Rem – 1983.11.09 – Just A Touch – Rhythmic Studios – San Francisco, CA – STO 1CD A-

01. That Beat (Don Dixon session?)
02. Walter’s Theme
03. Cushy Tush
04. Burning Down
05. All The Right Friends
06. Windout
07. Femme Fatale
08. Burning Hell
09. The Lion Sleeps Tonight
10. Skank
11. So. Central Rain
12. Letter Never Sent
13. Little America
14. Camera
15. Second Guessing
16. Second Guessing Take 2
17. Harborcoat
18. 7 Chinese Brothers
19. Just A Touch
20. Pretty Persuasion
21. Pale Blue Eyes
22. Time After Time (Annelise)

the bulk of these songs showed up in complete form on ‘Reckoning’ and other songs showed up in finished form on various B-sides. These straight to 2-track demos have *never* been officially released.

The only song on this recording whose source I would question is That Beat. Michael can clearly be heard talking to someone called ‘Don’ in the control room. This would almost certainly have been Don Dixon, the co-producer of their first two records. The Rhythmic Studios were produced by Elliott Mazer not Don Dixon so… hmmm… that suggests that this may come from a different session than this one.

Also the sound on That Beat is quite different to the sound of the rest of the songs.

This is from UNCUT Magazine:

“On November 9 [1983], R.E.M. demoed 24 songs at Rhythmic Studios, San Francisco, with Elliot Mazer, who’d produced Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’. They recorded nine songs that would eventually appear on ‘Reckoning’: ‘So. Central Rain’, ‘Letter Never Sent’, ‘Little America’, ‘Camera’, ‘Second Guessing’, ‘Harborcoat’, ‘7 Chinese Bros’, ‘Pretty Persuasion’ and ‘Time After Time (AnnElise)’.

Mazer had first met [Peter] Buck, a long-time Young fan, at R.E.M.’s show on June 20, 1983 at the Keystone Berkeley, California. He remembers the sessions: ‘The band called me as they wanted to demo some tunes and Mitch [Easter] was not in town. The band set up in the studio and when we had a sound, they started to play. Everything was done live to 2-track stereo. One take per song. They played a tune and, if they got through it, they moved onto the next one. It was intense fun’. Among the sessions were three covers -The Tokens’ ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonite’, and ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ and ‘Femme Fatale’ by The Velvet Underground- that the band ‘played to get sounds and warm up’, says Mazer. ‘We might have done one playback, if at all’, he continues. ‘They needed to record demo versions of these tunes’. The sessions never officially saw the light of day, though they were leaked online. When asked what happened to the tapes -and why the sessions weren’t included on the forthcoming ‘Reckoning Special Edition’- [R.E.M. manager, Bertis] Downs admits no-one’s entirely sure where they are: ‘They could be dust, or they could have been mislabelled and are sitting in a locker somewhere'”.

With the probable exception of That Beat, these were originally recorded live to 2-Track. They were circulating among collectors on cassette for a while and these are probably originally sourced from one of those unknown generation tapes. They were compiled onto CD-r and then extracted to flac using Exact Audio Copy. Everything else was done on TLH V 2.5.0.

The sound quality is pretty damn good. You won’t be disappointed (especially Manimal)