R.E.M. at the BBC

R.E.M. toured the U.K. in 1985 behind Fables, but didn’t come back to support Lifes Rich Pageant because they felt that I.R.S.’s licensees didn’t distribute their records well enough in Europe. They only did four? total dates in the U.K. and Europe in support of Document. So the best shot for them to do a BBC studio session before the 1991 session that opens this set would have been during the Green tour in 1989. For whatever reason, that didn’t happen.

 

Are any of the recordings on the box live in studio or are they all from concert performances?

 

I know - it’s a shame isn’t it? I was quite grumpy when the box was announced, saw that it wasn’t included in “Accelerating Backwards” & spent some time cursing the idiot BBC producer who left it off until I remembered that it was in fact, er, me...

I made that doc ten years ago, & I forgot that’s what it was called...

(I left it out at the time because the programme had to run a broadcast hour & something had to go. Sorry. It still should have been on as bonus!)

 

The first disc is in-studio sessions recorded between 1991-2008. They’re very good, ranging from full acoustic to full electric. All seem nice, well-recorded performances to me.

The second disc is a one-hour ‘session’ recorded for John Peel in 1998 - during the UP promotional period. I haven’t listened to it all yet, but there’s a live audience so I guess it feels more like a concert performance.

 

Also worth noting in the context of why so much BBC material from the latter part of their career is that they fared better (commercially speaking) in the UK/Europe than in the US in that era.

That could explain why all their live releases from that time were recorded in either the UK or Ireland: Perfect Square, Live, Olympia etc.

 

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Yes, in the latter part of their career, Europe was really their playground. Tours were longer around here, and for sure arenas were bigger. Also, radio still played them regularly.

 

what an ugly designed cover art , once again with REM

 

I agree with your main point but let's not forget that 'Perfect Square' was shot in Germany and that's not in the UK or Ireland, even in pre-Brexit times!!

 

Gah! I don't have that one, and thought it was filmed in London. Thanks.

 

The liner notes has a nice essay covering the band's connection w/ the BBC and (Europe for that matter).

I like the 'best of' CD so much I ordered the full box set.

REM were top-notch & can be easy for me to overlook at times...always nice to come back for a binge and this set is great for that.

 

Isn't Mr Stipe usually behind their art work? He does need to stick to singing.

 

Thanks for this. I had had wondered if they were any improvements and hated to pay the nutty high prices. Olympia is horribly loud and probably stuck that way. I ripped the DVD pcm for live 2007 which is only a tad quieter than the cd.

Monster and NAIHF and even Up are fine. Reveal was the first that was super loud IMO. And some of this is tamed in vinyl and dvda stereo. I’m not a fan of the 5.1 mixes but would argue the vinyl and hires stereo options are slightly better for Green through Up and then much better for Reveal and ATS.

This just seems like it’s turning into a box set every market period. I want this material but never did I think I’d have a whole shelf of R.E.M. boxes.

Come to think of it will they release all five nights of the Olympia shows?

 

I have to say, the disc with the IRS era stuff is the most exciting aspect of this box. Too many post-Bill Berry cuts for my taste.

 

I've read somewhere that John Peel was not a fan of the band during the 80's, so that likely explains why there were no Peel Sessions from the I.R.S. era. If true, it seems odd given Peel's appreciation of contemporaries in the same general zone such as Echo & the Bunnymen, the Smiths, etc.

 

I think Peel preferred U.K. bands to US ones in general.

 

Exactly the way I feel about REM, almost take them for granted and they kinda lost me after they got that big Warner Bros. contract, but still a great legacy they left.

 

I saw one disc I want (from 1984). Maybe it will get released separately...or maybe not.

 

That show has been available for along time in excellent quality. In fact, there's about 20 shows from that tour which are available.

 

How does the sound of the '84 and '95 live stuff compare to what's already floating around out there?

*The samples on Amazon sound slightly less compressed than the FM broadcasts, but who knows what the bitrate is on those...

 

LOL. Yeah. For some off the cuff impulse I ordered his latest ''photography book" and it is really really really not good. The first thing I thought was ''he should stick to singing..."

 

I actually really like the design and artwork of the CD box.

 

Me too. While they’ve had more than their share of bad or merely adequate album covers, and a pretty small collection of Actually Good ones, I like this. It’s clever & well-done.

 

The '84 set sounds nice, although I hadn't heard it as a bootleg. The '95 show sounds basically like the original FM broadcast, except (presumably) from the original feed and not via someone's FM capture. So, still a bit boomy and muddy, but probably the best you're going to get for that gig. It could pretty easily be bested by a remixed Atlanta set bundled with a Monster reissue, I'm betting.

 

While the Nottinghman show is the highlight of the set for me as well (and I've had the vinyl bootleg for 30 years), the Peel Sessions really improve on the songs from Up (imo), particularly Lotus, so you may want to check out a few tracks online. Overall, I find this to be a well-curated set and it continues the great job that Craft has been doing with the back catalog.

 

Stipe seems to avoid using images of band members