REM - Reckoning

The two-CD Reckoning – Deluxe Edition (I.R.S./A&M/UMe), set for release June 23, 2009 features the original album remastered plus a bonus disc of a previously unreleased concert recorded during the band’s Little America tour at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom on July 7, 1984 and broadcast on WXRT. In addition, Reckoning and R.E.M’s 1983 debut album Murmur will be simultaneously reissued on audiophile quality 180 gram vinyl in their complete original packaging.

On the Deluxe Edition’s bonus disc, the group not only performs eight of Reckoning’s ten songs, “Gardening At Night” from 1982’s Chronic Town EP and “Radio Free Europe,” “9-9” and “Sitting Still” from Murmur but also new songs that had yet to make it onto tape: “Driver 8” would later debut on R.E.M.’s third album and “Hyena” on its fourth.

Inclusion of the live concert is particularly appropriate for Reckoning – Deluxe Edition. Whereas Murmur had been complex and painstakingly deliberate, the band’s Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe, along with producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, saw Reckoning as a “chance to turn up the volume, tear up the rule book, and capture instead R.E.M.’s on-stage mojo,” according to the Deluxe Edition liner notes by author Tony Fletcher. Even as Stipe lyrically delved into darker subject matter and the album included the band’s first true ballads–the melancholic “Time After Time (Annelise)” and “Camera”–other tracks revealed a band steeped in the immediacy of playing gigs in a college town, from the pulsating “7 Chinese Bros.,” hard-rocking “Little America” and anthemic “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville” to the melodically evocative “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry),” “Letter Never Sent” and “Pretty Persuasion.”

Reckoning peaked on the charts at #27, nine spots higher than Murmur (Rolling Stone’s 1983 Album of the Year) and was eventually certified gold. R.E.M. would go on to score #1-charting quadruple platinum albums and win worldwide adoration. In 2007, in its first year of eligibility, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Alternative rock did not begin with a bang but with a Murmur. In 1983, a band from Athens, Georgia made its full-length album debut. The band was R.E.M.; the album was Murmur, Rolling Stone’s Album of the Year and one of the first alternative rock albums to gain mainstream notice. The two-CD 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Murmur (I.R.S./UMe), released November 25, 2008, features that original landmark album remastered plus an additional disc with a previously unreleased concert recorded at Larry’s Hideaway in Toronto three months after Murmur’s April release.

The 16-song live performance boasts nine of Murmur’s 12 songs, including “Radio Free Europe”; three songs first heard on 1982’s Chronic Town EP; early renditions of two songs that would subsequently appear on the band’s second album, 1984’s Reckoning; “Just A Touch,” later heard on R.E.M.’s fourth album, 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant; and a cover of Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes Again,” which the group recorded in the studio for the b-side of “Radio Free Europe.”

Assembled in conjunction with R.E.M., Murmur – Deluxe Edition, the package also includes exclusive essays providing insight into the recording of the album by producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, as well as former I.R.S. executives Jay Boberg, Sig Sigworth, Carlos Grasso, Michael Plen.

Writes Dixon: “R.E.M. was a product of the record store, the library, and the college classroom colliding with the ultimate counter-culture, nerd, dance, ambiguous sex party. They were a band in the most classic sense of the word. The perfect amalgam of The Velvet Underground and The Doors.” Boberg remembers his initial reaction to Murmur: “The first crystallization of the R.E.M. sound, a beautiful noise that will never be duplicated.”

Marked by singer Michael Stipe’s cryptic lyrics and equally cryptic vocal style, Peter Buck’s jangly guitar, Mike Mills’ moody bass and Bill Berry’s R&B drumming, Murmur built on the inroads afforded Chronic Town by a handful of music critics and independent record stores, and fans mainly from the southeast. Refusing to indulge in rock clichés such as the guitar solo or the then-popular synthesizer, R.E.M. blazed its own path. Rolling Stone called the album “intelligent, enigmatic, deeply moving,” and Murmur cracked the Top 40, as did “Radio Free Europe” on the Mainstream Rock chart. But even greater acclaim would arrive in retrospect, including being listed in Entertainment Weekly’s “The 100 Greatest CDs Of All Time” and Mojo’s “The 100 Records That Changed The World.”

R.E.M. would go on to score #1-charting quadruple platinum albums (Murmur was certified gold in 1991) and win worldwide adoration. In 2007, in its first year of eligibility, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Murmur – Deluxe Edition recalls the first major step in the journey of R.E.M., one of the great bands of our time.

R.E.M.

Murmur deluxe edition

Disc One

The Album

1. Radio Free Europe

2. Pilgrimage

3. Laughing

4. Talk About The Passion

5. Moral Kiosk

6. Perfect Circle

7. Catapult

8. Sitting Still

9. 9-9

10. Shaking Through

11. We Walk

12. West Of The Fields

Disc Two

Live at Larry’s Hideaway

1. Laughing

2. Pilgrimage

3. There She Goes Again

4. 7 Chinese Brothers

5. Talk About The Passion

6. Sitting Still

7. Harborcoat

8. Catapult

9. Gardening At Night

10. 9-9

11. Just A Touch

12. West Of The Fields

13. Radio Free Europe

14. We Walk

15. 1,000,000

16. Carnival Of Sorts (Box Cars)

With music ranging from one of the first and most influential alternative rock bands, R.E.M., to the timeless GRAMMY® award-winning rock anthem “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield, Activision Publishing, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) today announced a rich and diverse lineup of launch week downloadable content for the highly-anticipated Guitar Hero® World Tour. Available exclusively on Xbox LIVE® Marketplace for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft for two weeks starting October 30, the R.E.M. Track Pack features three songs, which can also be downloaded as singles, from the band’s newest album, Accelerate, “Horse to Water,” “Man-Sized Wreath” and “Supernatural Superserious.”

Available at the launch of Guitar Hero World Tour is the Classic Rock Track Pack that offers fans three rocking party anthems “Rock and Roll Band” by Boston, “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner and “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield, also available for download individually.

Created specifically for Guitar Hero World Tour, the Guitar Duels, original compositions by Ted Nugent and Zakk Wylde, will be available for free at launch to download and play outside of the Career.

The 1990’s era-defining “No Rain” by alternative rock group Blind Melon will be available as downloadable content during the launch week of Guitar Hero World Tour. The breakthrough single off the band’s quadruple platinum, self-titled album reached No. 1 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock and U.S. Modern Rock charts and firmly planted the group in 1990s pop culture.

Fans who have been shredding to Metallica’s critically acclaimed Death Magnetic on Guitar Hero® III: Legends of Rock since its day-and-date release with the album need not purchase the album again as it is forward compatible and will integrate seamlessly with Guitar Hero World Tour. The Death Magnetic downloadable album, compatible with both Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Guitar Hero World Tour, will continue to be available for download on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for Xbox 360 and in the PLAYSTATION®Store for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment.

The R.E.M Track Pack, Classic Rock Track Pack and “No Rain” single will be available for download on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for Xbox 360 and in the PLAYSTATION®Store for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment.

When the house lights go down on October 26, a new generation of guitarists, drummers and fearless frontmen will come together and rock with Guitar Hero World Tour. The latest installment in the #1 best-selling video game franchise of 2007, Guitar Hero World Tour transforms music gaming by expanding Guitar Hero’s signature guitar gameplay into a cooperative band experience that combines the most advanced wireless controllers with new revolutionary online* and offline gameplay modes including Band Career and 8-player “Battle of the Bands,” which allows two full bands to compete head-to-head online for the first time ever. The game features a slick newly redesigned guitar controller, drum kit controller and a microphone, as well as an innovative Music Studio music creator that lets players compose, record, edit and share their own rock ‘n’ roll anthems. Music creators will also be able to share their recordings with their friends online through GHTunesSM where other gamers can download and play an endless supply of unique creations.

R.E.M. have released a brand-new live digital EP, entitled Live in London, which is now available exclusively on iTunes. The EP features nine songs recorded during the band’s performance at the Apple Store on London’s Regent Street on March 26th, 2008.

An intimate performance for contest winners and several hundred members of R.E.M’s fan club, the Apple Store show was called “a triumph” by Britain’s music bible Q, which also wrote: “There’s an undeniable feeling that R.E.M. have come here to kick back and have fun with a bunch of close friends.”

Live in London features five tracks from Accelerate — R.E.M.’s 14th studio album — including the singles “Supernatural Superserious,” “Hollow Man,” and the latest “Man-Sized Wreath,” as well as old favorites “West Of The Fields” (from 1983’s Murmur), “Fall on Me” (from 1986’s Life’s Rich Pageant), and “Man on the Moon” (from 1992’s Automatic For the People).

Hailed as “a classic blast of rock and roll from a band at a new peak of its powers” by Rolling Stone, Accelerate was released in North America on April 1st, 2008, and debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard album charts. R.E.M. recently completed its U.S. tour and has now embarked on its European tour, which continues through October 2008.

The track-listing for Live in London is as follows:

“Living Well Is The Best Revenge”

“Auctioneer (Another Engine)”

“Hollow Man”

“Supernatural Superserious”

“Fall On Me”

“West Of The Fields”

“Horse to Water”

“Man-Sized Wreath”

“Man on the Moon”

Watch the trailer: