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Over the years


a certain misapprehension about Fables Of The Reconstruction has built up. For some reason, people have the impression that the members of R.E.M. don't like the record. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's a doomy, psycho record, dense and atmospheric. It creates its own strange little world, illogical but compelling. It's a personal favorite, and I'm really proud of how strange it is. Nobody but R.E.M. could have made that record. It took our four twisted personalities and the legendary Joe Boyd to make an album that character-filled and vibey. And therein lies the problem. All four of us were completely out of our minds at the time. We had just spent four straight years on the road; we were tense, impoverished, certifiable, and prime candidates for rehab. And it was cold. My main memory of that period is making the hour commute to Wood Green on the Tube and then walking for twenty minutes through invariably inclement weather, usually sleet. All these elements of personal misery, combined with a great batch of new songs and Joe Boyd's subtle production made the album what it is. Fables is unique in our canon. We've never made another like it.

And then there are the demos. We toured all of 1984, finishing with a New Year's Eve show in Atlanta. That gave us about three weeks to prepare for our trip to England, so we repaired to Jim Hawkins' studio in Athens. It's the usual story: you have a body of songs that basically last through your first two albums. Then comes the pressure of writing record number three. We had written "Driver 8" and "Old Man Kensey" on the road, but aside from that, the cupboard was empty. We spent a few weeks running through all the fragments and half-finished songs from soundchecks. The last day of rehearsal, I think with Joe Boyd in attendance, Jim Hawkins recorded what we had come up with. We spent about four hours recording all the new songs live, with minimal overdubs. I hadn't listened to this stuff since we recorded it, and I'm kind of stunned at how good it is. My memory of the rehearsals is us scrambling to finish songs. The songs on both Murmur and Reckoning had been performed for months if not years by the time they were committed to tape. I remember feeling dangerously unprepared when we flew to London, but on the evidence of this recording we must have known what we were doing.

-Peter Buck

THE ATHENS DEMOS


Auctioneer (Another Engine) Bandwagon* Cant Get There From Here Driver 8 Feeling Gravitys Pull Good Advices Green Grow The Rushes Hyena Kohoutek Life And How To Live It Maps And Legends Old Man Kensey** Throw Those Trolls Away Wendell Gee
RECORDED BY JOE BOYD AND JIM HAWKINS AT BOULEVARD GARAGE STUDIO MIXED BY JOHN KEANE AT JOHN KEANES STUDIO
ALL SONGS (BERRY/BUCK/MILLS/STIPE) EXCEPT * (BERRY/BUCK/MILLS/L.STIPE/M.STIPE) AND ** BY (BERRY/BUCK/MILLS/STIPE/AYERS) PUBLISHED BY WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP. (BMI) / NIGHT GARDEN MUSIC (BMI) ALL TRACKS: P 2010 CAPITOL RECORDS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Produced by Joe Boyd Reissue Curated by Sig Sigworth Reissue Supervised by Michael Murphy Executive Produced by Dennis Wolfe Mastered by Ron McMaster at Capitol Mastering, Hollywood Creative Direction by Tom Recchion Packaging by Chris Bilheimer & Michael Stipe Band Photography by Ed Colver Painting by Ron Scarselli (Page 9) Project Management by Stacey Freeman for EMI, Kevin ONeil for R.E.M. 509996 46071 53 This compilation p 2010 Capitol Records, LLC. Manufactured by Capitol Records, LLC. Unauthorized reproduction is a violation of applicable laws.

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