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R.E.M. ??/??/88
The Complete Green Demos, Athens, GA
Set I
Pop Hit 89 (Pop Song 89)
Orange Crush
Get Up (instrumental)
I Remember California
Untitled Instrumental 1
Title (instrumental)
Great Big (instrumental)
Untitled Instrumental 2
The Wrong Child (instrumental)
Get Up (vocal)
So Awake, Volunteer (The Eleventh Untitled Song) (instrumental)
Hairshirt (instrumental)
You Are The Everything
Stand
Set II
 
Set III
 
Comment
R.E.M.
The Complete Green Demos
John Keane's Studios, Athens, GA / Bearsville Studios, NY


This boot has an interesting story behind it. I used to go every month, religiously, to a record show at
the Holiday Inn in Hillside, IL back in the mid-90s. Usually it would be the same pile of crap at every dealer,
with the odd surprise find every now and then.

This was one of them.

An elderly lady was minding her son's table, whereby he had about a half-dozen cassettes in a box amongst
the Zeppelin bootlegs he was selling. I was quite surprised to see a cassette labeled "Green demos" amongst
the crap he had, and for $2.00, snapped it up. I normally didn't buy bootleg tapes but from the tracklisting
I could tell this was something special. I never did meet the guy whose table it was, so I was never able
to confirm lineage or the source.

This tape not only contained all the previously-known Green demos floating about on various bootlegs, but it
ALSO had 3 additional songs that I do not believe EVER appeared on any boots. In fact I don't think that prior
to me trading this tape, these three tracks were known amongst collectors to exist as "Green demos".

The three songs are:
09 - The Wrong Child (instrumental) --- much longer than Green version
10 - Get Up (Vocal) --- partially written lyric, with music boxes but different musical backing tracks
14 - Stand --- no wah-wah guitar solo, different musical backing tracks

I confirmed the above with Todd Ploharski, owner of Athens, GA's Low Yo Yo record store and one of the scene's
biggest REM collectors. If it existed in the REM trader/collector universe, Todd knew about it (if he didn't
actually have it himself). He'd never seen these three songs out there anywhere.

I suspect this originated with either a band member late in the Bearsville sessions or a Bearsville studio staff
person because of the development stages of the songs (i.e. the music boxes on "Get Up" - the idea came in a dream
Bill Berry had late in the day while the band were recording at Bearsville, and the previously-leaked instrumental
demo does not have the music box interlude). If the newly-discovered songs were simply tacked on the end of a tape of previously-leaked demos that would be one thing - but since they were interspersed amongst the others I think
this is a different source altogether than the one used to seed all the boots containing Green demos ("Sleeping
Songs", "Archival Footage", etc...). Furthermore the 4 unreleased instrumental tracks are FAR better quality here
than any of the pre-existing bootleg releases.
Last Changed By Lukas Karlsson
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