Document
	Produced by Scott Litt and R.E.M.
	Released on September 1, 1987
	US CHART POSITION #10 . . . PLATINUM RECORD . . . UK CHART POSITION #28
	Find it at GEMM
IRS-42059 cover [high resolution scan]

K ronomyth 6.0: LAST WILL AND DOCUMENT. One day I will learn all of the words to “It’s The End of the World As We Know It” and subsequently sing them. It will probably be the last day of my life and I will mumble most of them. It will be Stypian, this moment, lost in irony as my quiet howl against taking anything in this world seriously is misunderstood and one inexperienced technician and one overworked nurse argue over whether my dying words began “It hurts like an earthquake” or “It’s hard for a nurse’s aide.” I will accept it quietly the way I have so many other indignities over the years, letting Peter Buck’s ringing guitars drown out the deafening dumbness of this world, the airy angelspeak of “Fall On Me” and “Perfect Circle” trailing behind like cloudmatter caught on a trouser cuff. Document is the platinum blind leading the stoned dead into a bitter world of bored revolution, proletarian poetry and stillborn emotion. It is one of the finest albums they have ever recorded, and the first side stands as one of the most perfect pieces of plastic produced in the ‘80s. The second side falls apart some, or rather grows apart from track to track, unraveling after “The One I Love” levels the last stalk in the cold heart’s harvest. A dark and brooding album much of the time, Document is yet exquisitely conceived. The opening “Finest Worksong” is the sharpening of a knife that cuts deep for the next forty minutes, from “Disturbance At The Heron House” to “Oddfellows Local 151.” Even the exhuming of Joseph McCarthy to hang him once more in effigy is welcome sport when it’s done with such joie de vitriol. From this point forward, R.E.M. assumed a prominent place on the national stage alongside U2 as spokespeople for their generation. This album documents the rise from revolutionaries to rock stars and remains required listening for most everyone, especially if you intend on singing along at the Apocalypse.

TRACK LISTING

1. FINEST WORKSONG    3:48
2. WELCOME TO THE OCCUPATION    2:48
3. EXHUMING McCARTHY    3:19
4. DISTURBANCE AT THE HERON HOUSE    3:33
5. STRANGE    (Bruce Gilbert/Graham Lewis/Colin Newman/Robert Gotobed)    2:32
6. IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (AND I FEEL FINE)    4:07
7. THE ONE I LOVE    3:17
8. FIREPLACE    3:24
9. LIGHTNIN' HOPKINS    3:18
10. KING OF BIRDS    4:07
11. ODDFELLOWS LOCAL 151    5:21
    
    CD reissue bonus tracks
    
12. FINEST WORKSONG (OTHER MIX)
13. LAST DATE
14. THE ONE I LOVE (LIVE)
15. TIME AFTER TIME, ETC. (LIVE)
16. DISTURBANCE AT THE HERON HOUSE (LIVE)
17. FINEST WORKSONG (LENGTHY CLUB MIX)
    
    Tracks 1-11 written by William Berry/Peter Buck/Mike Mills/Michael Stipe unless noted
    

CREDITS

W.T. BERRY --
P.L. BUCK --
M.E. MILLS --
J.M. STIPE --
Steve Berlin -- horns
Carl Marsh - Fairlight
Scott Litt -- engineer
Gary Laney -- additional engineering
Steve Catania -- additional mix engineering
Michael Meister -- photography
Sandra-Lee Phipps/Jim McKay Group -- photography
Ron Scarselli -- packaging ally

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