[tweetmeme]Members of R.E.M.’s fan club have begun receiving their annual Christmas single from the band, and this year’s disc features a surprise: an appearance by retired drummer Bill Berry on a cover of “Crazy Like a Fox,” a hippie protest song Lenny Kaye recorded in 1966 under the pseudonym Link Cromwell.
Although Berry has performed live [...]

[tweetmeme]For music fans of a certain stripe, Christmas — and its Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping splurges — is a great time of year: It’s when you get the people you love to buy you those pricey multi-disc box sets you couldn’t quite cough up for yourself during the year. Here at Slicing Up [...]

[tweetmeme]R.E.M. recently set up camp in a Portland, Ore., recording studio to begin work with producer Jacknife Lee on the follow-up to 2008’s back-to-rock effort Accelerate. It’s a process the band has begun to document on its REMhq.com website with photos like the shot above, and, more recently, a pair of iPhone videos shot by [...]

Record Rack: A weekly round-up of new albums, reissues and/or box sets due out Tuesday.
ARTIST: U2
RELEASE: The Unforgettable Fire
BACKSTORY: This 25th anniversary reissue comes in four versions, and the expanded sets feature previously unheard songs “Disappearing Act” and “Yoshino Blossom,” which the band recorded in 1983 with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.
BUY IT: [...]

Record Rack: A weekly round-up of new albums, reissues and/or box sets due out Tuesday.
ARTIST: Bauhaus
RELEASES: In the Flat Field: Omnibus Edition, Mask: Omnibus Edition
BACKSTORY: The new Beggars Archive series issues multidisc Omnibus Editions of Bauhaus’ first two LPs. The In the Flat Field set features the 1980 debut, plus a second disc featuring [...]

The second album from Pylon — beloved early-’80s Athens, Ga., post-punk contemporaries of R.E.M. and the The B-52’s — will be reissued next week in digitally remastered and expanded form by LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy’s DFA Records.
Originally released in 1983 as Chomp, the now-retitled Chomp More features the album’s original 12 tracks, plus four [...]

In conjunction with this month’s release of its Live at the Olympia album, R.E.M. is presenting “This Is Not a Theatrical Release,” a series of limited sneak-preview screenings across the country of the “un-concert documentary” being packaged with the special 2CD/1DVD edition of its new live album.
Directed by Vincent Moon and Jeremiah (who produced the [...]

Retired drummer Bill Berry and bassman Mike Mills jumped onstage last night with Peter Buck and the rest of The Minus 5 for a near-reunion of R.E.M.’s classic lineup in Athens, Ga. — a get-together that could have spawned a full reunion, since Michael Stipe was in the audience at the 40 Watt Club, according [...]

R.E.M. has posted a second preview of its upcoming 39-song, 2CD Live at the Olympia album, a video of the band performing Automatic for the People opener “Drive.”  Due out Oct. 26, the CD/DVD package was  culled from five nights of “working rehearsals” in Dublin in 2007 that preceded the recording of [...]

R.E.M. is offering fans a preview of its upcoming 39-song, 2CD Live at the Olympia album with a video of the set’s opening track, Accelerate cut “Living Well is the Best Revenge.” The video is from the bonus DVD that will be packaged with the deluxe version of the live album, due out Oct. [...]

R.E.M. this week revealed the tracklist for its 39-song, 2CD Live at the Olympia, an album — due out Oct. 26 — that was culled from five nights of “working rehearsals” in 2007 that preceded the recording of last year’s hard-rocking comeback Accelerate.
The impressively deep tracklist — don’t be looking for the hits on [...]

The first two albums from hugely influential college-rock act The Feelies — Crazy Rhythms and The Good Earth — will be reissued in September as remastered CD and vinyl editions accompanied by digital-only bonus tracks.
Due out Sept. 8 on Bar/None Records in North America and Domino Records in the rest of the world, the two [...]