"Radio Free Europe", by R.E.M.
"Radio Free Europe" was the first R.E.M. song I ever heard. My old partner-in-crime Russell and I were on one of our periodic record-buying raids into the city (and sometimes beyond - to Greville Records in Prahran, to Exposure in Cotham Road, Kew, to Dixon's Recycled in far-away Blackburn - we even, once, went to the home of the World Record Club, in Hartwell, as it was closing down, and my regret now is that I didn't buy the entire contents, all of those V Balsara and His Singing Sitars records, what I wouldn't give etc etc).
If I may digress for a second: one night Russell, Roger and I headed off to somewhere like Coburg or Preston, by train, on a futile attempt to find some record shop we had never heard of, in a place we didn't know, that Russell seemed to think was having a big sale. We came home empty-handed (I don't think we even managed to find the shop, or maybe it was closed, or the sale was finished, or was a dud, I don't now remember - come to think of it I can't be absolutely certain that Roger was with us) and, when we were riding the train home, the entire carriage all to ourselves, a drunk guy wandered in, muttered something, sat down opposite us, vomited up a remarkably smooth and remarkably pink liquid concoction onto the floor between us, muttered a bit more, then stood up and staggered out of the train at the next station.
And with the appearance of the word "muttering", we neatly and unexpectedly return to R.E.M., who were once the subject of a magazine headline that said something like, "The only band that mutters". Anyway, on this particular vinyl excursion, we found ourselves at Central Station, downstairs at the long-defunct Melbourne City Square. They were having a sale, as it happened, and Russell handed me the first two R.E.M. albums, "Murmur" and "Reckoning", saying something like "You should buy both of these". Which, one friend unquestioningly following the advice of another, I did. I wish he was still around to thank. Both of those albums, and the two that followed, "Fables of the Reconstruction / Reconstruction of the Fables" and "Life's Rich Pageant", ended up being among my most-listened-to records of the 1980s. This was at a time when the sixties of The Byrds were only just starting to creep into the Melbourne band scene, and R.E.M. were a breath of fresh air similar to the one The Smiths were soon to blow in on from another direction.
(And then, on "Document", they gave the clearest appearance of selling out: YOU COULD UNDERSTAND THE WORDS!!! At which point I left R.E.M. behind. It was one of my typical, and typically misguided, rushes to judgment. "Document" itself, I am prepared to admit in hindsight, is only slightly below their best. "Green", on the other hand, has only moments. And I knew, the Saturday morning that I heard Brian Wise on the radio going on about the greatness of "Out of Time", that R.E.M. had slipped out of my grasp and into the mainstream. I was, of course, wrong, at least in one respect: their greatest moment, "Automatic For The People", was still to come.)
But, man, those first four albums. Michael Stipe was an extraordinarily charismatic front-man for someone who went to such great lengths not to allow himself to be understood. They had a remarkable guitarist (echoes, again, of The Smiths). They wrote great song after great song. They specialised in false starts and false endings, and in counterintuitive arrangements. They threw away as afterthoughts musical ideas most bands would have been proud to make a whole song, or even an entire album, out of. Most of all, and never more so than on "Murmur", they filtered the tunesmithery of The Byrds through the soundsmithery of The Cure's "Seventeen Seconds" and "Faith", two of my then (and still) favourite records. Nothing was clear. Everything was suggested. They weren't so much lost in the fog as seeing with absolute clarity where they were going, notwithstanding the fog. The fog, in other words, was integral to the songs, and hence to the records. It is how I remember them. It is how I want to remember them.
Which is why listening to the remastered two-CD "Deluxe Edition" of "Murmur", released to great fanfare last year, was such a horrifying experience. Here is a record, the opacity of the sound of which has always been integral to its greatness, buffed up and polished so much that it sounds like any other sixties-influenced eighties rock record. The drum hits are crisp and clear, the vocals are up front and centre, with impeccable clarity. Everything is in its right place. It's just that it's the wrong place. I have reacted to this "Murmur" in the much the same way that I reacted to first hearing "Speedboat", from the compact disc release of "Rattlesnakes", by Lloyd Cole and The Commotions, in 1986: I ran as far away from it as possible, as fast as possible, for fear that I could never listen to it on record again. In the case of "Rattlesnakes", the sound was just so frighteningly clear that I could see my entire vinyl collection collapsing into instant irrelevance. In that instance time healed all wounds, of course, and I can now listen to vinyl and CD (and MP3, for that matter) side by side and appreciate the pros and cons of both. But in the case of the remastered "Murmur" my fear is that by listening to it again I risk undoing the magic spell that the original album has cast over me for so long. If the album means as much to you as it does to me, I don't know that you are going to get anything positive out of the "Deluxe Edition". If you are new to R.E.M., then go for it, you will never know what you are missing, and I dare say that even in the absence of its original fuzziness it is still a great album. They are, after all, fine songs, whichever way you look at it.
So I run back to the shelf that holds the vinyl, think of Russell as I drag "Murmur" out of its cardboard sleeve, cardboard inner sleeve and plastic inner inner sleeve, drop the needle on the record, and luxuriate once more in the murky and unfathomable depths of this majestic album. And breathe a sigh of relief that its particular genie is still nestled comfortably in its bottle. But it was a close call.
