Community Trolls
Another Community Trolls' song, "Six Stock Answers", appeared in an unreleased indie film featuring Stipe, Sweet and some of their friends.
[5] While a member of Oh-OK, Sweet also began collaborating with Michael Stipe as the band Community Trolls.
"[6] They recorded their three compositions with producer John Keane that fall, but only one of the tracks from the session, "Tainted Obligation", has been officially released.
[8] In 1986, "Tainted Obligation" was planned for inclusion on the Zippo/Demon Records compilation album Don't Shoot, but ultimately was left off.
In a review of the album, Rolling Stone critic Gavin Edwards describes the song as "enchanting" and as having "harmonies as pretty as you can imagine".
[10] "Six Stock Answers", whose vocals are by Stipe, was used in an unreleased low-budget forty-five-minute Super-8 film called Just Like a Movie.
It was shot in September 1983 in Athens by New York Rocker photographer Laura Levine, a friend of the members of R.E.M.
[12] One scene in the film, a parody of the "Subterranean Homesick Blues" sequence in D. A. Pennebaker's Bob Dylan documentary Dont Look Back, shows Michael Stipe wearing a skirt and tights flipping placards with the song's lyrics, "Six stock answers to 74,000 questions" repeated ad nauseam.
biographer Marcus Gray believes it is likely that footage of the show, including the Trolls' set, was used in Just Like a Movie.
shared a bill with Oh-OK on October 3, 1983, at the University of Georgia's Legion Field, Sweet joined R.E.M.
[5][15] Although only Stipe and Sweet performed in the studio on "Tainted Obligation",[8] it is not clear whether other musicians may have sometimes been included in the band.
Gray writes that "the line-up of the Community Trolls remains elusive, but Sweet was guitarist and singer".
[16] In the book Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-A-Rama, their line-up is described as an "Athens-based, looseknit ensemble, which included Matthew Sweet, [and which] featured Michael Stipe's vocals on a handful of tracks".
[2][19] (In 1990, one previously unreleased Buzz of Delight track appeared on the DB Records compilation Squares Blot out the Sun,[20] and, in 2002, three others on To Understand.
[22] Sweet began distancing himself from other people in the Athens music scene and in 1984 quit Oh-OK; by 1985, the Buzz of Delight had broken up.
However, more than making the record itself and becoming a rock star, Sweet's main motivation was to get money to buy studio gear.
[25] On March 26, 2011, Sweet and Mills performed the Big Star song "September Gurls" together live at a tribute to Big Star singer Alex Chilton;[26] Stipe also performed at this concert, singing "The Letter", by Chilton's 1960s group, the Box Tops.
