R.E.M Rips The Knob Off Radio Rules

Something pretty spectacular unfolded during the birth of the final fifteen dedicated to the Twentieth Century. Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry froze their section of Rock History inside a time tube called R.E.M. Although their agreement to create as a single unit officially began before Ronald declared them the Reagan years... R.E.M. held true to the sport of being unique during a time when British new wave Punkster's were thrashing and Duran Duran re-mastered the heart strings of girls panting over the boys in the band. Thanks to College Radio the 90's might not have been so receptive to an alternative edge for Poets with pens and the guitars they carried with them. An unmasked R.E.M. stood before common radio folk programmers and consultants with a commercial sound that listeners discovered they could sing. Phil Collins, Rod Stewart and Michael Bolton were no longer needed to press the flesh of advertisers hunting down potential clients. A new shape of art had risen with the sun and Adult Contemporary was about to forfeit its face for a Georgia based band with only three letters to its name. Rollingstone Magazine reports today that R.E.M. has announced plans to re-master a 25th anniversary edition of the 1987 LP Document, featuring a previously unreleased live recording of a concert during their Work tour on September 14th, 1987 in Utrecht, Holland. The release includes new liner notes and is packaged in a lift-top box that contains four postcards. R.E.M. will also issue a re-mastered 180-gram vinyl edition of the release. Document was R.E.M.'s first platinum record, featuring the Top 10 hit "The One I Love" and one of the band's most enduring songs, "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Reviewing the album , Rolling Stone's David Fricke praised the record, calling it their "finest album to date" and writing, "Document is the sound of R.E.M. on the move, the roar of a band that prides itself on the measure of achievement and the element of surprise." The band wasn't sure what to expect when the album came out. "There are a few things on this album that could do well at Top 40 radio," guitarist Peter Buck told Rolling Stone in 1987. "But then I can't imagine it happening, knowing us. So I don't know if I have any commercial expectations for this one at all. I assume it will sell some, somebody's got to buy it." Document was certified platinum, with sales of more than 1 million copies, less than six months later – the first in a string of platinum-selling albums that included the band's next five releases: Green, Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Last September, R.E.M. announced they were splitting up after three decades. The re-mastered 25th anniversary edition of Document is set for a September 25th release. Check out audio of Buck's introduction to the album below, recorded in 1987 for attendees of the New Music Seminar.