TS: R.E.M.'s Murmur vs. Reckoning

Murmur is more consistent: there aren't songs as meandering as "Camera." However the songs are punchier on Reckoning - the singles sound like radio singles.

Mad love for both.

(xxpost! Alba OTM)

"Letters Never Sent" may be my favorite REM track, so I have to go with "Reckoning", but "Shaking Through" is my 2nd favorite...

a whack of xposts Yeah, what everyone else is saying.

xpost Hm, you're right, there is something magical I almost don't want to admit about some of the Murmur songs. I need to be in a really wussy mood for it but you're right.

multi-xpost to Alba's "R.E.M of today" comment:

Yeah, I know. I mean, "Man On The Moon" is a good song, but when I see people listening to The Best Of R.E.M: The Warner Years I think "Isn't that an oxymoron?" Except that when I think, I don't use big words like 'oxymoron.'

Both are beautiful. Psych-folk-disco! I keep meaning to through on some early R.E.M. and always forget.

Yeah, I think the songwriting was still getting better there. The reason people (myself included) don't like it as much as the first two is that it doesn't sound anywhere near as good. Can you imagine Fables with a Murmur-style production?

Robots are brilliant, but Berry had a fine style of his own.

(I hope I'm the first person to refer to "uncut funk" in a sentence about R.E.M.).

Anthony is right about the psych-folk-disco sound and the pre-Reckoning stuff. What happened to the rhythm section after Murmur? I've wondered that for a long time.

"electrolite" is indeed good but you have to get through "so fast, so numb," "zither" and, what I might consider their worst song ever, "Low Desert," to get to it.

"Green Grow The Rushes" is nice song. I like all of the songs on all of the REM albums up through Hi-Fi. It's a matter of degree. It's a long way from being one of my favorite "pretty" R.E.M. songs, though.

I can't hate on Green cuz its the first CD I ever bought with my own money.

My intro to Wire was the R.E.M. cover and Elastica's mad namedropping. But Elastica was cooler about it; Justine didn't try to shout.

See, this I don't get. Maybe King of Birds, but that record is really where everything clcked for me.

I'm also a huge Hi-Fi apologist. I think it's as good as Lifes Rich Pageant or Document or - let's put it this way - you could make an album of Document's length out of it that would be just as good. Although LRP still wins for containing my favorite song of the last twenty years - "Fall On Me."

your take reads like my high school diary

Hehehehe.

Trying to judge albums that were your lifeblood in middle school can be tough.

"Trying to judge albums that were your lifeblood in middle school can be tough."

Not in the case of these two greats (though I was in high school).

That's probably my favourite song on the album!

Even though Murmur has the hazy, kudzu quality to it, it has those two or three songs with loud scratchy guitar riffs that just kill (can't remember the names right now....). And "Talk About the Passion" is undeniable.

Also, Murmur might be my favorite album name, as album-names-that-sound-how-the-album-feels names go.

(goes to put it on and pour more wine)

Wow. I couldn't possibly disagree more about that!

Both are great, though.

Murmur = more cohesive and consistent as a whole.
Reckoning = several unassailably high peaks, plus some less engaging bits.

I'll opt for the latter as I really dig the, erm, 5 best tracks there.

And Hi-Fi and the second half of Document are mostly naff, it's true.

That said, while I do like all of the records pre-"Document" and a few of the records post, "Murmur" wears best for me over time. The songs and the production is much more adventurous than the later work. The dubbed ot intro to "RFE" and the synched-rhythm-pool-table on "We Walk" speak to this.

Best thing they ever did: "I Am Superman"

That's because it's fucking terrible.

The best of the squillion-selling LPs, yes?

It's a shame that Bill left and Mike basically became the keyboard player. "Texarkana" implies that his solo album would be rife with bass-poppin' absurdity and passionate tales of oases and devotion.

(x-post)

I agree that "Me In Honey" should've been a single - it would have been a more sensible follow up to "Shiny Happy People" than "Radio Song" (which is quite good if you tune out the KRS-One stuff) and "Near Wild Heaven" (which is a nice tune, but pretty lightweight and forgettable.)

I listened to Out Of Time start to finish for the first time in at least five years the other day, and I was kinda amazed that they thought it was anything remotely like a cohesive album at the time. It's such an oddball record. It's definitely my least favorite album of the Berry period, but it's got its moments. I was happy to reconnect with "Half A World Away" in particular.

(although heclaims Bowie has too, and the DVD I just saw proves just the opposite).

Tim, I do think that they are at a low ebb, but don't read that as me saying "REM totally suck now." I didn't like Around The Sun very much at first, but I now like about two thirds of record quite a bit. I still think some of those songs are duds, though.

Reveal is a weird one. In abstract, I don't like it very much, but if I hear it, I can get into it. Some of those songs are pretty duddy though - "Saturn Return" in particular. "Beat A Drum" is nice but a little too syrupy; "I'll Take The Rain" is catchy but probably the cheesiest power ballad of their career; I'll never understand what the hell they see in "She Just Wants To Be.' But "I've Been High," "Imitation Of Life," and "The Lifting" are pretty classic, and "Chorus and the Ring" is very underrated. I mostly think of Reveal as being an experiment in lushness than mostly came out sounding overcooked.

I really like the majority of the songs on Up, but I think that one needed to be edited down to nine or ten songs.

Who knew an R.E.M. thread would blaze like this??

This is the truth about their post-Berry records.

As for Murmur/Reckoning, I think I prefer Murmur but it's funny, I don't think it ends particularly well. The songs are ok but the sequencing is kind of odd. Reckoning flows a little better, especially the lp.

"All the Way to Reno" and "Disappear," too.

OTM. More "Kohoutek" love!

even though i'm listening to fables right now, my favorite is still reckoning. i just don't think the production holds up well on murmur, god love dixon/easter. it sounds murky. and not in the mystical way i remember it being when i was 14, either.

it could be my age more, though--i'm 25, and reckoning seems more restless and transitory and searching and unsettled and just alive, which is how i often feel.

and hi-fi is completely underrated. they've always said it's a road record, and they're right. one of the few albums with a ton of different styles that all fit together.

i was indifferent to Up until, oh, this january. then i gave it another shot and realized how brilliant it really is. there's something fragile and brittle, but yet filled with hope, lurking throughout.

and they've always been fantastic live. saw 'em six times this fall, twice in '03. the MSG show this year post-election may have been them at their best.

OTM. More "Kohoutek" love!
Yeah, this is one of my favorites. The thing I like about it is that they were so obviously completely drunk when they recorded it. Because of that, it has this weird drunken swing to it that I don't think any sober person could replicate.

REM break my heart. They were my favorite band for about 13 years, but it kills me to see them these days. I think their Warner years overall are very, very spotty, but I also think its weird the way some of them have aged for me. I can't even listen to the "insta-classic" 'Automatic' anymore, but i'm willing to go to the mat for scattered moments of 'Monster', which most everyone seems to hate. I had 'Circus Envy' come on after 'TV Eye' on my iPod a few months ago, and my head nearly exploded on the subway platform.

But those early records are just insanely consistent - I have a bootleg from the 'Fables' tour, and it's unbelievable how nervy and wiry and fierce they were back then. Within their first 3 years as a band, they wrote 'Catapult', 'Pretty Persuasion', 'Auctioneer' and 'Carnival of Sorts'. That's just ridiculous. The last 2 records -- it's like Phil Collins with worse songs. I kind of wish they'd busted up after 'Monster' and just reunited 10 years later.

I saw them on the Hits tour in '03, and it was phenomenal - they played songs I'd been aching to hear for years, and also performed like a band 10 years their junior. but when the lights went up, I knew in my heart that that near-perfect show had, at long last, closed the REM chapter of my life.

However, I will continue to adamantly defend 'Up' as an overlooked masterpiece to anyone who asks.

There's a colorful fruitiness to Monster that Iggy doesn't really touch. He's an obvious influence, sure, but there's more to Monster than that.

I had both Chronic Town and Reckoning before I got Murmur for some reason, so they both still seem more definitive to me than Murmur (I know that's nonsense, but the subjectivity of experience is a bitch). I love all three. After that, Pageant is the obvious high point, altho I think Automatic for the People really is a pretty great pop record ("Nightswimming" I could listen to over and over and over). Fables, Green, Document and Out of Time all have 4 or 5 songs I love. I did start to run out of gas on them in the mid-90s. Hi-Fi's got some nice stuff, I like the Leonard Cohen rip-off on Up, haven't heard much since. Like U2, their endurance is kind of comforting to me in a way that has nothing to do with art. (Like, I couldn't care less about the new U2 record, but I got a little warm and fuzzy in line at Best Buy the other day when the 16-year-old chiquita in front of me was singing along loudly with "Vertigo". I was like, I saw these guys before you were born! It was kind of generationally affirming or something.)

The Pavement comparison with R.E.M. is apt, in that they're both bands I like a lot but have always felt a little removed from. I never obsessed over R.E.M. the way I did over the Replacements or Prince. (Because the Replacements and Prince both made better records? OK, we won't have that argument here, this is the R.E.M. love thread.)

maybe this is what happens when you've been hanging out with the same people for 10 years. i have critical tunnel vision.

I have a strange releationship with REM - I would never say that they're one of my top 50 or so fave bands, yet when I am moved to play one of their albums, I end up playing the lot and *really* getting back into them. This phase lasts a couple of weeks and then I forget about them again.

I'd rate them like this :

Utterly Wonderful : Fables, Hi-Fi, Document, Automatic, Pageant

Nearly wonderful : Murmur (too familiar), Out of Time (likewise), Monster, Reveal, Around The Sun (a couple of songs are half-written, but I am enjoying this!)

Good, but not great : Up (brave experiment, but doesn't quite work), Reckoning (good songs but thin sounding - could be the CD, maybe I should hear it on vinyl), Green (a bit throwaway in parts?)

Did I forget any?

Personally I loved the first couple of albums when they came out (if I was forced to choose at gunpoint right now I'd probably say Reckoning - but if you asked me again tomorrow I'd be just as likely to say Murmur) but I was progressively less impressed with Fables and Pageant - in fact I actually stopped buying their albums at that time fir a while but ended up going back for them later, after having my interest in REM re-awakened by Automatic For The People.

Document was an improvement over Fables and Pageant but still not as good as Murmer and Reckoning.

Green has some great songs but doesn't seem to hang together as an album and I usually find my attention waivering.

Out Of Time had a couple of good tracks but a lot of filler.

Automatic For The People is a great album but has been completely destryed for me by over exposure (surely in this respect it has to be the '90's equivalent of Dark Side Of The Moon?).

Monster seemed to start off OK but rapidly lost momentum and I haven't bought another REM album since.

So far.

what about "around the sun"? i enjoyed "hi-fi" and "reveal" but did neither like "monster" nor "up". though i didn't really listen to those i must admit. an immediate gut reaction. is the new one for me?

haha o dear MY FIRST (serious) KISS was to "fall on me" - ATHENS TO THE CORE BITCHES

"Big Chill" + "Garden State" = "GEORGIA PEACH"!!!! MAKE IT SO!

Reckoning is awesome, though.

I was bowled over by Here from There (and esp. the cheap video) but i listened to that whole album for a year and didn't find any of the songs palling or obvious. Like something new (same time as Cupid & Psyche '85, another year-enduring winner for a low-stocked student).

But how many of the REM fans who voted for these polls actually own Murmer and Reckoning?

I've met several people who clearly considered themselves to be REM fans who were blissfully unaware of the fact that the band had a career before signing to Warner Bros. and if you're going to poll casual fans like those then you're inevitably going to get a result that leans heavily in favour of the biggest selling albums with the biggest selling singles on them; which is all very fine and groovy for what it is - but a balanced, informed and in any way

.... meaningful assessment of the relative merits of the individual albums it most assuredly ain't!

?!?!??! i can't believe i never knew this. fascinating. especially so cuz i'm listening to reckoning for the first time in about two years and am *so* impressed with the drums. i never noted before how high they are in the mix. berry meant so much to this band and never got enough credit for it.

also, i remember reading all these stories about how revolutionary r.e.m. was for letting buck noodle his way around since the melody was provided by mills' bass. funny, cuz i can i have to crank up the left side of my equalizer to even hear the bass here.

Murmur ended up being the only one I ever actively listened to. So that. It just sounds nice.

if you're talking about my comment re: buck noodling over mills' melody, i remember these articles being around the time of document and lifes rich pageant.

at least "radio free europe" purported some awareness beyond the single country that gave us "The World Series" and universal junk food for people on welfare.

ok, so they had to have dumb catchy first singles, but i can't think of a duller more predictable song from REM than "rockville". Thank xclly they moved on.

You're kidding, right?

yeah, i assumed it was a joke, ie: it had predictable chords you'd expect from an early Randy Newman sketch, a deliberately chart-catchy hook and some weird IRS contra deal whereby this band from somewhere i'd call nowhere got distributed as far as new zealand. we thought these jangly guitars where pretty trad. cf: what seemed more deliberately overt punk guitar from locals.

i'd like to hear the punk version. It'd be over faster, but it might have nice jerky timings.

back to fables and that "old man kinsey" and "Green grow .." sounded trad-ish but with interesting chords, good hooks, spooky .. abstract ..

(gotta disappear now)

OK i guess supposedly "catchy" songs piss me off sometimes and if listening to it felt painful i still apologise for not being able to listen to the words indepenently.

I do like the sound of Chronic Town if it is indeed fair to call it "psych-folk-disco".

i have a bootleg from '86 or '87 where they play 'oddfellows local 151.' i hate the studio version, but the live version is so unbelievably kickass--it's the one song that really shows *musically* how much they love and admired gang of four...

-- hndinglove (hndinglove), Thursday, 24 February 2005 03:43 (2 years ago)

I would say that "9-9" from Murmur is another R.E.M. song that references Go4. I love the little breaks where Peter Buck tries to pull an Andy Gill with nervous feedback, harmonics, and a scratch or two, and then heads straight back into jangle.

"Sitting Still" as it sounds to me:

his name or not we all agree
see can stop stop where it
we could find it in the cyst
we could gather throw a fit

up to pine, katie buys a kitchen
size but not me in
city top of the big key
waste a time, sitting still

I'm the son and you can read
I'm the son and you're not dead
We could find it in the cyst
We could gather throw a fit

up to pine, katie buys a kitchen
size but not me in
city top of the big key
waste a time, sitting still

I I I can hear you x 3

his name or not we all agree
see can stop stop where it
we could find it in the cyst
we could gather throw a fit

up to pine, katie buys a kitchen
size but not me in
city top of the big key
waste a time, sitting still

I I I can hear you x 3

We can gather when I talk
You can get away from me
Get away from me!

up to pine, katie buys a kitchen
size but not me in
city top of the big key
waste a time, sitting still

I I I can hear you x 6
Can you hear me?

(no!)

Did I mention I love this song?

I'm embarrassed to say that Reckoning is the one REM album I've never heard...

up to pine, katie buys a kitchen
size but not me in
city top of the big key
waste a time, sitting still

oh fuck is that what he says?

I probably mentioned it before but Chronic Town shits all over both from a great, brown, splattery height.

The real lyrics according to remrock.net:

This name I got we all agreed
See could stop stop it will rid
We could bind it in the cist
We could gather, throw a fit

Up to par and Katie bar the kitchen door, but not me in
Setting trap for love, making a waste of time, sitting still

I’m the sign and you can read.
I’m the sign and you’re not deaf.
We could bind it in the cist.
We could gather, throw a fit.

--

I think I like my version better.

No no no no, now I refuse to believe any of that. I always swore he was singing "Sitting top of the big hill/waste of time/sitting still..."

Also I refuse to pull out my early R.E.M. records because I might not listen to anything else for days. I'm not even going to get started. Or at least...not until I've had a couple more drinks.

"Sit and try for the big kid, waste of time, sitting still" is my version

"Katy bar the door" is a phrase my family still uses. It just means something has been finished or a final conclusion has been reached.

"Sit and try for the big kid" is fine with me as well. At least it sounds like what you hear on the record.

Thanks for communicating this "Katy bar the door" thing. I've never heard that before. Do you live in the southern U.S.?

yessir

Ah! That explains it then. I came from the south, but not south enough! :)

I probably mentioned it before but Chronic Town shits all over both from a great, brown, splattery height.

Well, yes. Chronic Town has the sound of a band discovering that it's really onto something, something raw, propulsive and compelling. Murmur and, to a lesser extent, Reckoning were both great discs, but they lack Chronic Town's energy and verve.

I listened to disc 1 of "...and I feel fine" (the IRS years best of that came in 2007) and I was struck at how quickly the quality of songs goes downhill after (and maybe a bit before) "Fables."

While "Chronic Town" is a great record I think "Murmur" holds its own with it. My guess is that alot of the songs from "Murmer" were written around the same time as "Chronic Town"
but Chronic Town shits all over both from a great, brown, splattery height.=hyperbole.

I think Fables is really underappreciated. To me, it's as good as Murmur or Reckoning, as it delivers on the Southern Gothic rock sound remarkably well.

R.E.M. had its moments after Fables. But as good as they were, they became just a very good slightly off-kilter rock band, losing all the regional charm they had up through Fables.

Received in e-mail today:

R.E.M.’S DEBUT ALBUM, the groundbreaking Murmur, REISSUED

IN TWO-CD 25th anniversary DELUXE EDITION FEATURING

PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED 1983 CONCERT

The two-CD 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Murmur (I.R.S./UMe), released November 25, 2008, features that original landmark album remastered plus an additional disc with a previously unreleased concert recorded at Larry’s Hideaway in Toronto three months after Murmur’s April release.

The 16-song live performance boasts nine of Murmur’s 12 songs, including “Radio Free Europe”; three songs first heard on 1982’s Chronic Town EP; early renditions of two songs that would subsequently appear on the band’s second album, 1984’s Reckoning; “Just A Touch,” later heard on R.E.M.’s fourth album, 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant; and a cover of Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes Again,” which the group recorded in the studio for the b-side of “Radio Free Europe.”

Assembled in conjunction with R.E.M., Murmur - Deluxe Edition, the package also includes exclusive essays providing insight into the recording of the album by producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, as well as former I.R.S. executives Jay Boberg, Sig Sigworth, Carlos Grasso, Michael Plen.

"Murmur" does slightly better what "Reckoning" does in a good way too.

... which is what, exactly?

Sigh, I'd like to hope this won't be another fuck-up like the recent New Order reissues. But I'm a pessimist. I reckon we'll see a lot more releases like this before the record industry as we once knew it finally collapses.

I like Murmur about a million times more than Reckoning. Although I love a lot of R.E.M.'s albums, Reckoning just isn't one of those. Don't know why, maybe something is wrong with me...

Nope! Murmur is 50% better than Reckoning, I'd say.

Always seemed pretty clear to me that he was singing "Silly tryin' for the big kill—waste of time sitting still," which, if nothing else makes far more sense than any of the transcriptions suggested above...in the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't ambivalence that would permeate American underground rock for the next decade. On my copy, the lyric is clearest the first time you hear it.

The versions you get from the various lyrics sites are most amusing, though. Can't remember what the 33 1/3 book about Murmer provided.

It's hard for me to recall now, unless one of the early songs catches me off guard, just how odd they sounded when I first heard them. I mean, there were bands that had hints of that old American spookiness, and obviously a zillion bands around then that twitched and jittered, but REM did both, and they seemed simultaneously familiar and unnerving.

Chronic Town still sounds the oddest, and it's still the most propulsive—I wish there were more material from that patch. "Stumble" is bit of a drag, but the "Carnival" and "Gardening" are magic.

They'd write great songs throughout the 80s, but for me their sound got less interesting as they went along, so I'd go with Murmer over Reckoning, but I think I might now take Chronic Town over both, short as it was.

i've always heard "see them try for the big kill, wasting time, sitting still." but then again, i want him to be singing "we could gather, throw up beer." both these albums are fantastic. murmur sounds to me like an artifact of a band amazed by how good they are right off the bat, able to follow up "chronic town" with a monster twice its length. but for my money the sound of reckoning hearkens more to the "chronic town" kudzu spookiness the cover of murmur depicts. i can't choose. i can't choose between any of their first four albums. they're all great

There's a bass part on Radio Free Europe, the build up to the chorus, that gets me going too.

^^^^
this

... which is what, exactly?

Well, both of the first R.E.M. albums were basically jangle pop albums produced by jangle pop "guru" Mitch Easter.

Does 'don't go back to Rockville' partly mean 'don't go back to Rockism'?

http://pix.epodunk.com/locatorMaps/md/MD_2764.gif

Yes, there is a place called Rockville; thanks for locating it.

Does 'don't go back to Rockville' partly mean 'don't go back to Rockism'?

nope

The After-Party: 'Rockville' and Other Riddles

By Richard Leiby
The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page C03

Mystery solved: For years we've wondered whether the great R.E.M. song "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" referred to the historic town that serves as Montgomery County's seat of government. "Yes, that's right," band member Mike Mills, who penned the lyrics, confirmed to us while partying after the Vote for Change concert rocked the rafters of MCI Center. Sporting sunglasses at 2 a.m. Tuesday, Mills and fellow R.E.M.'ers Michael Stipe and Peter Buck mingled at nearby Zaytinya restaurant with a VIP crowd heavy on arty, liberal, more-champagne-please types.

Side 1 of reckoning is absolutely stunning, whereas murmur spreads its glories

side two of reckoning is better!

although harborcoat may be my favorite REM song

no waiiiiiiiiiiiii side 1 rules

camera ruins side 2 for me

camera is pretty but side 1 is better

<3 camera

when was 'all the right friends' originally recorded?

early r.e.m. is the only thing i want to listen to these days.

interesting thread revive i know. I've been listening to the podcast R U Talkin' R.E.M. RE: ME? and that's been the catalyst

i tried to listen to the first episode of that and it was like twenty minutes of inside joke stuff from the previous incarnation of the podcast, and then another ten of them doing jokes about how they didn't know the actual names of the band members. that zone just wasn't my cup of tea, but does it become something else? cause i'd be into a fun REM podcast for sure.

I wanted to like this podcast, but I also couldn't get beyond their unrelated chit chat. Maybe some superfan can extract the good bits and reshare them so we don't have to sit through the bullshit.

lol one of the features of the podcast is them reading the annoyed itunes reviews along the lines of the last couple of posts

do they ever talk about REM on that podcast?

it's usually about 2/3s bullshit and bits (i enjoy the bullshit). the latter third is talking at length about R.E.M. from a personal point of view. so probably not for either of you

yeah not sure what you expect from an REM podcast by those two guys

i had no reference point for those two guys before checking out the podcast, so yeah. jim, thanks for clarifying that!

i would be into, like, the podcast equivalent of perpetua's Pop Songs 07-08 but that too is a tricky formula to pull off.

I love the banter and "Wait, is this an episode of I Love Film?" Their song-by-song takes on REM records are actually the least enjoyable part for me.

It was funny to me, as in the U2 podcast they were both such dorky apologists for the band whereas with R.E.M. only Adam Scott was a superfan to the end.

adam scott to almost every song "this is a really great song".

i quite like their reminisces of being teenage boys getting into R.E.M. That pre-internet way of consuming music where you learned about things by word of mouth or seeing a clip on the tv, and you'd buy the B-Side compilation rather than an album because you didn't know any better etc.

But in R.E.M.'s case you'd get one of their better albums!

true

Most of the songs on both were being played live even at the time of Chronic Town, so isn't there a valid issue centering on song selection and sequencing in the Murmur-vs-Reckoning debate?

I had to go back to http://www.remtimeline.com/ to check

Live sets in the months after the release of Chronic Town were still mostly material from Chronic Town and (increasingly) Murmur ... I think "Pretty Persuasion" is the only Reckoning track that was already a staple, and they'd been doing that one for a while ... several more Reckoning songs showed up later in 1983, after the release of Murmur

I remember reaction to Reckoning among my Athens friends as somewhat mixed; the shift from Nuggets-style covers to originals to a stronger folk influence was happening a bit too fast for our spongy young brains to process

Murmur > Chronic Town > Reckoning

Thanks for the input,, many of my REM bootlegs are un-dated but their style led me to believe they were from the same era.

interesting, the db's blog (Chronic Town demos) shows 'Just A Touch' being demo'd at the '82 RCA sessions, the REM timeline says otherwise.

conversation fear

Back then, I would have said Reckoning. Pretty sure today it would be Murmur, the difference summed up succinctly by Christgau: "...when all this was a tad more spontaneous." (He was talking about a later album.)

My favourite is whichever one I listened to last. Seeing as I only played Murmur yesterday that's where I'm at today.

Thing I love about both of these which seldom comes up elsewhere: The momentary unnamed jams (after Shaking Through, Camera and Little America). Years later they repeated this at the end of Bang and Blame, which could have been flagged up as a particularly self-conscious back2basics move but, alas, has never encouraged as much as a passing mention except on Wikipedia's list of hidden tracks.

Or so it seems, alas.

pavement did the same occasionally and i always assumed it was a nod to early REM

I think the jam “after Camera” is technically the beginning of “Rockville” (“gettin’ in the mood… alright…”). Is there one after Little America(?) That’s the last track on the album…

Whether the first of those jams is included at the end of Camera or start of Rockville seems to vary wildly between releases. On Spotify for instance, it's at the start of Rockville on the old master and end of Camera for the remaster. The one at the end of Little America is (iirc) on the original vinyl, the Sound Lab reissue and the 2008 remaster, but not elsewhere (shades of the one at the end of U2's Boy there).

The Camera/Rockville one is also the best, sounds like they're about to stumble across what became Lightnin' Hopkins. You got it UGH.

Huh, so there was a jam at the very end of the original vinyl? I don’t remember that, interesting

I should have been clearer - it's on some, but not all, original pressings. Someone will have to shed light as to which.

At 3:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g9qeYHOiMY

Wow! yeah, I’ve never heard that before…