Imaginary Albums #8: R.E.M.

A few posts back, we expanded Pavement's 1992 Watery, Domestic EP into a full-length album; today, we do the same with R.E.M.'s 1981 debut EP Chronic Town. For the expanded and rechristened Chronic City, I've taken the original 5-song EP and fleshed it out with various early non-album tracks (some final, some in rougher demo form). Now, I would've rather created an album constructed wholly out of the early party songs written by the fledgling band before they settled on the jangly arpeggiated guitar sound they introduced on Chronic Town--that would've been a really fun record (albeit one far less groundbreaking)--but only a few of these songs were ever captured in the studio, and most exist solely as live tracks found on old bootleg recordings.

So this project is a bit more of a free-for-all: a few of those pre-Chronic Town songs which were at some point given studio treatment, as well as some other early b-sides and outtakes (some of which ended up on the Dead Letter Office compilation). 

How'd it turn out? Well, the original EP was quite simply the perfect introduction to what became my favorite band of the 80s, and messing with it is a fool's errand. Still, the mix offers a fun look at early R.E.M., and makes for a cool trilogy with Murmur and Reckoning. (For my CDR, I included a few tracks found on bootlegs which don't stream, but the playlist below captures most of it.)