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.