REM plan to release rare singles for charity

REM hope to release some of their rarest singles as a charity compilation. According to Peter Buck, the defunct group plan to gather all of their fan-only Christmas songs for a “big box set ... one day”.

Two years after REM’s split, Buck told BBC News about a possible compilation of some of the band’s scarcest material. From 1988 until 2011, the Athens rockers sent limited-edition Christmas packages to members of their official fanclub. “There were like 24 of them, which makes about 50 songs,” Buck said. Pressed on vinyl, VHS, CD and DVD, the tracks included original tunes, spoof Christmas carols, team-ups with Radiohead and Neil Young, and covers of tracks by Chris Isaak, Mission of Burma, Television, Big Star and many more. Less than 6,000 copies of each single were produced.

“I just liked the idea,” Buck said. “I was never in the Beatles fanclub but ... I really liked the fact you would get a weird thing in the mail every year. So every year, REM put out a record. It was all material that had never been released anywhere else.” At one dealer website, a complete set of these singles is currently on sale for $1,155 (750).

While REM don’t have a firm release plan for the charity set, all of the members “are still on great terms”, Buck told the Irish Independent. “I see them regularly ... [and] they came to my wedding recently.” He is also confident that they “made the right choice” by splitting: it has allowed Buck to blossom as a solo singer-songwriter, issuing one album last year and with another due by next spring.

“[After the split] I immediately wrote 10 songs and started getting ready to perform them and sing, which I’d never done before,” he said. “If we hadn’t [ended] I would never be a singer or a lyricist. I’d be a sideman the rest of my life.”

Buck, who is 56, is currently promoting the new album by Tired Pony, his project with Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody.