Rem

Suspicion yourself, suspicion yourself

Don’t get caught

Everyone has their own Rem.  The Remmian/Remophile has their own favourite album (often different from the universally acknowledged masterpieces), whether out of sonic preference or simply because that's how they first got to know the band. Due to my age, and thanks to Mtv, I discovered Rem through the video for “Lotus”, captivated by Stéphane Sednaoui's images, that spectral chorus and Peter Buck's solo. “Up” thus became my all-time favourite album, my baptism. But that's another story.

The 1998 album is considered the first step of the new Rem, now without Bill Berry. For many it marks the start of a negligible phase, while others love it and defend it to the hilt. My own podium is: “Up”, “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” and “Fables Of The Reconstruction”. But I have no trouble acknowledging the peaks reached by “Murmur” and “Automatic For The People”. Then, talking with colleagues and fans, the discussion broadens further. The “purist” school of thought considers the “true and pure” Rem to be the band between 1981 and 1983, from the first version of “Radio Free Europe” on Hib Tone to “Murmur”. And since these days mark the fortieth anniversary of precisely that debut Ep, let's go back and listen to those early rapid movements.

Gentlemen don’t get caught

Cages under cage

Gentlemen don’t get caught

Boxcars (are pulling) out of town

It's 24 August 1982: riding the success of the single “Radio Free Europe/Sitting Still” (50,000 copies sold in no time, not a bad start), the Ep “Chronic Town” by Rem is released — a promising, still largely unknown quartet from Athens, Georgia. Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe immediately define, with courage and determination, their characteristic stylistic traits. Cryptic, evocative and obscure lyrics, a jingle-jangle sound descended from the Byrds tradition, blended with beloved Southern folk and the dominant post-punk sounds of the era. A scene that in Athens boasted two standout names, also cited by Simon Reynolds in “Post Punk 1978 – 1984”: Pylon and the B-52's.

Revolutionary and conservative, pop and rock, wild and reflective all at once, Rem at the time played alongside newly formed but highly respected underground bands (Minutemen, Husker Du, Black Flag, Replacements) and shared their artistic activity with other projects, right down to the fateful moment of having to choose “which side to be on” — see the Love Tractor chapter for Berry. Young but very clear-headed, they nurtured and drew out each musician's distinctive personality, creating the winning mix that would guarantee their success.

Drummer Bill Berry immediately emerges as the group's glue, the hidden leader capable of setting the tempo for both the songs and the band's decisions; Mills is the meticulous musician, Buck the utterly devoted music obsessive with a legendary vinyl collection, Stipe the shy, reserved art student who transforms on stage into a wild performer.

Having effectively founded college rock with the aforementioned single and staged memorable parties/gigs, the four criss-crossed America, literally, moving between moments to remember and outright humiliations. Their tenacity would pay off. With manager Jefferson Holt behind them and production by Mitch Easter — already at the console for the debut single, a figure we'll return to shortly — Rem forged their aura. Goodbye parties and wild rock'n'roll living: for those five tracks, the Athens boys wanted something completely different. We immediately grasp what world we're moving in from the cover of “Chronic Town”, left wondering what Stryga, one of the gargoyles of Notre Dame in Paris, is doing on the debut of four guys from Georgia.

After its first release in 1982, once the band had moved to Irs, the Ep became available within the compilation “Dead Letter Office”, was reissued in 1990 by the same label, and later included in the UK within the 1995 compilation “The Originals”. Now, to the delight of many, it's being reissued on picture disc, cassette and CD via Irs/UMe, with liner notes penned by none other than Mitch Easter (founder of Let's Active), one of the key figures (alongside Don Dixon) of early Rem, before he handed over production duties in 1985 to Joe Boyd for “Fables Of The Reconstruction”. In his Drive-In Studio — essentially a garage in North Carolina — the producer, introduced to the band by Peter Holsapple of the dB's (who was, in effect, a fifth Rem member for years), managed to capture on tape the energy, creativity and style the four had already defined, contributing plenty of ideas himself — see the loops and experiments used to enrich the tracks. It wasn't an easy task: Rem were, in fact, considered essentially a “live band”, unmissable on stage during their incendiary shows, but hard to capture on record.

The 1982 release is split into a Side One called “Chronic Town” and a Side Two named “Poster Torn”. Two titles drawn from a line in the best track of the bunch: “Carnival Of Sorts (Boxcars)”. As already noted in the recent OndaTop, “the song represents early Rem more than any other. The originality, the naive madness and the peculiarity of their beginnings. The sinister sound of a distant carousel, forgotten in time and in nightmares, the nonsensical lyrics, an Ep (…) in which, behind the gargoyle's face, the entire DNA of the Athens band is concentrated.”

Stipe has recently stated the influence of David Lynch's “The Elephant Man” on this track, and of “Circus Envy” on “Monster”. The songs featured here are not the first the band wrote: from accounts and recordings — now available online, especially those from the early, fiery party-gigs — we know the four had already conceived some original songs that were far more direct and explicit, later discarded. “Gardening At Night”, with Stipe's vocal part recorded by the singer lying on the studio floor, would go on to become the best-known track over the decades, thanks to its presence on various best-ofs and its live reprisals (the Bologna performances in 1999 and 2007, on the occasion of their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, were particularly epic).

A few more notes on the track. In the valuable liner notes for “And I Feel Fine… The Best Of the IRS Years 1982–1987”, Berry recounts how it came about: not so much from the image of a nocturnal gardener, but from a rather more urgent need… Stipe's vocal performance on the Ep version borders on a whisper, while the alternative version on “Eponymous” reveals a completely different kind of vigour.

If “1,000,000” is the most rock-oriented glimpse, “Stumble”, in its repetitiveness (the “We'll stumble through the yard” of the verses and the “Ball and chain, ball and chain” of the chorus), remains mysteriously magnetic. The singer was already crafting lyrics full of cryptic references and estranging images, with allusions to telephone lines that would return in “So. Central Rain”, and figures poised between unsettling fairy tales and dreamlike journeys. His voice, true to the conventions of the era, blends these words with the instruments, marching in step with Mills and Berry's rhythm work and Buck's arpeggios, which alternate open strings with high notes.

We close, appropriately enough, by going back to the opener, another standout track that also got an official video: “Wolves, Lower”. The song (of which a faster version also exists) would eventually take the place of “Ages Of You” and would be revived, along with almost the entirety of “Chronic Town”, on “Live At The Olympia” (2009). With only poor old “Stumble” left out, R.E.M. brought the songs from their debut EP back into their Dublin live shows, treating audiences to a mature performance of their youthful glories.

It's no surprise that the next step after this EP was “Murmur”. I've always seen the 1983 debut album as an exponential version of “Chronic Town”, a record where every element already present on the EP was expanded and brought to full fruition.

Forty years on, “Chronic Town” still holds all the vitality and inspiration of four young guys from the South, destined to gradually step out of that gargoyle's shadow and conquer the world. And as much as “my” R.E.M. are the ones fronted by a shaven-headed, androgynous Stipe taming oceanic crowds, already well used to not giving a damn about the rockstar role and the conventions of the industry, going back to their essential year zero is a musical journey I'd wish on every music lover.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

10/02/2026