R.E.M. - Monster 25th Anniversary (2019)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by FourWalledWorld, Nov 17, 2018.

  1. adm62

    adm62 Senior Member

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    Abba is not "silly pop music" in any respect.
     
  2. Summer of Malcontent

    Summer of Malcontent Forum Resident

    Out of interest, their UK Top 40 chart placings paint a very different picture, in which seventeen singles charted higher than 'Losing My Religion', including things like 'Tongue', 'Bad Day', 'Leaving New York', 'The Great Beyond' (their biggest hit!), 'E-Bow the Letter' and 'Strange Currencies':

    The One I Love - 16
    It's the End of the World As We Know It - 39
    Orange Crush - 28
    Losing My Religion - 19
    Shiny Happy People - 6
    Near Wild Heaven - 27
    Radio Song - 28
    Drive - 11
    Man of the Moon - 18
    The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite - 17
    Everybody Hurts - 7
    Nightswimming - 27
    What's the Frequency, Kenneth? - 9
    Bang and Blame - 15
    Strange Currencies - 9
    Crush with Eyeliner - 23
    Tongue - 13
    E-Bow the Letter - 4
    Bittersweet Me - 19
    Electrolite - 29
    Daysleeper - 6
    Lotus - 26
    At My Most Beautiful - 10
    The Great Beyond - 3
    Imitation of Life - 6
    All the Way to Reno - 24
    Bad Day - 8
    Animal - 33
    Leaving New York - 5
    Electron Blue - 26
    Wanderlust - 27

    Eleven top ten hits, and I'd say only 'Everybody Hurts' could remotely be considered a signature song.

    EDIT: Sorry, I missed that this was already posted!
     
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  3. Summer of Malcontent

    Summer of Malcontent Forum Resident

    Looking further, it seems that it was only in the US and the Netherlands that 'Losing My Religion' was their highest charting single, but there's no real consensus about their biggest hit internationally:
    Australia: Everybody Hurts
    Canada: Bang and Blame
    UK: The Great Beyond
    Germany: Shiny Happy People
    Norway: Supernatural Superserious
    New Zealand: Kenneth
     
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  4. DolphinsIntheJacuzzi

    DolphinsIntheJacuzzi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    For those of us of a certain age, who lived through the era, it seems a bit of a no-brainer that LMR was their signature song. Mainly because of MTV. Chart positions during that era can often be deceiving. But that video was played at least 5-6 times a day for what seemed like a year and a half. And radio stations followed suit.

    That was most definitely not the case for "Fall On Me" or "The One I Love" or "Stand." At least not anywhere near to that extent. The song and video for LMR were ubiquitous during that era, like nothing else they did before or since.

    Also, there's almost a bit of what seems like Mandela Effect with "It's the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)." It was a decent-sized video hit, but didn't chart particularly high upon initial release.

    But when it was featured on the Independence Day soundtrack, it took on a new life, making many people remember it as being more popular, during its original run, than it actually was.
     
    theMess, lucan_g, enro99 and 3 others like this.
  5. Musical Chairs

    Musical Chairs Forum Resident

    Still debating what I want to with tnis. Buy the deluxe CD package? Get the vinyl? Wait for a SACD and then record it to a blank 8-track?
     
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  6. JeffMo

    JeffMo Format Agnostic

    Location:
    New England
    Impressive!
    Nice to see such love for E-bow especially.
     
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  7. George Co-Stanza

    George Co-Stanza Forum Resident

    Location:
    America
    While I agree that charts don’t always tell the tale, Stand and The One I Love were both played non-stop on MTV during their respective peak popularity phases. Stand, in particular, was seemingly played every other hour every day for months.
     
    enro99 likes this.
  8. bvb1123

    bvb1123 Rock and Roll Martian

    Location:
    Cincinnati Ohio
    I bought the deluxe CD set and I wasn't disappointed at all. The remix of the album, IMHO, is completely transformative in the best way possible. The live discs sound great too. They were obviously caught on an "on" night. The demos are ok but not essential. But for $60 I was and am very happy with my purchase.
     
  9. DolphinsIntheJacuzzi

    DolphinsIntheJacuzzi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I agree. So was "Shiny Happy People," to an extent. But none of them were played as often as LMR. "Stand" was played for months. So was "The One I Love." But LMR was played for well over a year. And during that time, it was on a near-constant rotation loop.

    I'm not saying they hadn't had other significant video hits. Just none of that magnitude. LMR was to R.E.M. what "Under the Bridge" was to RHCP.

    BTW, I'm curious: Is there any way we can prove or disprove this? Is there some site somewhere that has tallies of how many times a video has been played on MTV? That would be interesting.
     
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  10. George P

    George P Notable Member

    Location:
    NYC
  11. Brian Doherty

    Brian Doherty Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA
    That would be an amazing resource, so many memories and impressions I'd like to check against reality. For example, I swear to this day that in 1982-83 era in which I first had it that the completely random selection of Rainbow's "Stone Cold" was in my memory THE most heavily played video, but this could be my strange luck of draw or just a mistake, I have found hardly anyone else with same impression.
     
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  12. Dmac99

    Dmac99 Forum Resident

    I agree. I watched a lot of MTV that year and Stone Cold was on very often. Great tune!
     
  13. kouzie

    kouzie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Batavia, IL
    It's a shame because in many ways, it was my favorite tour of theirs. I was at the 10/19/86 show in Chicago and there are a couple of circulating tapes of it. One is pretty decent B+ quality and the show itself was exceptional.
     
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  14. DolphinsIntheJacuzzi

    DolphinsIntheJacuzzi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I didn't get MTV until 1984. But I was mainly listening to hard rock stations at the time, and that song was pretty big on FM rock radio in 82-83. It's entirely possible that it was due, in large part, to heavy MTV play. I mean, it seemed like a bit of a left-field hit at the time. That could explain it.
     
  15. Vox78

    Vox78 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cork
    The demo disc is a bit ...pointless. Some of them sound like they belong to the Murmur/Reckoning/ Fables era. I’ll grudgingly accept that its inclusion is justified , but it just sounds from a different planet to the material from the rest of the set...I would have much preferred a disc of embryonic Monster songs regardless of quality.
     
    Heart of Gold likes this.
  16. douglas mcclenaghan

    douglas mcclenaghan Forum Resident

    I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the demos.
     
    Charky likes this.
  17. Desbug

    Desbug Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    so was I! I felt several of them worked as instrumentals in the same way as some of the b side instrumentals like Winged Mammal Theme (which I assume are in fact the same thing, instrumental tracks that Stipe didn’t complete)
     
    douglas mcclenaghan likes this.
  18. markreed

    markreed Forum Resident

    Location:
    Imber
    They often wrote songs that sounded "too much like R.E.M." and then put to one side for that exact reason - so they are demos from the same period, just not demos of the songs you know or expect.
     
    DavidD likes this.
  19. Paranoid Android

    Paranoid Android Forum Resident

    Leaning toward picking up this re-issue
     
  20. twicks

    twicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Been thinking about Stipe a lot lately and trying to pinpoint the exact moment he went from being an "eccentric Southern weirdo who fronted a rock band" to "actual rock frontman who seemed to enjoy his celebrity."

    I don't think it was when they signed to Warners because he still seemed plenty weird on the Green tour. It's tempting to invoke Samson and say it happened when he shaved his head bald for Monster...but I think it was before that, somewhere between the Green tour and the "Losing My Religion" video. He was definitely different by "Unplugged." Finally, the thing with the t-shirts at the 1991 VMAs sealed the deal.

    Sorry if I'm restating the obvious here.
     
  21. dlemaudit

    dlemaudit Forum Resident

    Location:
    France, Paris area
    he was no longer the southern weirdo by the Green Tour in my opinion , the portable loudspeaker and irritating arms waving ....
     
  22. twicks

    twicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Yeah, but even with the dancing and antics he still seemed fairly withdrawn emotionally, singing cryptic acapella songs and saying bizarre things onstage. By "Unplugged" he was very straightforward in the way he spoke -- and I understand he had to be in that setting.

    Maybe what I'm getting at is that *not* touring Out Of Time and Automatic and relying heavily on TV appearances is what inadvertently killed off his earlier persona (and therefore a big part of the band's mystique).
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2019
  23. walrus

    walrus Staring into nothing

    Location:
    Nashville
    Same thing happened to Eddie Vedder. I don't know about REM (I was 10 when Out Of Time came out), but Pearl Jam became a much more fun band to be a fan of when Eddie finally realized it's okay to be a rock star and enjoy life a little bit.
     
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  24. picassoson

    picassoson Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    Monster | HDtracks - The World's Greatest-Sounding Music Downloads

    Does anyone know if this HD-Tracks version of Monster from 2016, is the hi-res, unbrickwalled mastered version that is supposedly the same source as the DVD-A's? I'm thinking about trying to buy that version if it's still available in case it eventually gets pulled down permanently in favor of the new remaster. The sample mp3's appear unbrickwalled (unlike the 1994 CD master), which could be a good sign...
     
    enro99 likes this.
  25. andycherry

    andycherry Forum Resident

    Location:
    ohio
    i believe there was some discussion on here discussing whether or not the hdtracks 2016 was the same hi-res stereo from the dvd or not - apparently the new hi-res stereo from the blu-ray is different as well?
     
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