R.E.M. - Chronic Town - Expanded Version (1982)

I must say I'm not a huge R.E.M. fan, so I don't plan on posting a bunch of their stuff here. But I do really like a lot of their songs. I actually think some of the best material they ever did came on their EP "Chronic Town," released in 1982, a year before their first album, "Murmur." So I've expanded that EP to a full album, using other songs from that time period. I think if this had been released as an album, it would be considered one of their very best.

The "Chronic Town" EP only contains five songs, but all of them are very solid. (I selected a different vocal mix for "Gardening at Night," but the difference is minor.) That totals 20 minutes.

To fill out the rest of the album, I next turned to other material released prior to "Murmur." All I know of is their first single, "Radio Free Europe," and its two B-sides, which was their very first release of any kind, back in 1981.

The song "Radio Free Europe" was rerecorded in 1983 and put on that year's album "Murmur." It's that 1983 version that became a minor hit single and still gets played on the radio today. Personally, I prefer the 1983 version. But the band members actually much prefer the original 1981 version, after initially disliking it. In the liner notes to the 1988 compilation "Eponymous," the band even said the original "crushes the other one like a grape." In any case, they're both interesting, and since the 1983 version is widely available on "Murmur" and elsewhere, I've only included the original version.

The rest of the songs here weren't released at the time but came out later. One, "Romance," was redone a few years later for the "Eponymous" compilation, but this is the still unreleased 1982 version. "All the Right Friends" is from 1983, but I've included it here because it was in their setlist as far back as 1981. I want everything here to be from 1982 or earlier, but I used the 1983 version because it has the best sound.

I've included another 1983 song as a kind of bonus track, "Tainted Obligations." It's a strange and very obscure one, because it's not exactly an R.E.M. song, even though lead singer Michael Stipe sings it. It was done by a side project called the "Community Trolls," which was essentially just the duet of Stipe and Matthew Sweet. This is pretty interesting to me because Sweet was a musical nobody at the time, having just started his musical career. He wouldn't hit it big until 1981. But he was living in Athens, Georgia, at the time R.E.M. was starting to make waves, and apparently Stipe saw something in him. They didn't really do much except for this one song, but it's a good one. It wasn't released until many years later.

I've also included an acoustic version of "Gardening at Night" as a bonus track. I don't know when it was recorded, but I'm guessing 1982.

I think this is an excellent album, even if you're only a casual R.E.M. fan. They have a youthful, punky energy that you don't hear so much with their later material. Even the weaker songs are carried along by their enthusiasm.

01 Radio Free Europe (R.E.M.)
02 Sitting Still (R.E.M.)
03 There She Goes Again (R.E.M.)
04 White Tornado [Instrumental] (R.E.M.)
05 Wolves, Lower (R.E.M.)
06 Gardening at Night [Different Vocal Mix] (R.E.M.)
07 Carnival of Sorts [Box Cars] (R.E.M.)
08 1,000,000 (R.E.M.)
09 Stumble (R.E.M.)
10 Romance (R.E.M.)
11 Ages of You (R.E.M.)
12 All the Right Friends (R.E.M.)
13 Tainted Obligations (Community Trolls [Michael Stipe & Matthew Sweet])

Gardening at Night [Acoustic Version] (R.E.M.)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697042/REEEM1982_ChroniTwnExpnded_atse.zip.html

The cover art is simply the cover for the EP, unchanged.