Ok, so the comment from this morning made me not want to write anything else today, but hey, it’s Tunes you need Tuesday. Here’s one essential album any REM fan needs: Dead Letter Office.
There’s a good chance you haven’t heard this cd, it’s a great collection of b-sides, covers, and outtakes from the band’s early years. It’s a fitting title — in case you didn’t know, when your mail gets lost or you goofed up the address and don’t put your return address on the envelope, your mail goes to the dead letter office. Well, that’s what they used to be called. Now they’re referred to as Mail Recovery Centers, which sounds like letter rehab. Anywhoodle.
The covers on Dead Letter Office are great. I love REM’s version of “There She Goes Again” by Velvet Underground, it’s one of my favorite songs of all time. The cover of Aerosmith’s “Toys in the Attic” is a fun song, something I always find strange that REM recorded.
“Ages of You” is a song that could have been big, or at least I think so. I love a lot of REM’s music from before they really refined their sound. Here’s a fab line from the song, “the horses just don’t gossip anymore.” I never trusted horses, especially those haughty Clydesdales.
My fun, “try to sing along” song on the album has to be “Voice of Harold.” Michael Stipe used the liner notes to a gospel album (“The Joy of Knowing Jesus”, by the Revelaires) in the studio during the recording of Reckoning with the same backing music track as “7 Chinese Brothers.” I’m sure there was some drinking going on in the studio that night. Finally, the mucho grande fun track of the album is a liqoured-up version of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road.” You can almost smell the booze on Stipe’s breath when you hear it. Seriously. Here’s what guitarist Peter Buck had to say in the liner notes about “King of the Road”: I suppose if we had any shame we would have never allowed this little gem to see the light of day. This was recorded at the very end of a long alcohol soaked day, and I can barely remember cutting it. This first part was an attempt at writing a commercial for Walter’s Bar-B-Q. The second part is King of the Road, kind of. If there was any justice in the world, Roger Miller should be able to sue for what we did to this song.
So, there it is. Go to Amazon and get your copy of Dead Letter Office. It’s $7, I checked it out for you. I didn’t check iTunes this time, but you know how to find it. Oh, I didn’t mention that when the cd was released, they tacked on the EP, Chronic Town, to DLO, so you’ll get the lovely song “Gardening at Night” as a little bonus. I’ve had the cd for years and years, and I pop in it in to play for a fun drive a lot. The cd came out in 1987, before Document and Green, when REM was still pretty much considered a college band and they broke out big. Do yourself a favor and go get all those cds. I have the newer compilations and the old cds — you can’t beat the old ones. There a lots of gems off those older cds that never saw the light of day. Ok, so this Tunes you need Tuesday turned into REM you need Tuesday.
Promise I’ll put up layouts from Scrap ‘n on the River soon. Still haven’t unpacked the car. What? You think I unpacked anything, save for my Vera Bradley Miller bag in Java Blue? Ha. You’re so funny, I thought you knew me by now. I wouldn’t have unpacked that bag, but I needed my toiletries. A girl’s gotta have her hair products, now. Be good.
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