I arrived at my college radio station, a fresh-faced and impressionable little fellow, in the fall of 1988. At the time, U2 followed up their smash The Joshua Tree with a ludicrous cash-in double album that was a companion piece to a major motion picture. The Dead Milkmen convinced their fans to bum rush the request lines at MTV, making their song “Punk Rock Girl” an unlikely cult hit. Siouxsie and the Banshees had arguably the biggest college radio hit of the fall with the plainly spectacular “Peek-A-Boo” (perhaps the erstwhile host of 90FM’s “College Countup” can confirm or refute this assessment). I can probably tick off another half dozen examples of artists who loomed large in the rarefied airwaves of student-run radio at that time, but the most formidable force was a foursome from Athens, Georgia.

There were two R.E.M. albums somewhere in the station’s rotation when I arrived, both of those attempts by I.R.S. records to wrest a little more cash out of the band in advance of their pending major label debut: Dead Letter Office, a collection of b-sides and other flotsam and jetsam, and Eponymous, a “greatest hits” collection that is surprising rich given that it’s culled from five early albums and an e.p. Before winter properly set-in, the band would lessen the blow of the electorate’s dumbfounding selection of Bush the First by releasing Green on the same day that is Constitutionally designated for voting. Beside the sheer amount of product there, the band was a behemoth in college radio, every last thing they produced getting some amount of traction with programmers. It was okay to say that U2 had gotten too big, that The Cure had gotten too poppy, that The Replacements had sold their sloppy souls when they signed to a major label, but you didn’t hear anyone disparage R.E.M. Even those who were less inclined towards the band kept those views pretty quiet, as if dismissing the worthiness of the band was akin to dismissing college radio itself. It may have been another band that popularized the term, but R.E.M. were the patron saints of the left of the dial.

Since so many of their songs already received maximum exposure, we were always hunting for those rarities, the little songs buried on b-sides or dropped unceremoniously onto some largely unloved collection deep in the stacks. Playing R.E.M. was practically a requirement in those days, but playing something obscure was asserting one’s own deeper knowledge, greater worthiness. If R.E.M. was the holy light of college radio then digging into their less commonly shared scripture was like proving oneself to be more devout than others. And if it was live, all the better. And if it was a cover song, you could prove devotion to the music the band itself was devoted to. If it was a medley, the coolness factor increased exponentially (and you might have enough time to make a quick run to the bathroom, but that’s a whole other matter). If it was somehow all three, you could secure entry to college radio Valhalla where flannel-clad warrior were fanned with well-worn Velvet Underground album sleeves by nymphs with modest nose studs, foxy blocky glasses and Winona Ryder haircuts.

Or so it seemed at the time.

R.E.M., “Time After Time, Etc. (live)”

(Disclaimer: Best as I can track its archeology, this song first appeared as b-side to R.E.M.’s “Finest Worksong” single. I believe it’s been collected in a place or two, but I’m not sure if it’s on a release that’s still officially in print, and, frankly, I don’t have the spare mental energy to search diligently for this. Besides, I’ve got every last R.E.M. studio album on my shelf, and several of the early ones I bought in multiple formats over the years. You’d think they could let me have this one little gentle step on their copywritten toes. That wail of entitlement out of the way, I will briskly announce that should someone with due authority to do so contact me and ask me to remove this from the Interweb, I will gladly and rapidly comply.)