Yesterday was the 37th anniversary of the release of R.E.M.'s odds & sods catch-all Dead Letter Office. It's a throwaway album but it's always meant a lot to me; as a brand new 14 year-old R.E.M. fan it had some great shit along with some not-so-great shit, it slammed home to me what an incredible singer Michael Stipe was and maybe most importantly, gave me the same introduction to the Velvet Underground as with thousands of other college rock fans of my generation.
It also will always be remembered for having some of my favorite liner notes from the always delightfully loquacious Peter Buck:
My favorite, and a comic structure I've personally stolen many times over the last 25 years:'I've always liked singles much more than albums. A single has to be short, concise, and catchy, all values that seem to go out the window as far as albums are concerned. But the thing I like most about singles is their ultimate shoddiness. No matter how lavish the packaging, no matter what attention to detail, a '45 is still essentially a piece of crap usually purchased by teenagers. This is why musicians feel free to put just about anything on the b-side; nobody will listen to it anyway, so why not have some fun. You can clear the closet of failed experiments, badly written songs, drunken jokes, and occasionally, a worthwhile song that doesn't fit the feel of an album. This collection contains at least one song from each category. It's not a record to be taken too seriously. Listening to this album should be like browsing through a junkshop. Good hunting." -Peter Buck
Burning Hell: Sometimes you write a song without even trying to. Sometime those songs are the very best ones. That's not quite the case with this one however.
The two other greatest liner notes of course are from Husker Du's Warehouse Songs and Stories and The Replacements' Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash. (Bob Dylan of course holds the record for the most fucking pointless liner notes of all time.)
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