78: Monkey Power Trio

and some comic or whatever

The Remarkable Monkey Power Trio

I owe a review to my friends in the Monkey Power Trio - I owe a few, but this will have to suffice. Despite my ongoing fatigue, the guilt of not writing it has finally overwhelmed me. Because I want to spread the word. Here:

The Monkey Power Trio are a band of friends who made a pact while young and dumb to record a 45’s worth of of new music in one meeting, once a year, until they all died. They’re 26 years into this promise: 26 recording sessions collected on 20+ records (some records have more than one year’s work on them).

I met them online because we both had “monkey” in our domain names back then. I was reviewing records at BadMonkeyX, and they sent me their first few records to review. I love the idea of this band as much as I like their music, but I do really enjoy their music: it is unpracticed, shambolic, very human. They never don’t sound like friends fucking around with music for fun and love. When they nail it, it’s great.

Also they’re really funny. Album and song names, covers, and plenty of tracks are wild and silly. Their songs are - to my best understanding - written on that same day and so they tend to be super slapdash. There’s usually a great track or two on each record.

Their latest recording, Cry Mama, contains three years’ worth of recordings - 11 songs - and they break down into the two main kinds of songs MPT do: absolutely stupid rocking ballers (amazing) and guitar and vocal “songwriter” musical meanderings (terrible). Sand Flea (my favourite in a long time) fits the first category; Parties of Our Yesteryears fits the second. You can hear any of the MPT catalogue at their site - in fact, Cry Mama’s track list has a couple of mp3 only tracks as a bonus for not buying the record.

See below for my guide to MPT Ballers that should be their greatest hits so far album.

The notes on this one are great:

The Monkey Power Trio might sneak into your town, right into your neighborhood, and you wouldn’t know until now. We might Airbnb in that shotgun shack or that bungalow next to your uncle’s.

We plug in our megaphones and cigar boxes and wet our sax reeds. We take what the Mississippi washes up. We use the stray voltage of streetcars. And then, we make garbage art for our fellow survivors.

The songs don’t so much wash away our annual sins as reveal them, like time slowly revealing skeletons. These songs hang on to our precious regrets. We fight and we succumb in hope and affliction.

These 11 tracks should be put on a nice thick record with copious liner notes as an MPT Hits record. A retrospective now might fuel a little attention, and everybody loves a nice 180 gram piece of fossil fuel music in a heavy gatefold cover. Also, a documentary is also deserved. Somebody, please use your time on Earth to make that movie.

Monkey Power Trio: Their Greatest Hits

October Throughout History (1995)

Desparate People Do Desparate Things [sic] (1997)

Fatty Rocks - (1998) (unavailable online now due to estate complaints: Old Fatty licks a bunghole for a quarter, and his grandkids don’t dig it. Oh! The cover could be a crude drawing of that scene. I am a genius.)

I Run From Fights (1999)

Action Going (1999)

Butt Science (2003)

Gallon of Gin (2005)

Little Billy Oshin (2006)

Winifred (2008) (note: release this as the single)

Bottom of the Lake (2014)

Liquor Truck (2017)

Sand Flea (2020)

Thanks Monkey Power Trio, for doing the jobs that Americans won’t do. God bless us, every one!

love

Santa