R.E.M.
Radio City Music Hall
New York, NY
August 31, 1985
Soundboard Recording

Transfer: TDK SA-90 Type II cassette > Nakamichi DR-1 (azimuth adjustment) > Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD > Audacity (24-96) > FLAC 6 > JEMS mastering via iZotope RX and Ozone > convert to 1644 .wav > Audacity > TLH > FLAC

01 Feeling Gravity Pull
02 Harborcoat
03 Green Grow The Rushes
04 Skip Rope
05 Hyena
06 Maps and Legends
07 Fall On Me
08 Driver 8
09 So. Central Rain
10 Have You Ever Seen The Rain?
11 Pills
12 Can't Get There From Here
13 7 Chinese Bros.
14 Auctioneer (Another Engine)
15 Old Man Kensey
16 Little America
17 Pretty Persuasion
18 Life and How to Live It
19 Second Guessing
20 (Don't Go Back to) Rockville
21 Behind Closed Doors
22 See No Evil
23 Singing Cage
24 Theme From Two Steps Onward
25 Sitting Still
26 Time After Time (AnnElise)
27 Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)
28 Moon River
29 Windout

Known Faults: cut in "Old Man Kensey" due to tape flip; final song "Windout" cuts before the end and misses Stipe's final improvised vocals.

JEMS is delighted to debut the first in a series of previously uncirculated R.E.M. soundboard recordings. Our own history with the band goes back to JEMS patriarch Jared Houser taping them in Detroit 1983. We collectively recorded the band dozens of times thereafter and collected R.E.M. live recordings for just as long. As such, we know what soundboard tapes are in circulation, which is what makes these new board recordings so exciting.

R.E.M. is playing their biggest New York City headline show to date at Radio City Music Hall, with a capacity just under 6,000. It’s the last date of the 1985 tour’s US leg dubbed Reconstruction 1. The main set is representative of the tour, diving deep into Fables of the Reconstruction and a good helping of Reckoning, plus a couple of covers: CCR’s “Have You Ever Seen The Rain?” and “Pills” written by Bo Diddley by way of the New York Dolls.

The encore includes cuts from Murmur and the Chronic Town EP, a cover of “Moon River” plus two unreleased originals: “Windout” and what for my money is the best R.E.M. outtake of the era, “Theme From Two Steps Onward.” It’s a winning performance and a strong setlist. There are some fun snippets thrown in as well.

Details of how or why the board recording was made are lost to history but the provenance of the tape suggests this is the master cassette and the sound quality offers nothing to dispute that. We did a bit of work to bring the instruments into better balance and widen the soundscape, but mostly this sounds great because it is the real deal. Samples provided.

Huge thanks go out to By-Tor X-1 for the transfer and Walrus for his vital role in liberating these tapes. Moonvoices lent a hand as well, Professor Goody weighed in on pitch and mjk5510 handled post production. We’re grateful to work on such a major find for R.E.M. fans.

BK for JEMS