R.E.M.: A Twenty Minute Film And A Fifty Minute Live Mix

When they started out playing parties for their friends in abandoned churches and then rapidly became a proper band R.E.M. defined themselves as much by what they said 'No' to as by what they were for. One big 'No' was videos. Their label I.R.S. would have been happy with something that could have been shown on MTV, which was rapidly becoming the way Americans consumed their new music, but the band weren't comfortable with it and Michael Stipe refused to mime. Their early 80s music was drenched in mystery and for Stipe, a visual artist who was naturally drawn to the avant garde, making a brash, lip syncing promo just wasn't something he was prepared to do. They didn't really play the MTV video game until The One I Love in 1987. 

In 1983 when R.E.M. released their second album Reckoning Stipe secured some funding to make a film to coincide with Reckoning. An Athens, Georgia filmmaker James Herbert was brought in to direct and Stipe's vision was that the band would be filmed at the farm that belonged to a local folk artist R.A. Miller, Whirligig Farm.

Between them, Herbert and R.E.M. they ended up with a twenty minute film. Herbert was used to making twenty minute films and was reluctant to edit his footage down to four minutes for just one of Reckoning's songs. The band decided that the film could accompany all of one side of the album (side one,labelled on the disc as the Left Side. Side two was the Right Side- hence the film became Left Of Reckoning). As well as some snippets of studio audio verite and Little America to start and finish it, the film provides visuals to Harborcoat, 7 Chinese Brothers, So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry), Pretty Persuasion and Time After Time (Annelise).

Herbert used slo mo, close ups, time lapse, silhouettes and a process called rephotogrpahy which used the same image twice with a slight time lag, cutting in and pulling out. It's an impressionistic but watchable film, very of its time and place, a time capsule of a period when for many artists pop videos and MTV were an enemy. MTV didn't show Left Of Reckoning- they weren't really into twenty minute art films of long haired indie rockers wandering round a hillside with some windmills and whirligigs. 

I used to own Left Of Reckoning on an R.E.M. VHS compilation called Succumbs and there was a time when I would often put Left Of Reckoning on and sit and watch it, the visuals and music giving a glimpse into a world that I'd never visited and only knew through books and films- and this was a version of the south that was different from the one those books and films portrayed. A post punk Southern Gothic with jangly guitars, indecipherable but emotionally connecting lyrics, denim jackets and long hair. 

Between releasing Chronic Town in August 1982 and Document in September 1987 (their last for I.R.S. before heading off to major label Warner Bros) R.E.M. put out four albums, each one a little bigger than the one before, each one adding something to their sound and style and their songwriting. They also  played thousands of gigs, starting out at tiny venues in Athens and ending up in 1987 on the verge of big stages in big concert halls. They'd end up in arenas by 1995. 

Today's Sunday mix is R.E.M. recorded live at various gigs between 1983 and 1987, the band powering through those songs from Chronic Town, Murmur, Reckoning and Fables Of The Reconstruction. The audio differs a bit due to the nature of how and where it was recorded but it holds together pretty well and demonstrates in fifty minutes, what a fearsome and life affirming live band they were- the speed, thump and melodic power of Peter Buck,  Mike Mills and Bill Berry and Michael Stipe's words, vocal melodies and presence. 

Fifty Minutes Of R.E.M. Live In The Eighties

• There She Goes Again (Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto, 9th July 1983)
• Radio Free Europe (Live at The Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, 7th July 1984)
• 7 Chinese Brothers (Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto, 9th July 1983)
• Ages Of You (Live at the Paradise Rock Club, Boston, 13th July, 1983)
• Harborcoat ((Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto, 9th July 1983)
• Life And How To Live It (Live at Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, Utrecht, Netherlands, 14th September 1987)
• Sitting Still (Live at The Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, 7th July 1984)
• Talk About The Passion (Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto, 9th July 1983)
• Pilgrimage (Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto, 9th July 1983)
• Little America (Live at The Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, 7th July 1984)
• Second Guessing (Live at The Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, 7th July 1984)
• We Walk (Live at the Paradise Rock Club, Boston, 13th July, 1983)
• 1, 000, 000 (Live at the Paradise Rock Club, Boston, 13th July, 1983)

R.E.M. were in the habit of covering The Velvet Underground both in the studio and live. In 1983 they often opened gigs with Femme Fatale and on the Green tour they often encored with After Hours. Three Velvets songs turned up as B-sides and then compiled on the Dead Letter Office album- Femme Fatale, Pale Blue Eyes and the one I've used as the opener for this gig mix, There She Goes Again (from the Velvet's 1967 debut album The Velvet Underground And Nico). 

Larry's Hideaway was a bar in the Prince Carlton Hotel in Toronto, Canada, one of the first venues in Toronto to open up to punk and New Wave acts. It was originally a restaurant and then became a jazz club in 1961. The list of bands that played there is impressive- The Cramps, The Bad Seeds, Sun Ra, Killing Joke, The Fall, The Cult, Billy Bragg, John Cale, Black Flag and Bauhaus all trod the boards at Larry's. It closed in 1986. The hotel stayed open but was raided by police due to a series of robberies and assaults taking place on the property. It closed in 1988 and the building was destroyed by a fire in 1991. It's now the off leash dog section of Allan Gardens Park. 

The Aragon Ballroom in Chicago opened in 1922 and has a long and storied history ever since hosting bands of all descriptions, from the Big Band era onward, as well as wrestling, roller skating and boxing, another life as a disco and its appeared as a location set in films and on TV. When R.E.M. played there in July 1984 they were supported by The Dream Syndicate. 

The Paradise Rock Club in Boston opened in 1977 with a capacity of 900, close to the university. It's still open today- The Charlatans will play there in September. The plumbing may have been a bit off in 1983 however. In the final song in the mix/ set above, as the band power into Chronic Town's 1, 000, 000, Stipe cautions the crowd, 'Don't drink the water'.

Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht, Netherlands, was a 5000 capacity venue which shows the step up in audience and venue size R.E.M. took between 1983 and 1987. The building was demolished in 2008 and a new concert venue built on the site which opened in 2014. The version of Life And How To Live It they played there has a long introduction by Michael Stipe, where he describes the Athens man the song is about and the house he lived in, followed by the band absolutely flying through the song at the height of their 80s powers. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was A very small object. It's centre.

I went all atomic with Quando Quango and Mark Kamins, Juan Moreno, and Massive Attack, all loosely tied together by Carlo Rovelli and quantum physics. Out in the Bagging Area community there were the usual array of fantastic suggestions- Newcleus from Michel Houellebecq's Petit Mort, Suzanne Vega from Trail Of Bread, They Might Be Giants from Rol, Chapterhouse and Badly Drawn Boy from Al G, Soft Cell from Chris, The Incredible String Band from Ernie and sneaking in at the end Mrs G with Tinie Tempah with a tribute to stars and teenagers. 

Here's Chapterhouse's very small object, swirling shoegaze from 1991.

Pearl

This week's card says this- Change instrument roles

The Roland TB- 303 is a bassline synthesiser, produced by the Roland Corporation in 1981 and designed to replace the bass guitar and to accompany the 808 drum machine. It was considered a commercial failure and discontinued in 1984. 

Over in Chicago a group called Phuture had a 303 and had been seeing what they could do with it, what the instruction manual didn't tell them. By abusing the machine they discovered they could do much more than make a synthesised bassline- they could change the sound completely, making a squelchy, liquid, otherworldly sound that became the foundation stone of what a couple of years later became known as acid house. 

Acid Trax

Phuture were DJ Pierre, Spanky and Herbert Jackson. Marshall Jefferson helped out with the production of  Acid Trax and in getting it released. Phuture had in turn built on the house sound that DJ Ron Hardy had been playing at Chicago's warehouse parties, the mayhem of those parties Hardy DJed at and the thump of the rhythm and the effect it had on the crowd. The acid squelch took it up to another level. When it was released in 1987 it made its way to the UK, to London, Manchester and Nottingham. That squelch, that distinctive, futuristic, face melting sound that warps its way through Acid Trax is what happens when someone changes instrument roles. And kick starts a revolution. 

Nashville's Luke Schneider has taken an instrument usually associated with country and western and the Grand Ole Opry, the pedal steel guitar, added some FX and changed the pedal steel's role completely- in Luke's hands the pedal steel is an ambient instrument, layers of drones and ringing sounds, an enveloping soundscape. This is from 2020's Altar Of Harmony, as good a place to start as any. 

Mundi Tuum Est

Feel free to drop your own responses to Change instrument roles into the comments box. 

Friday Trio

Three EPs for Friday from the electronic end of things, suitable for home listening and for playing out, for making the humanoid banana wiggle and writhe and flip his skin. First, from Belfast the new EP from The Vendetta Suite (Gary Irwin). Gary's musical history goes back to the early 90s, to David Holmes' Exploding Plastic Inevitable and then becoming Holmes' studio engineer. Gary, David and Timmy Stewart kept going as producers and DJs, illuminating nights in Belfast with acid house, dub and techno. Fast forward to 2021 and The Vendetta Suite released an album, The Kempe Stone Portal, and David's resulting remix of Purple Haze Yellow Sunshine stands out as one of the best remixes of the 2020s. Fast forward again and here we are in 2026, with The Vendetta Suite's Scrabo Electro, an EP that harks back to the halcyon days of mid- 80s electro, breakdance, B-  Boys and for Gary, teenage days in Newtownards. 

The original mix of Scrabo Electro is a body rockin' gem, squelches and 808s, 'uh uh uh' and burping bass. A Dub For Dave kicks down with a skanking version, underwater dub with Space Invaders sounds. Uprock At Digby's Disco goes full on electro and we finish with the Lead Mines Bonus Beats, scratching and slo mo fun. You can get all four versions at Bandcamp. 

Second, here's an EP from Photay from earlier this year- Always Cosmic is a four track EP led by Photay's remix of United Freedom Collective's Always Open, percussive, tribal, acid house with the distinctive vocals of Falle Nioke. Acid bassline and bleeps, Afro vocals, rattling breakbeat, deep and epic sounding psychedelic acid. 

The EP adds three more versions: an instrumental radio edit of the remix; Always Cosmic, a stripped down cosmische dub that sets the controls for deeper and further; and the pH Dub, wiggy, dark jazzy acid, the elements bent out of shape with some Balearic piano. Always Cosmic is at Bandcamp. 

Thirdly, out now on Barcelona label Adepta Editions is an EP from Ariadne's Labyrinth that I dropped into one of the recent Oblique Saturdays posts. Endless Corners has four tracks, a collision of classically trained piano and violin with rave and club culture. Opener Amble Eddy Song is a delight, dark bass and breakbeats with melodies dancing across the top. Missing Daydream is even better, Philip Glass crossed with 90s breakbeats, a heady trip into ambient techno.

Terminal Dot featured a few weeks ago. It's followed by Threads which rides in on bumping bass and a fractured drum break, urban and urgent, Ariadne's Labyrinth background in London's squat scene, classical training and love of Cuban and Brazilian rhythms in full flight. You can find Endless Corners at Bandcamp. 

In The Dawn

The countdown to the new Durutti Column album continues- Renascent, out at the end of the month- and a second song from it was released into the world recently, Scammer. 

Scammer sounds fragile, Vini's voice at its centre, whispering about things learned from his life. Around him there are washes of synths and keys and Vini's guitar playing, little runs of notes like pin pricks of light puncturing the swirl of sound. There's a prodding sound too, deep bass notes that push the song along. It's a lovely way to spend three minutes and coming on the back of the first single Liars, promises much for Renascent. 

In James Nice's biography of Factory records, Shadowplayers, he writes about Vini recording guitar tracks for what became the Durutti Column's second album, LC (Lotta Continua, the struggle continues), released in November 1981. LC is a wonderful album with several Durutti Column highlights- Sketch For Dawn, Jacqueline, Messidor and The Missing Boy (Vini's song for Ian Curtis) among them. The first Durutti Column album The Return Of The Durutti Column was created, produced and mixed by Martin Hannett out of sessions that Vini really hadn't enjoyed, but the completed album brought a new found confidence and this can be heard on LC. Vini knows what he's doing and what a Durutti Column album should sound like. 

Vini recorded the guitar parts for LC on a four track in a spare bedroom at his Mum's house on Pytha Fold Road in Withington, M20. He then went into the studio with drummer Bruce Mitchell and made the record in a couple of hours. When Vini made album that in 1981 in his Mum's house, I was living about a quarter of a mile away, a few streets to the west. Fog Lane Park which Pytha Fold Road runs onto was our playground. It is therefore the album that was recorded closest to any place I was living in at the time it was made. 

In 1981 I was eleven years old and had no interest in Factory Records or The Durutti Column. We enjoyed Madness, The Jam and The Specials and the weekly Top Of The Pops but were equally if not more interested in 2000AD, Indiana Jones, early evening Star Trek re- runs and The Empire Strikes Back. Funny to think though, at the time Vini was recording those songs, many of which I've been listening to for decades now, I was just around the corner.

In 1983 Vini and Bruce played at De Doelen in Rotterdam and opened with LC's Sketch For Dawn, Vini introducing himself to the crowd with, 'Hello, we're called The Durutti Column and I hope you like what we do'. 

Sketch For Dawn (Live in Rotterdam 1983)

Soil Of My Forefathers

Constantine Weir was one of the founding members of Galliano, one of the Acid Jazz group's front men and vocalists. A sharp dresser, spoken word poet and man about town. More recently, Constantine spent a decade in Senegal studying Sufism and when he returned to London used his experiences to record some tracks, releasing a series of vinyl only albums and singles under the name Yahya Constantine Weir. 

I found this one recently, Soil Of My Forefathers, and I hit play several times in succession- four and a half minutes long, Constantine speaking over an African Head Charge, Nayabinghi groove with acres of dub space. Righteous, wise, heavy musical treasure. 

Soil of My Forefathers is on an album that came out earlier this year, Certainty Beyond Logic. It was vinyl only apart from some minute long snippets at Bandcamp that give a flavour of the rest of the album- and those snippets sound really good, spiritual folk, Nyabinghi blues. There were only 200 copies of the vinyl pressed and by the looks of it, they've all long since sold out and the three copies currently on Discogs are priced starting at £60. Re- issue please Constantine?

In 2024 Galliano reconvened with an album- Halfway Somewhere- and a 7" single called Cabin Fever that echoed Andrew Weatherall's famous Skunk Funk remixes, The Clash, dub, On U Sound, New Age Steppers and Gil Scott Heron. The expanded version of Halfway Somewhere included a dub version of Cabin Fever that's really hits the late July spot. 

Glasgow Kisses

I spent three days in Glasgow last week in the company of JC, The Vinyl Villain, who showed me the city in all its glory: the south side of the city, Queen's Park and Pollockshields; the West End, Kelvingrove, the bandstand, the university and Byers Road; the east end, Barrowlands and St Luke's; the city centre, its pubs and bars including the legendary McChuills and the Laurieston (both pictured below, McChuills top and the Laurieston below), a superb photography exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art, and the Admiral Woods bar; the sites of local musical history (including the two places where The Clash performed on their 1985 busking tour- venues The Clash played becoming a theme of my summer), venues that Andrew Weatherall frequented as a DJ, acid house/ techno clubs the Sub Club and the Arches; and in a rush of blood to the head, a bus ride to East Kilbride and back, to see the 1960s new town that Roddy Frame and the Reid brothers were so keen to escape from. 

On Wednesday night we watched the England game, the semi- final that led to defeat against Argentina. I wasn't the only England fan in the room but we were very much outnumbered by the Argentina fans. The sun shone, the beers flowed, England collapsed with twenty minutes to go. The following night we met up with Aldo, Comrade Colin, Stevie (from Charity Chic Music) and Carlo (Strangeways), some of whom I hadn't seen since the international bloggers weekend in Glasgow in 2017. 

It was fantastic. Glasgow is a city that is alive, gritty and energetic, where music and culture and football rub shoulders all day long with the people who live there. I saw this advice on the flagpole on top of the hill in Queen's Park and it felt apt...

Some music from Glasgow's extensive back catalogue starting with Simple Minds and an extended version of the title track from their 1984 album, added drums and running time, a glorious song from the mid- 80s. 

New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) (German 12" remix)

Belle and Sebastian's Lazy Line Painter Jane, their second single back in 1997 with Monica Queen on guest vocals, a Northern Soul/ indie rock crossover with a still startling line about getting a dose of thrush from licking railings. 

Lazy Line Painter Jane

And finally, from East Kilbride, the new town they built eight miles from Glasgow, in theory a short drive from East Kilbride to Glasgow city centre but it might as well be a hundred miles, over the hills and far away. On a gloriously hot and sunny day it was a little difficult to imagine the teenage Jim and William Reid, sheltering from the wind and the rain, convinced they were the only Velvet Underground fans in East Kilbride, antisocial, isolated and alone, experimenting with the local LSD and dreaming of escape, black jeans, winkle pickers and a mess of hair. Everybody comes from somewhere. 

Happy When It Rains

Everyday People

I went back to The Whitworth last week to revisit the Beneath The Great Wave exhibition, a selection of surviving prints from Edo period Japan by Katsushika Hokusai and Utogara Hiroshiga. I loved it when I went in March, its free, I'm off work- what's not to love? 

The Whitworth is a beautiful building, stepping in through the front into the modernist interior and recent re- modelling is in itself a joy. The woodblock prints of Japan's floating world are visionary- the colours, the lines, the perspectives- and seem to be both old and modern at the same time. There are drawing of nature- the great wave of the exhibition's name and numerous prints of Mount Fuji.

The scenes portrayed in some of the prints, show Japanese people going about their daily business- farmers, travellers, actors, Geisha, merchants, urban dwellers and rural peasants, Samurai. The floating world (Ukiyo) became a phrase used to describe the growing urban world, where Edo (future Tokyo) became a place for hedonism and urban lifestyles. It and the prints also brought Japan into contact with the West. 

As I walked into the gallery last Tuesday a primary school was in the large open room that overlooks Whitworth Park and as I started to make my way round the prints the children started singing Sly and The Family Stone's Everyday People.

I poked my head round the corner to have a look and the children's choir were singing for parents and carers, a teacher conducting this group of multi cultural and diverse ten and eleven year olds singing...

'There is a blue one who can't accept the green one for living with a fat one trying to be a skinny one, different strokes for different folks, and so on and so on and scooby- dooby- doo one... I I I I am everyday people'

It was quite a moment, completely unexpected and a little overwhelming. 

In 1992 Arrested Development borrowed Sly Stone's hit for their own song, a tale of respect (and the lack of it) and a warning about the dangers of violence. Arrested Development were a big thing for a while in 1992-3, an alternative voice in the rap world. 

People Everyday