Intro to MONSTER

  At midnight on September 27, 1994 I bought my first fresh R.E.M. album, MONSTER.  I drove the 15 miles to Manchester, NH with my friend Christy and we sat in the parking lot expecting the midnight madness sale at Strawberries to be crazy.  I think when the doors opened there were only about ten customers.  Of course!  They had a million copies of the damn album, why would anyone shop for it at that late hour?  I bought the cassette ... don't laugh, my car only had a tape player ... it was 1994, okay?  Christy bought an official book with the CD in the back and a bunch of photos which she gave me a year later.
  We had already heard 'Kenneth,' so I remember sitting in the car as 'Eyeliner' played and thinking that this was the first new song from R.E.M. that I had heard from music that I personally purchased ... plus I was one of the first people to hear it at all!  Christy enjoyed that track, but as the album went on she was less and less impressed, while I was more enthralled.  This was the beginning of the end of her fandom, even when we went to see the band live the next year and could not believe that we were in the same room as the four men from Athens, GA she was slipping away from the group.  I couldn't get enough.
  Buck said while recording that the goal was to put all the mandolins, banjos, and dulcimers away and simply rock out.  Was Monster a response to Nevermind and the burgeoning alt rock movement started in Seattle and sweeping the country?  Did the band feel pressure to get back on the Rock and Roll track after a couple of brilliant Adult Contemporary albums?  The very movement that the band had a hand in inspiring was taking off and it was time to rear back and turn up and let it rip.  Plus, they were now being influenced themselves by this young group of musicians.  The songwriting called for this type of heavy hand, but you can be sure that the start of the sound was Buck.  There's no way he didn't have a wall of sound and a million effects to play with.  Most of the guitar tracks on this album are very simple, but heavily layered and effected.  The result is pretty astounding, but I'd love to hear an acoustic version of this album ... I think the songs would stand up ...
   Also, in looking back at this album I think it's the most obvious in terms of concept album. I usually point to this album when I describe R.E.M. as an art-house band. Highly conceptual and obsessed with the mystique of the Velvet Underground, I believe that this type of offering is what the band always saw themselves as--a creation of theme and style, treating each song and album as a work of art. This is what Peter means when he says a song doesn't fit the feel of an album. When they were crafting the sound of each incarnation of the band, the product was at the forefront of their minds and each album has a concept. It's why even when the albums are uneven, they still work.
  First up ... WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY KENNETH ...