Harborcoat

Harborcoat was another song that wasn't on my original list of songs to cover but, as the ideas for songs to cover dried up and my infatuation with Peter Buck's use of the Rickenbacker 360 blossomed, it became an obvious choice.

For me Harborcoat is an excellent showcase for what each member of the band brings to the music. Aside from Peter Buck's complex guitar picking we have another beautifully lively bass part from Mike Mills, as independent from Peter's guitar as his vocal melody is to Stipe's lead vocal. Then there are Bill Berry's drums which power their way through the song with intricate changes to the hi hat during the verse which further adds personality to the song.

It's not a bold rock classic like Summer Of 69 but a delicate little art-rock song from a quietly confident young band full of tiny musical details that add to its character, like the way Mike drops one of the bass notes an octave in the chorus during one of its repetitions, and the organised chaos of the middle 8 with some random harmonica from Stipe and some chaotic string scratching from Peter while all the time held together by Bill and Mike's steady rhythm section.

Catapult

A man in a guitar shop, who repaired my bass guitar once, asked me how I manage to play it without crippling my fingers. This was after I'd heard him muttering to his colleagues how he can't believe how shit these cheap bass guitars are and how poorly they are made. Lucky I didn't go in his shop the day after recording Catapult with blisters on my fingers. Yes, it's safe to say I have the strongest left hand in the UK and not for the derogatory reasons my friends would have you believe.

It was never my intention early on to tackle Catapult because, at the time, I had no bass guitar and was pessimistic about my ability to master some of the string-bending, intricate guitar parts. But alas, I got myself a cheap bass guitar and managed to approximate the guitar parts quite closely. Consequently it's now one of my top 10 favourites of all my cover songs. It's often the case that the after-thoughts actually become favourites.

The only variation from the Murmur original was in that I started the song in a similar way to how they performed it live at the time i.e. the drums don't kick in until after one bar of the bass riff, which I think is a nice touch.

Feeling Gravitys Pull

The danger with taking on a song with such an individual guitar sound as Feeling Gravitys Pull was that I could fall flat on my face right from the opening chords of the song. But I think I did OK for a non-Rickenbacker owner. 

I also had to get my head round harmonics on guitar - I've been playing guitar for 15 years and never really understood what harmonics were and how to play them, but it was important that I get it right for this song because they're such an important part of the main guitar riff. I'm never going to get them sounding as menacing as on the original but I think I'm at least half way there.

The original ending had the strings doing what they do on Fables Of The Reconstruction but, after four and a half minutes of crunchy-sounding electric guitar, the synthesised strings that come with Garageband sounded a bit weedy in comparison! So I opted to play the melody on electric guitar which I think works surprisingly well and is now one of my favourite parts of the song.

Eleventh Untitled Song

I won't lie, my reasons for covering this song were basically me thinking 1) What would be the quickest, easiest song to quickly knock out? 2) Having just sampled the drum intro to Exhuming McCarthy, what other R.E.M. songs are there where I can grab the drums from the album version during a drum solo? There aren't many solo drum parts in the R.E.M. discography and I have no desire whatsover to tackle How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us so Eleventh Untitled Song seemed the obvious choice!

I'm aware this is a tedious listen but I have high hopes for it once the vocals are added :)

King Of Birds

It was actually March Song from the Lifes Rich Pageant re-issue that was my inspiration to cover King Of Birds. Although it's a rough, somewhat tedious, early version of the song, hearing it like this inspired me to feature these raw elements more prominently in my cover. The "marching band" style drums are much more dominant in my cover than they are in the R.E.M. original.

But I knew something was missing and I knew what it was - the dulcimer. But not owning a dulcimer I had to decide whether to imitate this part on acoustic guitar or leave it out completely. I went with the former and I'm semi-pleased with the results. The opening to the song is so much powerful when it follows the dulcimer part than when it just starts with the big drums.

It was also a conscious attempt to tackle something different, I've done a lot of jangly early 1980s songs recently to the point where they almost become quite easy, so I wanted to challenge myself with this one.