This is the Thread Where You Bash REM's Monster

I like hearing Stipe's performance on it clearer. It's kind of like a Husker Du song. Very sad song.

Also: maybe it's just that one guitar on the original, just more processed.

Mills on guitar iirc

Buck on Farfisa

Berry on Heineken

Tambourine!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19hhctlleNo

Haha, I thought so (but couldn’t resist the joke)

Stipe’s comments about the song at the time have always stuck with me, that he felt that if he too had become super-famous at a younger age, that he wouldn’t have survived it. R.E.M. were nice guys.

I'd like to hear Document with a little less of the eighties production, that's for sure.

xp xref “How to Disappear Completely”

lmao wait til y'all hear the "king of comedy" remix

make your money

nothing will ever replace the original because there are hundreds of copies of it in every retail establishment in the world, enough to last millions of years

― akm, Friday, October 11, 2019 10:04 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol seriously. there were always 3-4 copies of this album and new order's republic in every used CD bin in the late 90s.

And it's in 50% of the charity shops in Britain right now, alongside Free Peace Sweet, Onka's Big Moka and every Robbie Williams record.

SPICEWORLD

the Best Of Bread of the digital era

New interview, some good lines: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/entertainment-arts-50206491

I like how they’re basically — “Scott’s new remix is whatever, we had nothing to do with it....”

The band built an app so you can A/B the two versions: https://www.engadget.com/amp/2019/10/29/rem-monster-25th-anniversary-remix-compare-web-app/

All these years later, I'm finding that "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" not a highlight for me at the time, has totally held up for me. I want to sing along with it at the top of my lungs whenever I hear it.

lmao wait til y'all hear the "king of comedy" remix

In the vernacular of the era: "Could the vocal BE any drier and more upfront?"

https://66.media.tumblr.com/1ab7daff8828955c68405b62752224d5/tumblr_p4trcpBLJD1x4bi9zo6_250.png

I'll admit it's interesting to actually hear (parse) the lyrics of "Star 69" for the first time.

It sounds like they purposefully used the murkiest, lowest-quality dub of the original album they could find for purposes of that A/B listening page

Remastered 'Crush With Eyeliner' sounds tremendous.

That's the one that hit me too.

Wavered between "Ehh?" and "OK?" to "I guess?" on most of these, but Litt did a pretty good number on "Crush".

Still like the original tho'.

You guys talkin bout the REMastered or REMixed tracks?

the surf guitar touches on the remix of “crush with eyeliner” are interesting but distracting imo

“crush with eyeliner” remix is actively unlistenable

er i meant “king of comedy”*

Oh I'm not bothering with the remix, I'm only talking about the remaster here, which is much the same as the original but really pops in all the right places.

yes the remastering job is sweet, i was reminded of the mirage and tango in the night remasters in that a lot of subtle detail gets raised up very tastefully

I’m actually kind of enjoying the remix(!), now that I’m listening to it straight through. It definitely makes a... different impression.

I went thru the rough/unfinished demos on my drive... a few of them sound like they could have made good songs, but most sound like super-generic R.E.M. jams.

I really like the remix! "I Don't Sleep, I Dream" is fabulous: Litt draws consistently on the doomy side of the album, in emphasizing the bass, and it lifts this song into something new (rather than just subtracting something old, like on WTFK).

i find the extremely audible amp hiss on "i don't sleep i dream" p much ruins it

listening to the remix r/n and finding it totally hapless for my own ears --- there's definitely neat "revealed details" but it's sorta missing the whole reason i wanna listen to Monster. pulling stipe's voice out and pushing the band back... it sounds like a solo album demo tape, or a late-period REM album maybe. and some of the lyrics that are going for camp menace end up sounding just goofy, idk. like idk, "star 69" and "bang and blame" and "tongue" come through okay, but "circus envy" without everything brickwalled and fuzzed out sounds a lot like "ignoreland" in the "squares trying to be a heavy caveman riff band" kinda way.

it does sound like a demo tape! i hate it

the only smart choice i can point to is subtracting the drums from the first verse/chorus of "you," that sounds pretty cool

I thought "Tongue" came out well. None of these are going to replace for me the original versions (well, maybe "Strange Currencies", the only song on this I've never liked).

I thought it was weird that Mike Mills' voice is mostly cut, but there are other female vocals I never noticed before brought to the forefront. Who are they? Is Stipe's sister on this?

Ané Diaz – backing vocals on "Bang and Blame"
Sally Dworsky – backing vocals on "King of Comedy" and "Bang and Blame"
Lynda Stipe – backing vocals on "Bang and Blame"

sally dworsky's and stipe's gang vocals at the end of "king of comedy" are prob my favorite moment on the whole record

I only discovered today that she's also on the Lion King soundtrack. That's quite the early 90s CV.

huh, cool! the end of "King of Comedy" is really fun now in the remix, in a way I'd never noted before

I think part of the deal for me with the remix is that I’ve listen to this album so many times, it’s kind of become “ossified,” so it’s nice to be able to hear the songs with fresh ears... even if the remixed version is definitely not the one I would recommend to someone coming in new!

(The basic remaster also helps freshen up the songs… although the bass may be boosted a teeensy bit too much on “Bang or Blame.”)

these demos are lame

i'm never going to listen to this remix again.

the remaster is really nice

Looking back at Monster as a whole package, the sleeve imagery, the Thurston Moore guest appearance, etc. it all feels to me now like a concerted effort to sell R.E.M. as these kind of godfathers of the indie rock scene. That might be part of the reason why it felt so baffling and mildly alienating to me as a kid, when "Automatic" was my only other knowledge of the band - I wasn't really into "cool" music then and found this new direction really strange.

It makes it feel like a bit of an anomaly in that sense, I can't think of another album in their back catalogue that is consciously striving for hipster cred status (at least from a presentation point of view) as this one did, and they've never particularly struck me as a band that really gave a shit about that sort of thing. By the time of "Up", just four years later, they were pretty much already rock heritage material in any case.

FWIW, it didn’t feel that way to me at the time... If anything, SY‘s Dirty felt more like that!