At my most beautiful, I count your eyelashes

In the words of Henry Hill, as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be an REM fan. I first heard Pretty Persuasion (off Reckoning, their second album) on the radio in the early eighties and just knew I loved it, all jangly guitars and strange vocal delivery - however, in the days before Shazam and the internet, if you missed the DJ saying who the artist was (or, even worse, they just didn’t bother telling you!) then you were, as the saying goes, shit outta luck. I think it took me a couple of years to track down that it was REM – during which time, I think it’s fair to say, their career hadn’t exactly sprinted out of the blocks.

Document (their fifth album) was my first purchase – during my cassette tape buying period (not entirely sure what caused that!) and I like to think my interest sparked their meteoric rise to global superstardom (and no, I didn’t go round saying “I liked them before they were famous” or “Well, obviously it’s not as good as their early stuff”). My current REM album count stands at 14 (precisely none of them on tape) – with the favourite albums being the obvious choice of Automatic for the People (stand out tracks being “Everybody Hurts” and “Nightswimming”) and the slightly less obvious choices of Green (“You are the Everything” and “World Leader Pretend”) and New Adventures in Hi-Fi (“The Wake-up Bomb” and “Leave”).

So why pick Monster? It’s to do with the lesson I learned from it - that sometimes people don’t do what you want them to but, you know what, it’s not the end of the world as we know it (I feel fine!). You’ll probably like some of it (“Crush with Eyeliner” is a great track) but you still like the stuff you liked before and you might like some of the stuff they do next (and I did!). And if you don’t, then you don’t - get over it. Over a long period of time, I realise that REM have given me a great deal of pleasure – I wish I’d seen them live a few more times, but it ain’t gonna happen now!

I feel the need to end on some more great tracks from other albums – At My Most Beautiful & Falls to Climb (from Up), Fall on Me & I Believe (Life’s Rich Pageant) and Seven Chinese Brothers (Reckoning). And if you like Seven Chinese Brothers, check out Voice of Harold (Dead Letter Office) which features the same backing track with alternative lyrics read off a record sleeve. Because, why not?!?