Vinyl Emergency

Today, we focus on R.E.M.'s polarizing yet passionate ninth album from 1994, Monster. Craft Recordings just released a 25th anniversary package available on 1LP, 2LP, 2CD or 5CD/1Blu-Ray formats, available at remhq.com or wherever you buy music.   Growing up, renowned visual artist Chris Bilheimer's first introduction to what record covers looked like was -- serendipitously -- by staring at R.E.M.'s early classics like Murmur. In his words, he's since spent his career "stumbling into little tiny pockets of music history," creating landmark album artwork for iconic groups like Neutral Milk Hotel, Weezer and Green Day. Since the mid-90's, Chris has been R.E.M.'s official in-house art director, collaborating directly with frontman Michael Stipe on new releases, deluxe reissues, compilation packages and more. Today, Chris shares some remarkable stories about rebuilding the Monster artwork from scratch for this re-release, how stacks of portfolios containing original R.E.M. cover art were nearly lost forever, wor