My Top 1000 Songs #440: 7 Chinese Brothers
Every song on 1984's Reckoning is pretty much perfect... but for some reason, "7 Chinese Brothers" has always struck me as just a little bit more perfect than most. Or, to put it a different way: R.E.M. changed my life back then, and each song on Reckoning (and the prior year's Murmur) retains the almost magical capacity to transport me back to that moment in time.. but "7 Chinese Brothers" gets me there just a little faster.
Live 1984:And 1985:2008, still perfect!
Beautiful. On the B side of the 12inch 'S. Central Rain' single, there's a song called Voice of Harold which is them essentially jamming over this same backing track (7 Chinese Bothers) but reading bits of liner notes from the back of other records. Pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteApparently Stipe was having trouble working out the melody for the song, so he ended up just reading the liner notes over the song to loosen up.
DeleteHa! That's make sense. I'm gonna go play that again tonight.
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