{"id":2448697,"date":"2019-09-13T08:10:12","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T14:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=883142"},"modified":"2019-09-13T08:10:12","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T14:10:12","slug":"hear-r-e-m-s-rare-intense-rendition-of-welcome-to-the-occupation-in-1995","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/hear-r-e-m-s-rare-intense-rendition-of-welcome-to-the-occupation-in-1995\/","title":{"rendered":"Hear R.E.M.\u2019s Rare, Intense Rendition of \u2018Welcome to the Occupation\u2019 in 1995"},"content":{"rendered":"
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R.E.M. are releasing a six-disc version of their 1994 LP Monster<\/em><\/a> on November 1st, complete with a remaster of the original album, a new mix by producer Scott Litt and previously unheard demos. There\u2019s also a complete concert from the Monster<\/em> tour taped June 3rd, 1995 at the Rosemont Horizon near Chicago. Rolling Stone<\/em> has the exclusive preview of \u201cWelcome to the Occupation\u201d from that night.<\/p>\n

The song originally appeared on R.E.M.\u2019s 1987 album Document<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s very sad that it has taken on an entirely new relevance,\u201d bassist Mike Mills tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cThat song was originally more about American misadventures abroad, but certainly there are plenty of misadventures going on right here at home. In many ways, America feels like it\u2019s been occupied. It\u2019s certainly as relevant now as it ever was. Also, this just a rocking mix. We were playing very loudly and aggressively on that tour and it shows in that song.\u201d<\/p>\n

When R.E.M. first entered the studio in late 1993 to begin work on Monster,<\/em> they were one of the biggest bands on the planet thanks to their two most recent albums (1991\u2019s Out of Time<\/em> and 1992\u2019s Automatic For The People<\/em>) and massive radio hits like \u201cLosing My Religion,\u201d \u201cMan on the Moon\u201d and \u201cEverybody Hurts.\u201d But these were relatively stripped-down records and they wanted to go in a different direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt like, \u2018Let\u2019s turn up the guitars,’\u201d says Mills. \u201cAt that point. Peter [Buck], who had gotten away from the electric guitar for the bulk of Automatic For The People<\/em>, had scratched that itch and was ready to crank it up on the electric guitar again.\u201d<\/p>\n

They also had been off the road since wrapping up their grueling, 137-date Green<\/em> tour in 1989. \u201cWe all realized that for our general well-being, it would be best to take time off,\u201d says Mills. \u201cThat gave us a certain freedom to make records in the studio without having to worry about touring them, which lead to a couple of pretty good records. But by the time of Monster<\/em> we were like, \u2018We\u2019re ready to go back and play some music and this time we\u2019re going to make it loud.\u2019 We wanted to have fun with that record and have something that would come across well in a big arena.\u201d<\/p>\n

Producer Scott Lit honored their request by turning the guitars way up, but he\u2019s never loved the sound of the final product. When plans for this new box set began coming together, he asked for the chance to remix it for a bonus disc.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had some second thoughts about it fairly quickly after it came out,\u201d says Mills. \u201cI thought it sounded great. I didn\u2019t think the vocals were buried in the mix. I thought it was supposed to be a guitar-oriented record, so I was fine with the way it sounded. On the other hand, he was a big part of our sound for quite a while. And if he felt these songs would be better served by a different approach, we certainly had no problem allowing him to take that approach. And so he did this and we felt it would be fun for deep fans to see that there are other ways to look at a record.\u201d<\/p>\n

R.E.M. has released deluxe versions of their most popular records over the past few years and Mills says he imagines they will continue going through the catalog. \u201cThe record companies really enjoy it, let\u2019s put it that way,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd since we aren\u2019t creating new music, it\u2019s nice to show fans some aspects of what we\u2019ve done that they wouldn\u2019t otherwise be aware of. Going forward, if we can find enough fun things, we\u2019ll keep doing this. There\u2019s no reason not to.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R.E.M. are releasing a six-disc version of their 1994 LP Monster on November 1st, complete with a remaster of the original album, a new mix by producer Scott Litt and previously unheard demos. There\u2019s also a complete concert from the Monster tour taped June 3rd, 1995 at the Rosemont Horizon near Chicago. Rolling Stone has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2448697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 17:56:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2448697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2448697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2448697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2448697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}