Body Count

I consider Body Count to be one of the more mature unreleased songs to emerge from the band's very early days. Partly in that it's the first song they wrote with a topical subject matter (though it is a rather cringe-worthy attempt at a song about the Vietnam War!). Also, in the structure of the song which is quite ambitious for the band at the time. It is essentially two songs with fairly similar melodies joined together by a sonic splurge of feedback and freeform noise in the middle of the song.

But it was an early favourite of mine when I first got my hands on some early R.E.M. bootlegs and it stood out from other early songs. It's more of a hint at what R.E.M. would become than other songs like Baby I and Dangerous Times. R.E.M. would of course adopt a much more subtle, effective approach to topical songs in years to come, Body Count stands as a rather immature first attempt.

In terms of my approach to the song, I found the best quality version I could on YouTube and used this as a template. I'm aware there are versions out there without the second half of the song but I particularly wanted to feature the whole song. I improvised with the bass as I couldn't clearly work out what Mike was doing most the time. I added guitar overdubs during the second half of the song too.