduced but is mixed way back panned far left and right. With my cover I've boosted the volume of the guitar as it would sound a bit sparse without vocals.

This is another song I wish they'd revisited at the 2007 Olympia sessions!

Auctioneer (Another Engine)

Another great "railways" song from Fables Of The Reconstruction, Auctioneer features a great guitar riff from Peter Buck which sounds like pistons on a steam train, which collapse into jarring jangly arpeggiated notes during the chorus that provoke a sense of unease and urgency. The guitar solo during the middle 8 and outro hits you like bullets from a machine gun and then suddenly the song is over. In short, it's a frenetic thrash of a song and never was this better illustrated than the way Stipe used to perform this song live on the 1985 Reconstruction tour. His vocal performance would descend into a series of howls and screams almost as though this particular song was his outlet for venting his frustrations at what was a self confessed crisis period for the band.

The song doesn't really work played live in the present day because all of the urgency is missing and, from a technical point of view, Peter Buck doesn't play the guitar riff correctly, as it was played on Fables. I found this a hard song to cover because it's like three very different segments that Joe Boyd was able to marry together perfectly on the album but my recording sounds disjointed.

Staring Down The Barrel At The Middle Distance

One of two songs written for Accelerate and played at the Dublin rehearsals that never made the album and have consequently never seen the light of day, the other being the beautiful On The Fly, presumably rejected because it didn't match the pace of Accelerate and was the type of R.E.M. song they were maybe trying to get away from.

But Staring Down The Barrel At The Middle Distance would by no means have been out of place on Accelerate, so I guess it was just an issue of quality. I can sort of understand the reason for leaving it off. Though I like it and it sounds fresh now when I go back and listen to it on the Live At The Olympia live album, it is a fairly uninspiring song and a little 'R.E.M. by numbers' with even a hint of recycling old guitar riffs - the end of the chorus makes me think of Animal, So Fast So Numb and Crush With Eyeliner.

I'm pleased with the cover though. I always find covers easier when there is very little to go on, with this there is just the one live performance which is just Peter, Mike, Michael, Bill Rieflin and Scott McCaughey playing additional electric guitar. Nice drumming from Bill Rieflin on this one too...

These Days

In 2007, at the Dublin rehearsals, Michael Stipe told the story of how These Days marked an epiphany for him at the age of 25 after coming out of a dark period (presumably referring to the making of Fables Of The Reconstruction and the band crisis that followed). It's hard not to feel renewed or revitalised when you hear this song, it marks a new direction for R.E.M. and a new style of vocal delivery and lyric-writing for Stipe. The line "hope despite the times" particularly resonates with me at the moment, as I'm sure it could do with anyone for a whole manner of reasons, that's the great thing about R.E.M. songs is you can take what you want from them, each listener has his/her own interpretation of what the song means to them.

For some reason I was dreading covering this song because I was nervous about my ability to do a good job of it. But I now consider it one of the best covers I've done. It has enough instrumentation to make it dense but never "over-produced". Aside from the guitars, bass and drums it features a piano echoing the bass during the middle 8, very subtle organs that only really flourish during the final chord of the song and a subtle synth sound during the choruses and the third verse. Also, as was common for Bill Berry around the time of Lifes Rich Pageant and Document, the song features elaborate percussion, especially during the middle 8 where all sorts of percussive sounds can be heard including what sounds like a rattle snake!

If the term "joyful noise" could ever be used to describe an R.E.M. song then it would be this one. A great song and a pleasure to cover.

Pretty Persuasion

Pretty Persuasion was my first introduction to early R.E.M. when I saw them play it live on the Old Grey Whistle Test (not at the time I might add, more like ten years later!). Though the song intrigued me I wouldn't say it was love at first sight, it has grown on me over the years and now, for me, comes to represent the band at their most jangly, cryptic best.

This cover is based on the album version but has ended up striking quite a resemblance to the Old Grey Whistle Test version and I'm pleased with this one because it's the jangliest I've got a guitar, that isn't a 12 string Rickenbacker 360, to sound!

That Beat

I was in Dublin around ten years ago and I found this little record shop that specialised in bootleg recordings. It was here I bought my first bootleg R.E.M. recording (a hobby that would gain momentum in years to come). I bought three things, a video of them performing on Rockpalast in 1985, a cassette of a show they did at Tyrones in January 1981 and a CD of their performance at Merlins, Madison in April 1982. On this CD were two unrealeased songs that captivated me for weeks to come, Romance and That Beat.

I'm not for one minute going to say that That Beat was good enough for Murmur or Reckoning but it is one of the best early R.E.M. songs never to be released. There's a hint of Rock n' Roll in it, a style carried over from their earliest days as a band, but it has the signature of a maturing R.E.M., the lively bass guitar competing with the lead guitar for attention and the undecipherable lyrics from Michael Stipe - though I suspect there were never actual "words" for this song, most likely just a string of vowels that sound good with the melody.

A tricky one to cover. The version I based it on isn't the Merlins, Madison recording but the studio demo recorded circa 1982-1983. The recording was very simple, drums centre, guitar left, bass right. I centred the bass, kept the guitar left but with lots of reverb to spread the sound and added a very subtle acoustic guitar just to accentuate the pucking of the strings.

That Beat was played live as late as 1984 before being abandoned by the band. It would have been lovely if this was reprised for the 2007 Dublin Rehearsals the way Romance was.

Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)

In 1994 I had just discovered R.E.M. through Document, Automatic For The People and Monster and I naively assumed they were a band at the beginning of their career. Without the Internet it wasn't as easy as it would be now to quickly look up the band's discography. Having discovered this "new" band was born in the early 1980s I instantly became intrigued and so my first attempt at delving into the early material of this band was to purchase a cassette of The Best of R.E.M. Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars) is the first track on this compilation and so it was the first song I heard from this newfound youthful R.E.M. and for that reason it is a song that means a lot to me and was my favourite Chronic Town song until I discovered Wolves, Lower. I was excited by the pace and energy of the song and a very young-sounding Michael Stipe, almost unrecognisable from the Stipe I knew on Automatic For The People.

Though I have nothing against the carousel organ intro to the album version I was particularly taken by the way they open this song live, in particular on Livewire, that terrible Nicklodeon kids show they appeared on in 1983. So, this cover is a combination of the album version, the early live version and also I feel it lends itself slightly to the version they performed on the Live At The Olympia release.

Living Well Is The Best Revenge

I was looking forward to covering Living Well Is The Best Revenge because I had a definite vision for how I would approach the recording of it. I told myself that for every bass or guitar part that I would play I would think about something that makes me angry and take that out on the strings whilst being recorded. I was determined not to make this a wishy-washy cover of a really angry song. I think I've done an OK job of getting the anger across.

Living Well Is The Best Revenge is a signal of intent, an act of rage and, by far, the strongest album opener since Begin The Begin on Lifes Rich Pageant. It also introduces its audience to the new throaty Michael Stipe. I don't know what has happened to his voice between Around The Sun and Accelerate, but something has happened! Either it's too much smoking or too many live concerts but his voice crackles and rumbles with passion and with a distinct coolness.

The song features a cascade of crunchy electric guitar positioned carefully around the sonic spectrum. I believe there are three guitars for example during the verse, one left, one right and once centre. Then of course, there is another one of Mike Mills's amazing bass guitar performances, only to be bettered still by his performance on the following song, Man-Sized Wreath.