Importation duties from UK to EU are painful… hopefully they will set up some mainland Europe hub for the next reissues 
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Brexit. The shitty gift that keeps on giving…
…It costed more shipment and duties than the items I bought 
So after mostly avoiding Facebook for the past few years, I just discovered Murmurs again!
I got Chronic Town in the mail today and was comparing the different versions I have. I noticed that all 5 Chronic Town tracks at the end of Dead Letter Office are left/right reversed from both the original EP and the new CD. I love finding mastering errors like this. 
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This is out of sheer curiosity: if you open an editor an see just a wave on the right and another on the left, how would you know if they’re reversed?
With the example provided, the most obvious clue looks like the beginning 5 seconds of the song, where the levels of the two channels are quite different. You do need two different sources to compare, though.
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They do look different. I noticed that at first. But why would that mean the channels are reversed? I mean, comparing to the second screen shot, they do look reversed, but only in comparison. The thing is, people have been saying the channels were reversed and the new mastering “corrected” that. How would they know?
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There’s no way to tell absolutely which way is correct without playing the master 2-track tape. However, the new CD matches the original 1982 vinyl EP.
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New interview with Mitch Easter from Salon. Now, I’m also curious as to what song Stipe was singing with a garbage can over his head during the sessions for Chronic Town.
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When my copy of Chronic Town arrives, I’ll have all the R.E.M. officially released albums, going to listen to them in chronological order, from their beginning as a band to the end, how their music developed over time. It’s going to be great. Haven’t done that before.
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I haven’t binged on R.E.M. (or any one artist) for a while. This past Saturday, I did just that, listening to everything from Chronic Town up to and including Dead Letter Office. It used to be kind of a ritual of mine to listen to everything from their catalog just prior to a new release. It sort of helped to put everything into perspective. I didn’t do it for every new release but most of them from the I.R.S. era and into the early years on Warner Brothers when Bill was still in the band.
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Good read by Rob Ross at Musictap.com
“I heard something on our local college radio station that froze me – it was like nothing before and it was a surreal moment. I remember thinking very clearly “I wonder if it’s that band, R.E.M.” Two songs later and the disc jockey came on and said “…and that was R.E.M. with “Wolves, Lower” and I was out the door like a shot;…”
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I bought the new Chronic Town CD a few weeks back, but also found the vinyl picture disc at a record store last week.
The picture disc sounds quite good, considering the format. There is the initial “swoosh” sound at the lead-in, but everything is pleasant after that.
I’ve been buying The Cure’s Record Store Day picture disc releases for a while now, finding them to be stellar quality as far as picture discs go. Chronic Town falls in line with those.
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