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END-OF-YEAR POSTCARD FROM THE BREAK

Today, three days from the end of the year 2011, I am thinking a lot in threes: three decades of life with R.E.M., three guys at the end, three is a good number. Favorite things are sometimes hard to isolate–threes are easier at least for me:

So . . .three of my favorite:

Shows: Madrid, 1995, Dublin, 2007, Locarno, 2003

Songs, three a decade: Gardening At Night, All the Right Friends, Life and How To Live It; Find The River, I Took Your Name, Losing My Religion; Horse To Water, All The Way To Reno, the Lifting; Walk It Back, All the Best, Oh My Heart

Videos: Driver 8, Oh My Heart, Turn You Inside-Out

Covers: Pale Blue Eyes, First We Take Manhattan, Academy Fight Song

Sites: Athens Olympic Stadium, 2008, Trafalgar Square, 2001, Cologne Cathedral, 2001

Festivals: Rock In Rio, 2001; Werchter, 1985,1989,1995,1999,2003,2005,2008; Oxegen, 2008

REMplaces: Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Brazil

Under-rated: Reveal, Live At The Olympia, Collapse Into Now

Places to go back to: South Africa, Turkey, Argentina

Never got to: China, India, Russia (though we tried!)

So many memories, so many blessings from a great band and so many good friends we have known along the way–quite an amazing run as they say.

Happy New Year in the great beyond,

Bertis