that distorted groove on Crush With Eyeliner where the guitar sounds like it’s sputtering behind the beat is awesome.
my ma hates rem but the old man used to get to play this in the car a lot under the pretence of “the kids like it” because me and my sister found the sad tomato line in crush with eyeliner really funny for some reason.
bang and blame is a proper banger
I’m pretty sure that monster was at peak singles releasing ear and six tracks got released as singles! I kept the rem calender that came with the 7" of tongue for years.
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yeah i just read this… think there were videos going into rotation a whole year after the album was released.
It was this and the bends that made me think “this is getting silly now” when six songs on an lp are “singles”
Monster is magnificent.
I will try to chime in with a more detailed critique later in the week, but the above will certainly do if necessary.
hmmm, Wiki has Tongue as the ‘fifth and final single’ and it was - intriguingly - only released in the UK and Ireland. number 13 in the UK which is good for a 5th single. can’t believe they didn’t put Tongue on the best-of, i don’t think the band have had much time for it since.
A big part of that could be because Bill Berry collapsed with his aneurysm whilst playing “Tongue” live - I think I remember reading something akin to a “bad memories” effect in a subsequent interview.
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Well it’s possible my memory is faulty but if I get the chance to root around in my old stuff in my parents’ house over Christmas I’ll see what I can dig out!
5 singles in the UK i think:
Kenneth
Crush
Strange Currencies
Bang & Blame
Tongue
Also, i think the calender came with ‘Crush With Eyeliner’. The Tongue 7" single came with a cool enamel pin badge of the ‘Monster’ head.
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There is definitely an interview the band did just before the album came out where Michael Stipe says that ‘Tongue’ is has favourite song on the album (think this is in the ‘Rough Cut’ documentary).
I stand corrected in both counts. How many singles were there on automatic? Have a definite memory of despairing of rem and radiohead for releasing six singles from a twelve song album (the bends was a double a side though). Could well be misremembering but it was around the time of two part cd singles and idiot competist me spent more on those bloody things than clothing or food during my late teen years.
The Automatic singles were:
Drive
Man on the Moon
Sidewinder
Everybody Hurts
Nightswimming
Find The River
6 singles! Mental.
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The curse of Monster!
On a similar note, Peter Buck on why What’s the Frequency… gets slower towards the end:
“The truth is, Mike [Mills] slowed down the pace and we all followed, and then I noticed he looked strange. It turned out he had appendicitis and we had to rush him to the hospital. So we never wound up redoing it.”
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Ah ok that was the one that made me cry.
So so many bloody singles. I think my teenage self expected someone to be at my place and go “well you look like you have ALMOST all the singles off the bends but you’re lacking part two of street spirit so, sadly, I won’t be sleeping with you after all”
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I love the idea that your response to appendicitis would be not to stop playing altogether but to play a bit slower. Mills is hardcore.
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i’ve read a lot of interviews with Buck and he strikes me as someone who likes to gently embellish the truth, shall we say
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Buck seems like a lovely bloke…but remember that time he went apeshit on a British Airways flight by throwing yoghurt around and shouting “I AM REM!”…weird.
Suede Coming Up is another example of this. 10 tracks, 5 singles (all top 10 i think!)
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I love the lyrics on ‘I Took Your name’: “I don’t wanna be Iggy Pop but…if that’s what it takes”.
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