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.