Forgot this one originally, and am in no hurry to get to the post-New Adventures material, so I’m combining Dead Letter Office (which includes the essential Chronic Town EP on the CD version) and the three non-album singles from In Time: The Best of R.E.M.. I expect the Chronic Town material will walk away with the votes here, though “The Great Beyond”, “Bad Day” and “Animal” are respectable late-period songs. Went with “Wolves, Lower” myself.
I voted for Bandwagon, terrific tune and the lyrics are pretty funny. I never cared much for Chronic Town but Dead Letter Office had some gems, including Ages of You and covers of Toys in the Attic and King of the Road.
I voted for “Pale Blue Eyes” but my eye somehow skimmed right over “Bandwagon.” Damnit!!
Can you only vote once? I said Crazy, but Walter’s Theme/King of the Road, the VU covers, Bandwagon, Wolves…, so many great ones here.
Yep, sorry - only set up for one vote.
A Must!
Hm. If you’re going to throw in Chronic Town, that’s so unfair. Without it, I’d have to say “Crazy.” With it, I’m going to have to say “Wolves, Lower.”
However, since I only ever owned DLO on cassette, it didn’t have Chronic Town (that was a different cassette), so I’m voting for “Crazy.” I still wanna find the original version, to see how it compares (of course, I don’t mean I’ve put any effort into it, but you know what I mean).
I’ve never been an enthusiast for their covers or their novelty songs. My LP of Dead Letter Office walked away aeons ago and I haven’t thought about some of these tunes in years (“Voice of Harold”!). I still remember quite clearly hearing “1,000,000” and “Carnival” on some NYC college station when Chronic Town first came out – it was really late at night and I can recall exactly where I was, and I can recall being mesmerized, too. So that’s where my vote goes.
Monster is the last record I’m at all familiar with (and not too familiar at that); I’m interesting in checking out poll winners for their more recent records.
“Gardening at Night”. Always and forever “Gardening at Night”.
Runner up: “Wolves, Lower”.
I went for for Wolves, Lower, but I like the Velvets covers, and the quite obviously pissed version of King of the Road.
Original version of “Crazy” available for download here (also available on iTunes).
So you voted for Voice of Harold. I didn’t know anything about the band members back then. The song was so bizarre, I thought they might be evangelical Christians.