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I sent this missive recently via Facebook Messenger to a musician I knew and whose band I admired in the last century. Identifying details have been removed.

Hi ______________,

Well, I don’t know whether or not you will find this weird, and this is about only the second note of its kind I’ve written in my life, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the various articles I wrote about ______________ back in the ’80s. I am…how can I put it…honestly sorry that I wasn’t a better writer back then, because the band deserved to be written about by people who were able to offer a more complete and fully realized portrait of who they were and what their music was than I was capable of providing at the time. (On the rare occasions I do, I read my old clips from 1985/86 with a mixture of head-shaking amusement and abject, what-the-hell-was-I-thinking horror, although I think my review for the ___________ of your show at _________ in March of ’88 wasn’t completely terrible.)

Although I tried hard, I wasn’t able to tell your story as a band in the way it deserved to be told, and I deeply regret that. In looking back at my efforts as a writer circa 1985–87, although I took my work seriously, I may have projected the image of someone overly impressed with his own cleverness and apt to inject far more about himself and his opinions on the page than the subject of the day warranted (structure is important!), but the truth is that in those days I was very insecure and filled with self-doubt, including about my writing ability. I don’t know how well a job I did of concealing it, both on and off the page, but in any case I’ve been through life’s wringer a few times over the past 30-plus years and am (very fortunately in my case) definitely not the same person I was in the ’80s; but then, who is?

I think that if people go to the great trouble of forming a band, practicing their instruments, writing songs, rehearsing, playing shows, making records, touring, doing promo and all the rest of it, they deserve to be interviewed, reviewed and written about by people with a sincere intent to present them to their readers as accurately and completely as possible, placing them in full truthful context with all due sympathy, as far as it is possible to understand any artistic efforts at all. My failings are mine alone, and for any hurt feelings or disappointments from those Boston days, I am truly sorry.

These days, at my advanced age, I’m at peace with myself and enjoying life; I’m a better person and, I certainly hope, better writer for having experienced many things good and bad and learning some useful truths about myself and the world over the years.

I hope you’re doing well. I only wish you and yours the best.

Thanks for listening.

Wes E.