The love you found must NEVER STOP

Writer Delfin Vigil provides an endearing remembrance of post-punk heroes Echo & The Bunnymen in a recent issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. You can find it here.
Reading his tale of a fan on a singular mission -- to renew a splintered alliance of musicians -- reminded me how important the Liverpool band were to me during my college days.
College in Iowa seemed like a stint in a foreign land for me as a Bay Area native. For one thing, I was never prepared for the weather. In California, sunshine almost automatically meant nice weather. In mid-winter Iowa, sunshine can mean minus-14 degrees (hmm... much like today). My mind could never come to terms with that juxtaposition of sunshine and bitter cold, and the resulting confusion only seemed to amplify my feelings of being a stranger in a strange land.
That's where Echo & The Bunnymen come in to the frame. More specifically, it was a marvelous cassette EP that I carried with me EVERYWHERE I went. It included "Back of Love" and "The Cutter" and the incomparable "Never Stop," a song that still rolls through my head from time to time.
"Measure by measure, drop by drop and pound for pound we're taking stock..."
The songs served as a lifeline to my California roots -- they were songs played with regularity on first "The Quake" and then "Live 105" -- at a time when such a lifeline helped comfort me in what seemed like a very strange place.