Right, I had to write something after another correspondent described their early stuff as "lame". Ahh, yeah. Their only lame album, I feel, is... well, even Up is pretty good if you tweak the running order. Most days of the week, Lifes Rich Pageant is my favourite R.E.M album. Other days, if I'm after something enigmatic but rockin', Murmur, if it's an extraordinarily rainy day, Fables Of The Reconstruction, if I'm after a wall of noise, Document covers the political, Monster for the personal, if I want to go on a journey, New Adventures In Hi-Fi. And the others have their moments and uses, too.

In 1991 I had a handful of R.E.M. records, the newly released Out Of Time, Murmur, and Document. It's amazing how the latter two (along with stacks of Midnight Oil and Hunters and Collectors, and, umm, Mike Oldfield) got me through my HSC the year after my father's demise through cancer. So I was quite keen to get hold of more. LFR in particular was recommended to me, so that I ordered it in through the local record bar, but after three months of bugging them about it they gave up on the order. It wasn't until next year when my mother and I had flown up to Sydney early 1992 so I could enrol at uni as a fresher a couple of weeks prior to O week, and I found out lost my wallet soon after we arrived at my cousin's flat, where I was to board for that year. Hence, no cash to spend in the big city. Bugger. The last day I went to one of the Pitt St megastores and "borrowed" some cash to get something, which turned out to be LFR, and so I listened to it on the discman on the train back home snaking through Campbelltown and the southern highlands.

But the reason I particularly like Lifes Rich Pageant is "Begin The Begin". That brilliant opening lick, the squall of feedback that recoils from it, and then Michael Stipe opening up loud and proud: "Lifes rich demand/A birdie in the hand/The insurgency began and we missed it...". Exhortations that manage to make absolute sense and yet have you go "what... the... hell?". And the rest? Jesus. "I Believe" is even better in that regard, "Cuyahoga" starts off like the old dreamy-period R.E.M. but then opens up like nothing they've done before. "Swan Swan H" closes the chapter on their Southern cycle as an affecting coda on the War Between The States. And the rest is genius, even the goof-offs "Underneath The Radar" and "Superman" rock. As it turned out, Lifes Rich Pageant was an exercise of clearing their out old songbook, helped in their confident sound by Don Gehman, before they headed off to refine and broaden that sound further with Scott Litt over the next few albums.