As a part of their ongoing 40th-year celebration, R.E.M. has unveiled the Hib-Tone version of “Sitting Still,” that fans might recall is the B-side to the band’s 1983 debut single “Radio Free Europe.”
Hib-Tone is the Atlanta-based indie record label that originally released “Radio Free Europe” (a reissue was released last May) and “Sitting Still” in 1981.
In 1983, both tracks appeared on the college-rock favorites’ debut album, Murmur, via I.R.S. Records.
Above is the original 1981 version of “Sitting Still,” – offered digitally for the first time.
In a couple of weeks, R.E.M. will reissue their first single as a 7-inch via Craft Recordings. Likewise, R.E.M.’s 1981 demo tape — ‘Cassette Set’ — is going to be offered in limited quantities for the first time ever via the official R.E.M. store as a bundle with the 7-inch.
“We were all just kind of finger-painting,” Mitch Easter, who produced “Radio Free Europe,” told Rolling Stone in May. “They weren’t super-deliberate about anything. I loved that about the sessions. Even when we did the LPs, nobody was really taking any orders from anybody. There might have been people advising R.E.M. on the business end of things, to do this, that, or the other. but they pretty much ignored all of them.”
Watch out for the reissued “Radio Free Europe” 7-inch coming out later this month.