''Reckoning'' (alternatively titled ''File Under Water'')
[Hoskyns, Barney. "Four Guys Working For The Sainthood". ''NME''. April 21, 1984.] is the second studio album by American
alternative rock
Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from mainstream or commerci ...
band
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band from Athens, Georgia, formed in 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and lead vocalist Michael Stipe, who were students at the University of Georgia. One of the first alternati ...
, released on April 9, 1984 by
I.R.S. Records. Produced by
Mitch Easter
Mitchell Blake Easter (born November 15, 1954) is a musician, songwriter, and record producer. Frequently associated with the jangle pop style of guitar music, he is known as producer of R.E.M.'s early albums from 1981 through 1984, and as fron ...
and
Don Dixon, the album was recorded at Reflection Sound Studio in
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...
, over 16 days in December 1983 and January 1984. Dixon and Easter intended to capture the sound of R.E.M.'s live performances, and used
binaural recording
Binaural recording is a method of recording sound that uses two microphones, arranged with the intent to create a 3-D stereo sound sensation for the listener of actually being in the room with the performers or instruments. This effect is ...
on several tracks. Lead singer
Michael Stipe
John Michael Stipe (; born January 4, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter and artist, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of alternative rock band R.E.M. He is known for his vocal quality, poetic lyrics and unique stage presence.
Pos ...
dealt with darker subject matter in his lyrics, with water-related imagery being a recurring theme on the album.
Released to critical acclaim, ''Reckoning'' reached number 27 in the United States—where it was
certified
Certification is the provision by an independent body of written assurance (a certificate) that the product, service or system in question meets specific requirements. It is the formal attestation or confirmation of certain characteristics of a ...
gold by the
Recording Industry Association of America in 1991—and peaked at number 91 in the United Kingdom.
Background and production
![Mitch Easter producing Two Steps](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Mitch_Easter_producing_Two_Steps.jpg)
After their debut album ''
Murmur'' (1983) received critical acclaim, R.E.M. quickly began working on their second album. They wrote new material prodigiously; lead guitarist
Peter Buck
Peter Lawrence Buck (born December 6, 1956) is an American musician and songwriter. He was a co-founder and the lead guitarist of the alternative rock band R.E.M. He also plays the banjo and mandolin on several R.E.M. songs. Throughout his ca ...
recalled, "We were going through this streak where we were writing two good songs a week
..We just wanted to do it; whenever we had a new batch of songs, it was time to record".
[Fletcher, p. 100] Because of the many new songs the band had, Buck unsuccessfully tried convincing everyone to make the next album a double album.
[The Notorious Stuart Brothers. "A Date With Peter Buck". '']Bucketfull of Brains
''Bucketfull of Brains'' (also known as ''BoB'') was a London-based music magazine, founded in 1979 and published until 2015 . An associated record label was launched in 2010.
History
''Bucketfull of Brains'' was founded by Nigel Cross in 1979, a ...
''. December 1987. In November 1983, the band recorded 22 songs during a session with
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian-American singer and songwriter. After embarking on a music career in Winnipeg in the 1960s, Young moved to Los Angeles, joining Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Richie Fur ...
producer
Elliot Mazer
Elliot Mazer (September 5, 1941February 7, 2021) was an American audio engineer and record producer. He was best known for his work with Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Band, and Janis Joplin. In addition, he worked on film and telev ...
in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
. While Mazer was briefly considered as a candidate to produce the band's next album, R.E.M. ultimately decided to team up again with ''Murmur'' producers
Mitch Easter
Mitchell Blake Easter (born November 15, 1954) is a musician, songwriter, and record producer. Frequently associated with the jangle pop style of guitar music, he is known as producer of R.E.M.'s early albums from 1981 through 1984, and as fron ...
and
Don Dixon instead.
R.E.M. started recording ''Reckoning'' at Reflection Sound in
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...
, on December 8, 1983. The group recorded over two eight-day stretches around Christmas that year, separated by two weeks of canceled studio time that allowed the band to perform in
Greensboro, North Carolina
Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte, North Car ...
, go see a movie, and shoot a video in the studio. While the studio diary listed 16 days for recording, the album sleeve later claimed the album was recorded in 14 days, while in interviews, Buck sometimes stated that the album was recorded in 11 days. The producers both disputed that the sessions were that short; Dixon insisted that they were at the studio for over 25 days — during which he worked 18-hour days), while Easter said "When I read '11 days' I thought, what the fuck! It was 20 days, which was still short, but it's not 11."
[Fletcher, p. 101]
During recording, there was pressure from I.R.S. Records to try making the album more commercial. The label sent messages to Dixon and Easter, which the producers told the band that they would ignore. While the producers respected I.R.S. president Jay Boberg, they expressed dismay at the comments he made when he visited during the last day of sessions. Dixon called Boberg "record company clueless", while Easter said "I got along with Jay Boberg OK
..but now and again he would express an opinion that would make me think, 'holy shit', because it would strike me as really teenage." Buck said he was grateful that Dixon and Easter acted as a buffer between the band and its label. He said that "it got to the point where as much as I respected the guys at I.R.S., we basically tried to record the records so they wouldn't know we were recording them!", and explained that part of the reason why R.E.M. recorded the album so quickly was that the group wanted to finish before representatives from I.R.S. showed up to listen to it.
The recording sessions were difficult for lead singer
Michael Stipe
John Michael Stipe (; born January 4, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter and artist, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of alternative rock band R.E.M. He is known for his vocal quality, poetic lyrics and unique stage presence.
Pos ...
, who, among the band, was particularly worn out by the band's 1983 tour schedule. Getting usable vocal tracks from Stipe was difficult; Dixon recalled that he and Stipe would show up around noon each day before the rest of the band, but that "he was kind of shut down, and it was difficult to get him to open up". While recording the song "
7 Chinese Bros.", Stipe sang so quietly that Dixon could not hear him on the tape. Frustrated, the producer climbed a ladder to a spot above the recording booth Stipe was in and found a gospel record titled ''The Joy of Knowing Jesus'' by the Revelaires, which he then handed to the singer in an attempt to inspire him. Stipe began reciting the liner notes from the album audibly, which enabled Dixon to move on to recording the vocal track to "7 Chinese Brothers" properly (the initial recitation take was later released in 1987 as "Voice of Harold" on the compilation ''
Dead Letter Office
Dead letter mail or undeliverable mail is mail that cannot be delivered to the addressee or returned to the sender. This is usually due to lack of compliance with postal regulations, an incomplete address and return address, or the inability t ...
'').
Music
With ''Reckoning'', Dixon, Easter, and the band wanted to capture the energy of R.E.M.'s live sound. Dixon had not seen the band perform live before working on ''Murmur''; after he had done so, he had a greater sense of the band's strengths and weaknesses. Dixon wanted the guitars to sound more like they did in concert, but originally they met resistance from both the band and the label; however, by the time R.E.M. started recording, Dixon said the group "wanted to rock out a bit more".
Dixon was enamored of the
binaural recording
Binaural recording is a method of recording sound that uses two microphones, arranged with the intent to create a 3-D stereo sound sensation for the listener of actually being in the room with the performers or instruments. This effect is ...
technique, and used it extensively on the album. Easter recalled that Dixon "made this sort of fake binaural head out of a cardboard box and stuck two microphones in it" to record the group. In Easter's opinion the method made drummer
Bill Berry's parts "fresher sounding". Binaural recording also allowed bassist
Mike Mills
Michael Edward Mills (born December 17, 1958) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer who was a founding member of the alternative rock band R.E.M. Though known primarily as the bass guitarist and backing vocalist of R.E.M., h ...
' backing vocals to be loud without obscuring Stipe's lead vocals. Dixon explained, "Mike Mills was often singing 12 to 15 feet away from the microphones that were recording his part, but because it was in a studio binaural field, we would tend to hear him as behind
tipe"
Biographer David Buckley wrote, "While the music moved away from ''Murmurs slightly airless feel, the subject matter was a little darker."
[Buckley, p. 102] Buck noted in a 1988 interview that water imagery was abundant in the album. Buckley interpreted that imagery as representing the change presented by the band's increasing success, as well as the changing music scene of the group's
Athens, Georgia
Athens, officially Athens–Clarke County, is a consolidated city-county and college town in the U.S. state of Georgia. Athens lies about northeast of downtown Atlanta, and is a satellite city of the capital. The University of Georgia, the sta ...
hometown.
The song "Camera" addressed the death of a friend from Athens who died in a car crash. Easter said, "
tipe'svocal was so exposed on that track, and because of that, it could really show any technical imperfections with regard to pitch." The producer tried to get Stipe to sing a better take, but the singer was more intent on getting the feeling of the song across, and at one point refused to record further. While many of the album's songs were new compositions, some had been in R.E.M.'s show setlists for years; in particular, the songs "Pretty Persuasion" and "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" had been played live as far back as October 1980. The band was reluctant to record "Pretty Persuasion," as the members considered it too old, but Dixon and Easter convinced the group to do so. R.E.M. initially planned releasing "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" as a non-album single between ''Reckoning'' and its next release.
When the band recorded it for the album, the group rearranged the song from its live incarnation and gave it a
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
-like influence as tribute to their advisor
Bertis Downs, IV, who was a fan of country music.
The following additional songs were recorded during the ''Reckoning'' sessions:
Packaging
For the cover of ''Reckoning'', Stipe drew a picture of a two-headed snake, which he then gave to artist
Howard Finster
Howard Finster (December 2, 1916 – October 22, 2001) was an American artist and Baptist minister from Georgia. He claimed to be inspired by God to spread the gospel through the design of his swampy land into Paradise Garden, a folk art scul ...
to fill in as a painting. Stipe stated that the imagery was an attempt to define the elements, explaining, "Part of it is rocks and part of it is the sun and part of it the sky." The end result was considered a disappointment, as Stipe had to work with Finster on a long-distance basis, and the reproduction of the artwork for the album sleeve was problematic.
[Fletcher, p. 106] The spine of the vinyl version of the album features the phrase "File Under Water". Stipe told ''
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
'' in 1984 the phrase is the true title of the record. He added "In America, both titles are on the spine, with nothing on the cover. Here
n the United Kingdom
N, or n, is the fourteenth Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphabet# ...
they insisted on ''Reckoning'' being on the cover."
Instead of labeling the sides of the record as "side one" and "side two", the sides were designated as "L" and "R", respectively.
The back cover features individual photographs of the band members, including a photograph of Stipe taken by Michael Plen at the club in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
, France, on November 24, 1983.
Release and reception
''Reckoning'' was released on April 9, 1984 in the United Kingdom and on April 17 in the United States.
[Black, p. 94] The album quickly reached number one on the
college radio airplay charts, whose audience had highly anticipated the album; however, the band hadn't received much exposure on commercial radio and
MTV by that point. Instead of the music industry standard of waiting for mainstream radio stations to pick up the band's music, I.R.S. hoped to "convince reluctant programmers to add the group by pointing to the press response, word-of-mouth reaction to local live performances and sales figures", according to a July 1984 ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
'' article. The album's first single, "
So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)", was released in May and reached number 85 on the
''Billboard'' Hot 100 charts. Its second single, "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville", was released in August; unlike its predecessor, it did not chart.
[Buckley, p. 357–58] Within a month of its release, ''Reckoning'' peaked at number 27 on the
''Billboard'' 200 albums chart, and it remained there for nearly a year. While the album's domestic chart placing was unusually high for a
college rock
College rock was the alternative rock music played on student-run university and college campus radio stations located in the United States and Canada in the 1980s. The stations' playlists were often created by students who avoided the mainstream ...
band at the time, scant airplay and poor distribution overseas allowed it to chart no higher than number 91 in the United Kingdom. In 1991 the record was certified gold (500,000 copies shipped) by the
Recording Industry Association of America.
''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...
'' gave ''Reckoning'' a four-out-of-five star rating. Reviewer
Christopher Connelly
Christopher Connelly (September 8, 1941 – December 7, 1988) was an American actor, best known for his role as Norman Harrington in the successful prime time ABC soap opera '' Peyton Place''. He stayed with the series during its entire f ...
wrote that in comparison to ''Murmur'' the "overall sound is crisper, the lyrics far more comprehensible. And while the album may not mark any major strides forward for the band, R.E.M.'s considerable strengths – Buck's ceaselessly inventive strumming, Mike Mills' exceptional bass playing and Stipe's evocatively gloomy baritone – remain unchanged". However, Connelly felt that Stipe's "erratic meanderings" were an impediment to the band that "will prevent R.E.M. from transcending cult status". Nonetheless, he concluded, "R.E.M.'s music is able to involve the listener on both an emotional and intellectual level."
Joe Sasfy of ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' felt that the songs on the album "trump even ''Murmur''s outstanding songwriting" and stated "there isn't an American band worth following more than R.E.M."
[Sasfy, Joe. "Reckoning With R.E.M." ''The Washington Post''. May 10, 1984.] ''NME'' reviewer
Mat Snow
Mat Snow (born 20 October 1958) is an English music journalist, magazine editor, and author. From 1995 to 1999, he was the editor of ''Mojo'' magazine; he subsequently served in the same role on the football magazine ''FourFourTwo''.
During the ...
wrote that ''Reckoning'' "confirms R.E.M. as one of the most beautifully exciting groups on the planet" and called the album "another classic".
[Snow, Mat. "American Paradise Regained: R.E.M.'s Reckoning". ''NME''. 1984.] The album placed seventh in ''NME''s Best Album of the Year critics' poll, and ranked sixth in ''
The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, th ...
''s
Pazz & Jop
Pazz & Jop was an annual poll of top musical releases, compiled by American newspaper ''The Village Voice'' and created by music critic Robert Christgau. It published lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and, after Christgau's two-year abs ...
poll.
[Christgau, Robert]
"The 1984 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll"
''Village Voice''. February 18, 1985. Retrieved on March 2, 2009. ''
Slant Magazine'' listed the album at number 81 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s".
The 1992 British CD reissue of the album included five bonus tracks. A 25th anniversary deluxe edition of the album, which was remastered and packaged with a bonus disc featuring a concert recorded at
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
's
Aragon Ballroom on July 7, 1984, was released in 2009.
''Left of Reckoning''
Eager to explore the
music video
A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device ...
medium, Stipe secured funding for a short film that would accompany music from the first half of ''Reckoning''. Stipe's concept was to film the project at folk artist
R.A. Miller's Whirligig Farm, and he recruited Athens filmmaker
James Herbert
James John Herbert, OBE (8 April 1943 – 20 March 2013) was an English horror writer. A full-time writer, he also designed his own book covers and publicity. His books have sold 54 million copies worldwide, and have been translated into 34 l ...
to direct it. In March 1984 R.E.M. filmed ''Left of Reckoning'' at the Whirligig Farm in Rabbittown, Georgia.
The short film draws its title from the fact that it is soundtracked by five songs that appear on the "L" side of the vinyl version of ''Reckoning'': "Harborcoat", "7 Chinese Bros.", "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)", "Pretty Persuasion", "Time After Time (AnnElise)", in addition to "Second Guessing" from the R side.
[Black, p. 95] In contrast to standard music video imagery, the film consists primarily of footage of the band members wandering around the farm, while Herbert utilizes close-ups, silhouettes, and slow motion footage.
Herbert utilized
rephotography during the editing process, which involved taking photographs of film frames at random, while also closing in or pulling back from the image with no regard to narrative.
According to Buck, "It was really inexpensive to make and kind of fun. We just asked
erbertto edit something to four minutes' length, but he's used to making 20-minute films, that's the length he works in. He just made this film that goes along with the first side of the record." While MTV did not air the complete film, the channel's program ''
The Cutting Edge
''The Cutting Edge'' is a 1992 American sports-romantic comedy film directed by Paul Michael Glaser and written by Tony Gilroy. The plot is about a wealthy, spoiled figure skater (played by Moira Kelly) who is paired with an injury-sidelined i ...
'' (funded by I.R.S.) aired the "Time After Time (AnnElise)" segment, and the snippet featuring "Pretty Persuasion" was aired by other music programs.
[Gray, p. 292] The full film was later included on the video releases ''
Succumbs
''Succumbs'' was R.E.M.'s first commercially available full-length movie. Released in October 1987 by UNI/A&M, it contains video footage shot by R.E.M.'s lead singer Michael Stipe dating back to the early-1980s, while the band was still recordin ...
'' and ''
When the Light Is Mine: The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982–1987''.
Track listing
All songs written by
Bill Berry,
Peter Buck
Peter Lawrence Buck (born December 6, 1956) is an American musician and songwriter. He was a co-founder and the lead guitarist of the alternative rock band R.E.M. He also plays the banjo and mandolin on several R.E.M. songs. Throughout his ca ...
,
Mike Mills
Michael Edward Mills (born December 17, 1958) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer who was a founding member of the alternative rock band R.E.M. Though known primarily as the bass guitarist and backing vocalist of R.E.M., h ...
, and
Michael Stipe
John Michael Stipe (; born January 4, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter and artist, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of alternative rock band R.E.M. He is known for his vocal quality, poetic lyrics and unique stage presence.
Pos ...
except where noted.
Side one – "(L) The Left Side"
#"Harborcoat" – 3:54
#"
7 Chinese Bros." – 4:18
#"
So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" – 3:15
#"
Pretty Persuasion
''Pretty Persuasion'' is a 2005 American black comedy film directed by Marcos Siega, written by Skander Halim, and starring Evan Rachel Wood, James Woods, Ron Livingston, Elisabeth Harnois, and Jane Krakowski. Its plot follows a 15-year-old stu ...
" – 3:50
#"Time After Time (Annelise)" – 3:31
Side two – "(R) The Right Side"
#
"Second Guessing" – 2:51
#"Letter Never Sent" – 2:59
#"Camera" – 5:52
#"(Don't Go Back To) Rockville
"(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" is the second and final single released by American rock band R.E.M. from their second studio album, '' Reckoning''. The song failed to chart on either the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 or the UK Singles Charts.
Backgroun ...
" – 4:55
#"Little America" – 2:58
Personnel
R.E.M.
* Bill Berry – drums, percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...
, and backing vocals
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...
*Peter Buck
Peter Lawrence Buck (born December 6, 1956) is an American musician and songwriter. He was a co-founder and the lead guitarist of the alternative rock band R.E.M. He also plays the banjo and mandolin on several R.E.M. songs. Throughout his ca ...
– guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...
*Mike Mills
Michael Edward Mills (born December 17, 1958) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer who was a founding member of the alternative rock band R.E.M. Though known primarily as the bass guitarist and backing vocalist of R.E.M., h ...
– bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
, piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...
and backing vocals
*Michael Stipe
John Michael Stipe (; born January 4, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter and artist, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of alternative rock band R.E.M. He is known for his vocal quality, poetic lyrics and unique stage presence.
Pos ...
– lead vocals and harmonica
Additional musicians
*Bertis Downs
Bertis Edwin Downs IV (born July 13, 1956) is an American entertainment lawyer. He originally provided legal counsel (particularly for initial contracts), and then became both counselor and manager, for the rock band R.E.M., taking over from the ...
– backing vocals on "Wind Out" (With Friends)
* Jefferson Holt – lead vocals on "Wind Out" (With Friends)
Production
* Don Dixon – co-producer
A film producer is a person who oversees film production. Either employed by a production company or working Independent film, independently, producers plan and coordinate various aspects of film production, such as selecting the script, coordina ...
*Mitch Easter
Mitchell Blake Easter (born November 15, 1954) is a musician, songwriter, and record producer. Frequently associated with the jangle pop style of guitar music, he is known as producer of R.E.M.'s early albums from 1981 through 1984, and as fron ...
– co-producer
*Howard Finster
Howard Finster (December 2, 1916 – October 22, 2001) was an American artist and Baptist minister from Georgia. He claimed to be inspired by God to spread the gospel through the design of his swampy land into Paradise Garden, a folk art scul ...
– art direction
Charts
Certifications
Release history
††Remastered Deluxe Edition, with Live at Aragon Ballroom bonus disc
References
*Black, Johnny. ''Reveal: The Story of R.E.M.'' Backbeat, 2004.
*Buckley, David. ''R.E.M.: Fiction: An Alternative Biography''. Virgin, 2002.
*Fletcher, Tony. ''Remarks Remade: The Story of R.E.M.'' Omnibus, 2002. .
*Gray, Marcus. ''It Crawled from the South: An R.E.M. Companion''. Da Capo, 1997. Second edition.
*Platt, John (editor). ''The R.E.M. Companion: Two Decades of Commentary''. Schirmer, 1998.
Notes
External links
*
:* (I.R.S. Vintage Years edition)
{{Authority control
1984 albums
Albums produced by Don Dixon (musician)
Albums produced by Mitch Easter
I.R.S. Records albums
R.E.M. albums
Binaural recordings