Ugly Christmas Sweater


The "ugly Christmas sweater" post I promised you:

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1984 album in review: The Replacements--Let It Be

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Former Replacements guitarist Bob "Slim" Dunlap died on December 18 after many years of ill health. Though Slim didn't join the Replacements (aka the 'Mats) until 1987, this seems the perfect time to write about the band's 1984 album Let It Be , and thus continue with this little series on 1984 long players. Let's rewind to that magical year of 1986, the year I have rhapsodized about so often in this blog. I don't remember exactly how this happened, but sometime in autumn '86, Ron P.--an older guy who lived on my dorm floor--let me borrow his vinyl copy of Let It Be . I assume this has to do with the R.E.M. factor. Ron may have thought that Let It Be was similar enough to R.E.M. that I'd like it, and maybe it also had to do with R.E.M.'s Peter Buck being guest guitarist on the opening track, "I Will Dare." (All roads lead back to R.E.M.). Allow me to digress for a moment and say a retrospective "thank you" to all the peop...
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1984 album in review: R.E.M.-- Reckoning

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In my latest sporadically published posts about 1984 albums, I tackle R.E.M.'s second album, Reckoning . This is yet another album I discovered after the fact. It was that hallowed autumn of 1986 that I have mentioned at least a few times in this blog. I had already heard "Fall on Me" that summer and quickly went out and bought a cassette of Lifes Rich Pageant at the Camelot Music in Saginaw's Fashion Square Mall. A month or so later, I arrived at Michigan State and quickly learned that, compared to several other kids, I was an R.E.M. newbie. I was "tripled" in my dorm room at MSU, which means I had two  other roommates. (We were assured by the university that as we settled into the school year, the "triple" would revert to a "double." Of course, I couldn't help but worry who would be the odd man out). Anyway, one of my roommates was a guy named Tim F. Tim was cool. Tim was the first to arrive and already had posters of the movie Era...
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