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.