Title:Dead Letter Office By: R.E.M. Released by: I.R.S. Released on: 1987 Rating (out of 10): 8 Date: 07/05/2001
The Cadillac of Pisstake Albums
Some bands I like to namecheck
And one of them is R.E.M.
—Pavement, "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence"
In all my years as a music fan, I've kept a surprisingly consistent short list of essential artists—and I'd say the band that has been there longest is R.E.M.
As with a lot of artists I love, I can go months without hearing their music, but the bond is there—the reflex to say their names when asked for a list of Bands I Listen To. When I do find myself listening to R.E.M., it's usually at a time when it's necessary to be spooked by Chronic Town, rocked by Lifes (sic) Rich Pageant, or seduced by Automatic for the People.
I've been following R.E.M. since 1988, when I first heard "Orange Crush" and "Stand," and learned that the same band was responsible for two other great songs I'd heard on the radio—"The One I Love" and "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)."
We've all read the publicity spiel: At a time when hair-metal and synth-fluff ruled, R.E.M. (along with a couple other aberrations, such as 10,000 Maniacs, Cowboy Junkies, U2, and Midnight Oil), were keeping a high standard and a tight rein on their creative control—writing lyrics with political and social purpose, introducing young audiences to the sounds of mandolins and 12-string acoustic guitars, making videos that were influenced more by independent films than pyrotechnics displays.
R.E.M. had a reputation as a Serious Band With a Conscience. But anyone who has heard bootlegs of R.E.M.'s '80-'81 shows at Tyrone's and the 40 Watt (both in Athens, GA) has noticed the marked differences between the band that gave us lyrics like "Every whisper/Of every waking hour/I'm choosing my confessions" and the band that played loud, fast, mostly interchangeable dance-rock numbers in front of a few hundred beer-swilling fratboys.
Dead Letter Office, released in 1987, is a sampling of some tracks from R.E.M.'s early days. But aside from "White Tornado," recorded at the sessions for the '81 Hib-Tone "Radio Free Europe"/"Sitting Still" single, and "Windout," penned in 1980 but recorded for the 1984 album Reckoning, it includes nothing before the previously-released Chronic Town EP from '82. It focuses mainly on outtakes and pisstakes recorded during sessions for Murmur, Reckoning, and Fables of the Reconstruction ('83, '84, and '85, respectively).
It was around the time I bought Dead Letter Office (in '91, I think) that I realized what a cool band I had adopted as one of my favorites. At the time, R.E.M. were at the apex (nadir, for some) of their high seriousness, with the outrageous Caravaggio-inspired tableau of the "Losing My Religion" video and their inclusion of "Fretless" on Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World soundtrack. And this was the same band that had let their godawful, learned-while-the-tape-was-running (bass player Mike Mills to guitarist Peter Buck: "C!—F!—G!"), only-a-basic-idea-of-the-lyrics version of Roger Miller's "King of the Road" be unleashed upon the public.
What's more, there are three Velvet Underground covers ("There She Goes Again," "Pale Blue Eyes," and "Femme Fatale"). As any aspiring rock musician knows, Velvets covers are something you play at your very first band practice, when you don't have any other songs worked up and none of the musicians is very skilled. You don't record Velvets covers, especially if you plan to become famous. They will come back to haunt you. (Well, I'll make exceptions for The Feelies and Yo La Tengo, who have spent the better part of their careers trying to emulate VU.) So the award for Audacity goes to R.E.M., who deserve it.
Audacity prevails again in a couple of Dead Letter Office's most cringeworthy moments: a straightforward version of Aerosmith's "Toys in the Attic" (in which the only humor is Michael Stipe's later admission that he had never heard the song before the other members worked up the cover) and an original cheese-metal song (think Iron Maiden or Judas Priest) called "Burning Hell." Sample lyric, sung over a death-rock riff: "Women got legs/Men got pants/I got the picnic/You got the ants." Sigh.
Dead Letter Office is worth buying for Chronic Town, the cover of Pylon's "Crazy," and for two tracks in particular. The first is "Voice of Harold," which has Michael Stipe drawwwwllllllling the liner notes to gospel choir The Revelaires' The Joy of Knowing Jesus LP—"We awre associated with the Yew-nited Music World Reeecordin' Studios, Innnncorporated/West Columbia, South Carolaahhhna/The fahnest sound available anywhere"—over the instrumental tracks of "Seven Chinese Brothers."
And "Bandwagon," though not a favorite of the band ("because of all the stupid chord changes," says Peter Buck in the liner notes), is a magnificent self-parody of a jangly folk-rock band that wear their pet issues on their sleeve ("Come on aboard/I promise you/We won't hurt the horse/We'll treat him well/We'll feed him well.") It's a song that brings out the giggle monster in me. Every time I start to think "Oh, R.E.M., what a bunch of pretentious wankers," I put on this song to restore my sanity.
Another highlight is "Walter's Theme," a peppy number that R.E.M. wrote as "an attempt at" (vague explanation courtesy of band historian Buck) a commercial jingle for Athens eatery Walter's Bar-B-Q. Stipe adopts the same aw-shucks drawl that he uses for "Voice of Harold" to throw out phrases like "Puttin' on mah boots/Goin' down to Walter's/Gonna bring some home for the Missus." It's pretty fucking surreal.
Now that Mills and Buck are doing movie scores, and now that Stipe is hitting the big time as an indie-film producer, maybe it would be healthy for R.E.M. to toss a Dead Letter Office: Volume 2 our way, to remind us that they're still, ya know, rock n' roll kids at heart.
Or maybe they know that every piss they've ever taken is now downloadable (how the hell do you think I got Bill Berry singing "My Bible is the Latest TV Guide"?) as an MP3? It just goes to show how great a demand there is for R.E.M.'s music, good or bad, even 20 years after their first official release. A lot has happened in music since "Radio Free Europe"/"Sitting Still"; a lot of artists and magazines and genres and subgenres have come and go; fashion trends that I can actually remember from the first time around are coming back; indie labels have exploded and gone under within a few years; major labels have been bought out by megaconglomerates who shut down all the imprints associated with those major labels; bands have been dropped from their labels; bands have risked career suicide and left their labels.
