Cluttered Like My Head

Lots of talk in the past week about the upcoming solar eclipse, and that, although its only a partial one, its the best one in the UK since August 1999, and that the next full eclipse visible from here isn't until 2080, or 2081.  I remember exactly where I was on that last eclipse in 1999, not because I made a big deal out of it, but because I'd been on holiday with a mate, and we were flying back from LA. My memory tells me that it was a Virgin Airlines flight, that they handed out glasses to view the eclipse on the flight, and that it was visible from one side of the plane and they encouraged everybody to go to that side to get a look. Obvs it would have been more effective if you had a window seat on that side, but I do remember getting a quick glimpse, and obviously we weren't as impacted by the low clouds which blighted much of the rest of the UK.  We saw REM at the Greek Theatre on the 9th August, and then flew back to the UK the following day. Ever since, my mate has...

  I read the recent biography of REM, "The Name of this band is REM" by Peter Ames Carlin. I've read a lot of books about the band in the past, but much as my interest in the band dwindled towards the end of their career, so did the biography industry, and most of the books stop at their peak rather than afterwards. This book carries on to the breakup of the band, and has been well reviewed over the past year or so, and with my interest in the band renewed following the Shannon / Narducy Fables tour in 2025, I put it on my Christmas list and have devoured it since then. First things first - the band aren't interviewed for the book, so any words from them are from contemporary interviews or as told by other people. It's at its strongest in those early years - capturing the contradiction between a band that was willing to put the hours and the legwork into becoming a great band, and one that didn't want to appear in its videos and have decipherable lyrics to sin...

 As it's now 40 years since its first release,REM decided to mark the occasion by re-releasing the first version of "Radio Free Europe" as close to the original as they could. Let's call it a facsimile edition. It's pretty cool.  Even more excitingly (for the purposes of this blog at least) they also decided to release a version of their first demo tape, limited to 1,500 copies, and only available by jumping through an expensively placed hoop.  Naturally I bit, so I am now the proud owner of a set of REM button badges, a new REM t-shirt, the 7" of "Radio Free Europe" and the demo tape, titled "Cassette Set" Following on from the 7", it's very close (I guess) to the original release. There's 3 tracks on side 1 of the tape, although it takes a couple of goes for the first one (Sitting Still) and there's a snippet of White Tornado after the actual full track of the same name, as if they taped over their first attempt at the s...