Wednesday, June 17, 2020

50 Days of R.E.M. # 47 Letter Never Sent


Nice little song. Song 2 Side 2 of Reckoning. Nothing particularly special, but cool riff, cool yearning, cool backing vocals. All the early R.E.M. ingredients. The reason it's here is for its sentiment, which captured the feeling of the times it came out in.

R.E.M were essentially a literate band. They were one of quite a few who emerged at round about that time. The Smiths, The Go Betweens, Aztec Camera, Prefab Sprout, The Triffids. Literature was as important as music to these bands. And listening to them encouraged you to read more.

They also wrote about writing. Letter Never Sent. Letters were important back then. I've posted a picture of mine from 1985, the year after Reckoning came out. During my gap year before university. I worked in a kind of hotel in Locarno, Switzerland, an incredibly beautiful part of the world.

This is a picture of me walking with my colleagues from Locarno to Brione one morning with my colleagues. I'm the one in the John Lennon specs. There was some kind of festival / carnival there which we were going to. We're all reading the letters we received in the morning on the way. Letters, as I said, were important then. I probably still have the letter I'm reading here, whoever it was from, in the bottom drawer of the desk I'm sitting at. Thirty five years later.


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