This is the Thread Where You Bash REM's Monster

yeah, I'd love them to do a new Dead Letter Office, or even just collect all the b-sides, live cuts and all. For instance, I think the acoustic version of "Pop Song 89" on---I think it's on the "Pop Song 89" single?---tops the original version. It would be great to give that a wider release.

The problem is that most of the latter day original b-sides are instrumentals, and R.E.M.'s instrumentals all sound like something they didn't bother finishing because it wasn't good enough.

I love "Endgame" (speaking of instrumentals, I mean)

New Orleans instrumental no. 1 or whatever it was called made a REALLY good soundtrqack for BBC footage of drowned New Orleans. Never cared about the track before.

REM were always a shitty band for b-sides.

i dunno, Dead Letter Office is one of their best, I think

― Mr. Que,
Side 1 is great. It falls off after the flip, though.

...unless you have the version that has Chronic Town tacked onto the end!

this album is SOOOOO good!
that is all.

Yeah, love this album. My second favorite of their 90s output behind New Adventures. Also, this was my gateway drug to deeper R.E.M. love. Never understood the hate, though I can see why fans of the early years might be put off.

i think the pretty bad arena show I saw during the Monster tour kinda put a sour taste in my mouth as far as this record is concerned. But I listened to it not that long ago and liked it. Still dread "Strange Currencies" though. And was never a huge fan of "Bang and Blame" ...

apparently one of the least-wanted cds on earth:
http://product.ebay.com/Monster_UPC_093624574026_W0QQfvcsZ1226QQsoprZ3162438QQssPageNameZFavMerch_SO:BACK

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, June 15, 2006 3:37 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

wow, that link is still priceless... in a manner of speaking...

one dude is trying to sell it for $18.35 plus shipping

"NEW/SEALED & Perfect 4 Gift Giving - ADD TO CART ~~~ and Make Someone's Day"

Yeah, 290 results for that and only 267 for Hootie's big album.

rem blow

monster blows. it's by rem

i think the pretty bad arena show I saw during the Monster tour kinda put a sour taste in my mouth as far as this record is concerned

Yup. A minor band named Radiohead also opened.

rem = i'm playing some chords. i have a scalp tattoo. my sweat reeks.

a friend clued me in to playing the album tracks in reverse order and it opens up into a weird, beautiful little album. it's like stepping out of a rover onto Mars. "You" and "Circus Envy" are possibly the best songs this band ever recorded. Amazing how much of an effect the garish artwork has on the music itself. Replace the orange and cartoons with some blurry photograph in earthy tones and suddenly you can see the thread that runs from Automatic's "Star Me Kitten" through "Tongue" all the way to the follow-up's "How the West Was Won". The hype around Monster definitely worked to its detriment. What someone said upthread about Monster being a parody of a major-label version of an underground album is dead on. The similarity between "Strange Currencies" and "Everybody Hurts" is downright comical, and I believe it was meant to be comical. A sense of humor certainly helps with this album in general.

yeah? maybe it just blows

Matt P on the money

I thought he was on the blow.

Yup. A minor band named Radiohead also opened.
opener for my show was ... Luscious Jackson. Though I had bought the tix when Sonic Youth was scheduled to open, but the aneurysm thing caused a delay ...

johnnyblo

uh-oh. school's out...

alice cooper, now there's someone who doesn't BLOW

agreed

Yup. A minor band named Radiohead also opened.
opener for my show was ... Luscious Jackson. Though I had bought the tix when Sonic Youth was scheduled to open, but the aneurysm thing caused a delay ...

― tylerw, Tuesday, March 9, 2010 2:21 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

me too. i saw their chicago show. group of adults in front of me were doing charades to song lyrics. not a good show.

Maybe I should be glad that I got shut out of that show! The Chicago show was my freshman year of college and was to be the first major arena show I was to see, but tickets sold out before we could get them. At the time, I was honestly more excited to see Sonic Youth though.

i went with two high school friends

i don't think i have spoken to them or even heard their name uttered in 15 years

"Kenneth" is pretty classic -- still sounds good on the radio.

I need to rescreen this one ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eGWW8KOQio

god i hate REM for not breaking up after adventures

group of adults in front of me were doing charades to song lyrics

this really cracks me up. it's like something out of catcher in the rye.

My second favorite of their 90s output behind New Adventures.

totally agree with this

this was easily my favorite r.e.m. album of 1994

Their worst album. But, as I said upthread, it is possible there may be some good songs there. But I can't hear them. I just hear guitar noise.

why are you still on geirbot v. 2.6 when everybody else has already installed geirbot 2010? i'm surprised that you can even play CDs on that thing.

god i hate REM for not breaking up after adventures automatic for the people

But I can't hear them. I just hear guitar noise.

Geir manages to make the album sound ever more awesome to those who haven't heard it.

XP If R.E.M. were to break up after Adventures they might as well have broken up after "Automatic For The People", yes. "Monster" and "Adventures" were their two worst albums, after all. They got better again later.

some of the songs were AMAZING live though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60IBPy1wiBM&feature=player_embedded

agreed! i saw them live after my senior year in HS and all the songs they played off MONSTER were great

Oh, yeah. I was at the Chicago show, too. It ruined the band for me. In retrospect, knowing how much of New Adventures in HiFi (which I came to love years later) came from that tour, I wonder whether I was in the wrong -- expecting "Superman" or whatever when they'd moved on. Wonder if there's a decent bootleg from that tour out there...

This is R.E.M's best post-"Automatic For The People" moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKbBiR89KSo

man i hate that song. and i used to love r.e.m.

and i like melody, too.

I wonder how much, if any, of this was an unconscious nod to Achtung/Zooropa/Zoo TV U2 - it previewed REM's biggest tour to date and although I'd assume the band had given up/stopped caring about the 'biggest band in the world' mantle once Bono etc were back. For all the 'return to rock' it doesn't sound like Document or any of their other rockier albums although I think they admitted as such at the time. I like the way 'You' and 'Circus Envy' seem to follow that REM tradition ('I Remember California', 'Oddfellows') of discordant oddball songs, the kinda thing Peter Buck talked up before recording 'Document' but it was almost as if they couldn't help themselves and consciously dropped those songs towards the end.

I'd be curious to know the order in which songs were recorded for Monster. I remember reading a Rolling Stone article around the time. The sessions were apparently difficult, with lots of stops and location changes. By the time the following year's tour commenced they were already playing a batch of new songs, some of which made it onto New Adventures. These songs were, for the most part, pretty bland and awful - "Revolution" (a crowd favorite, supposedly, which never made it onto New Adventures), "Departure", "Undertow"...terrible terrible songs. Maybe "Tongue", "I Don't Sleep", "You", "Circus Envy" were the first batch of new songs they had after Automatic for the People, as these were the bulk of the quality material. Maybe one day they started fooling around with "Crush With Eyeliner" and decided to take the album in the direction it went.

Sucked then. Sucks now.

liking good music is boring.

Departure", "Undertow"...terrible terrible songs.

suggest ban