R.E.M.’s Fables Gets Deluxe Treatment

Newly remastered edition will include bonus disc of pre-album demos. Check the video from 1985, below.

By Blurt Staff

The latest expanded edition of a classic R.E.M. album has been announced: on July 13, Capitol/I.R.S. will issue a two-CD, 25^th Anniversary version of 1985's Fables Of The Reconstruction. It will have the digitally remastered original album, plus 14 previously unreleased demo recordings, cut prior to the album's studio sessions, including one long-sought track that has never been released.

Also part of the package: liners from Pete Buck, plus a poster and four postcards. The original LP will also arrive on 180-gram vinyl.

The commemorative release also adds insightful new liner notes by R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, with the 2CD package presented in a lift-top box with a poster and four postcards.  On the same date, the remastered original album will be released on 180-gram vinyl.

The bonus disc should be of particular interest to fans. The album was originally recorded in London in the winter of '85 with producer Joe Boyd (Nick Drake, Fairport Convention), but prior to that the band went into Jim Hawkins' Athens, Georgia studio for a few weeks to do rehearsals and polish up fresh material - some of the tunes on hand, notably "Driver 8" and "Old Man Kensey," had already been debuted in concert and were already making the rounds on bootleg and among the R.E.M. tape trading community.

In his liner notes, Peter Buck recalls, "The last day of rehearsal, I think with Joe Boyd in attendance, Jim Hawkins recorded what we had come up with.  We spent about four hours recording all the new songs live, with minimal overdubs.  I hadn't listened to this stuff since we recorded it, and I'm kind of stunned at how good it is.  My memory of the rehearsals is us scrambling to finish songs.  The songs on both Murmur and Reckoning had been performed for months if not years by the time they were committed to tape.  I remember feeling dangerously unprepared when we flew to London, but on the evidence of this recording we must have known what we were doing."

"The Athens Demos," as R.E.M. has dubbed them, comprise the new edition's second disc of 14 previously unreleased recordings, including drafts of Fables' 11 songs and three additional tracks that didn't make the album. The three non-album demos include two early versions of songs that were later revisited by the band and recorded for other releases and one song, "Throw Those Trolls Away," making its release debut on this new edition.

Tracklisting:

Disc One: digitally remastered original album

1. Feeling Gravity's Pull

2. Maps and Legends

3. Driver 8

4. Life and How To Live It

5. Old Man Kensey

6. Can't Get There From Here

7. Green Grow The Rushes

8. Kohoutek

9. Auctioneer (Another Engine)

10. Good Advices

11. Wendell Gee

Disc Two: "The Athens Demos"

1. Auctioneer (Another Engine) [demo version]

2. Bandwagon [demo version] [final version was B-side to "Can't Get There From Here"]

3. Can't Get There From Here [demo version]

4. Driver 8 [demo version]

5. Feeling Gravity's Pull [demo version]

6. Good Advices [demo version]

7. Green Grow The Rushes [demo version]

8. Hyena [demo version] [album version appeared on Life's Rich Pageant]

9. Kohoutek [demo version]

10. Life and How To Live It [demo version]

11. Maps and Legends [demo version]

12. Old Man Kensey [demo version]

13. Throw Those Trolls Away [demo version] [previously unreleased]

14. Wendell Gee [demo version]