<img src ="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/22/REM_Fables_Of_The_Reconstruction_cover.jpg/200px-REM_Fables_Of_The_Reconstruction_cover.jpg">
Record is <a href ="http://www.sendspace.com/file/qs4gl1"> here. </a>
Released June 10, 1985 on I.R.S. Records.
#28, Billboard top 200
#35, U.K. Album Chart
For me this album is one of the few that gives me a specific sense of being in a specific place when I listen to it. Another album like this is Ocean Rain.
This album definitely puts me in "The South". But, not like the real south, like a mythical dreamland version of how I imagined the south before I actually went there.
A long time ago, I drove across the continent in a 1981 Econoline with my buddy The Juice. This album was our prime reason for routing ourselves through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. I guess we thought everyone was going to be like Old Man Kensey or Wendell Gee or something, and that there'd be like wizened old railroad hobos telling us to keep our money in our shoes, and that we'd want to stay there and move into a dilapidated old rural house with a big veranda. That kind of shit. Turns out it was nothing like how we imagined it. Plus, it's wicked hot there. Live and learn.
Oh, I also like how the original vinyl does not make clear if the album is called "Fables of the Reconstruction" or "Reconstruction of the Fables". Neat!