This is the Thread Where You Bash REM's Monster

I love the chorus; the "guitar solo" is pretty hilarious, but I like Berry's attempt at funky drummer

If there's YouTube of one of this tour's better performances, I'd love to watch it. From my pov much of the backlash came from watching them try to do these flash/"ironic" moves onstage and flailing in a gawky and self-conscious way; all they needed was "Pop Music" and Golden Arches to foreshadow POP Mart.

my first time watching REM too. Radiohead opened and they killed (I'm not a fan).

Berry is kind of a funky drummer in his own writeright. Not of the Clyde or Jabo variety, but in the sense of guy who plays in a rock band and is creative but not studio pro slick.

So Monster = Achtung Baby? I'm good with that, Achtung's also my favorite U2 album.

I like Monster now more than I ever did in the '90s, and find myself enjoying most of it these days. If there's a dud on this album for me, it's definitely 'King of Comedy'. Overall, I prefer New Adventures In Hi-Fi though, which I rank up there as one of their all-time best.

I always liked this album. It's my favourite of their major label albums, probably. I'm glad that it seems to be getting a reappraisal, at least here. Nice guitar tones and production. I'm not really sure what makes this 'arch and ironic' in a way that Document or Green are not, tbh. I never thought 80s REM was earnest in the way that 80s U2 was: if anything, obliqueness was part of their schtick.

Let's not forget 'Everybody Hurts', though!

arch ironic earnest

Sorry, still trying to think of new words. Maybe "self-aware" or "self-reflexive" as opposed to just sort of tunneling forward?

Something too fey or twee or weak about certain tracks on Green. Something too oblique about Document.

Although maybe Life's Rich Pageant was sort of a similar move, but without the dark sunglasses and eyeliner.

My Crush With (Dark Sunglasses and) Eyeliner

This is a very good and somewhat overlooked documentary based around the Monster tour rehearsals, broadcast originally in the UK at exactly the same time as 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times', duh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYG7nNhzpN0

I'd love to know what Stipe regrets about "King Of Comedy", I think that's a spectacular track.

he's not commodity

I gave up around Green, when they decided to stick with "plodding and deliberate" as an instrumental approach. Based on advance word, I thought Monster would be different, but if anything, it was worse. I always found it overwhelmingly bland and faceless. But it got them on the road, and their renewed joy in playing live at least resulted in a decent studio record (Hi-Fi), so it wasn't all for naught.

Is that doc the one in which the two Michaels look at the sheet music for "Galveston"?

Yep.

I strongly suspect that Automatic-Monster-Hi Fi is their secret creative peak (I am definitely a non-fan)

i mean i would agree but i always thought that was because i was an impressionable teen at the time

I think this is the album where you look to Berry when people talk of his 'restraint' - like in the Pavement tribute song.

He could have been all over this album, given the fact that it was him who seemed to make most noise over the 'return to rock' - but it's not heavy on fills or overplaying at all. Having said that that was pretty much his approach for the duration of the band.

I loved this record, but probably because I was 18.

no recall of ever flipping through this. somebody on here must have one?

http://eil.com/images/main/REM+-+Monster+-+Book+Pack+Sealed+-+CD+ALBUM-549992.jpg

holy fuck i had no idea about this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsCsv996bZw

i remember seeing that special edition.

in retrospect this album isn't nearly as bad as I remember. I like more than almost anything that came after by them.

As a whole, this album doesn't work at all, although some individual songs (like Kenneth) and some individual moments in songs (the chord change on Circus Envy, the throbbing noise in You) are pretty great.

Having said that, I saw them live in '95, aged 17, and was SO EXCITED (and NB also totally high) that it remains, in my memory at least, the best gig I've ever been to.

And Bang and Blame is the first really flat-out irredeemably boring REM song.

i don't think i ever got over the way we heard the album for the first time; over an outdoor PA on a Sunday morning, as we queued up for tickets to the (ultimately cancelled) Birmingham arena gig. it was played at about 8 a.m. and it sounded really thin and tinny over that shitty PA. didn't help that we'd been up all night driving from Manchester to get there i suppose. UP and New Adventures.. wipe the floor with it.

Its the best 'let's run this guitar sound into the ground' album ever

http://i.imgur.com/8XuufQK.jpg

Ha - Piscesx, I heard the record the same way queuing up at Wembley Arena, stuck behind two guys talking about Dark Side of the Moon for three hours. Ugh. Did not sound good.

I was quite a fan before this shabbiness

That three note guitar riff, following the turgid, ploddy 4 chord strumming on Kenneth - its all just flaccid grunge cock

Quite the opposite. They want you to suck their cock.

If I may... http://thequietus.com/articles/16426-rem-monster-review-anniversary

I think this is one of REM's most interesting albums, not least down to Stipe writing some really strong lyrics - dark and ambiguous character studies, plenty of genderfucking.

Their best album.

Good write up

6 Discs on the reissue, but still no room for the best REM doc, which is from the same tour! Maybe they don't liek it. There's a vague Let It Be vibe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBby0SCGLmk

This album sucks, sorry bros

Crush with eyeliner is some boring ass shit

it's good, not in the top 5 but good

20+ years later and i still can't get over how much of a misstep it felt at the time!

And as it remains
They should have called it quits with Green, they’d be legendary by now, a hundred college bands imitating them
I

No no no way before green

This is a good album, though

why did they sing the verse of "losing my religion" when they were singing "bang and blame ?
b and b has a great hook/chorus.
― kenneth jnr, Monday, May 16, 2005 10:00 AM (fourteen years ago)

this always bugs me too, i can't unhear it

I’m gonna bash the fact that the 2-disc version of the anniversary set consists of the original album + remixed album, and not the outtake disc (which you need to buy the 6-disc set to hear).

Who needs two mixes of the same album — especially when the OG version (if you don’t already own it) costs a few bucks in any record store? If the 2CD set was remix + outtakes, there’d be a reason to buy it.

I’m checking out the 25th Anniversary editions of the previous two albums that they’ve been releasing via Craft/Concord... I admit they’re tempting.

Everyone’s got their *jumping off point* with this consistently great band. Monster is a great record, but not my fave sonically.

Appreciate your angle, Alfred. For me, R.E.M. we’re sexiest in the mid-‘80s, when I think they were the most feminine. An attractive veil of artifice and earthy/no-nonsense at the same time.

i haven't heard the remix yet but the remaster itself sounds great, very crisp with a lot of detail i never caught before in the denser tracks cf. "king of comedy"

also this is such a great album, so fun and sexy and weird and creepy

I probably have "I don't sleep, I dream" as my own #1 or #2 track on this, to me it bridges the band's past and present effortlessly.