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Monkey Time
Local avant-popsters the Trash Monkeys By
John Floyd
There
is a compilation disc of Miami-based bands that frequented Churchill's Hideaway,
the Little Haiti haunt that has been a long-standing haven for all manner of
rock and roll noise and punk-rock chaos. Issued in 1993 on Frank "Rat
Bastard" Falestra's Esync label, the CD's title embodies both the ethos
and the reality of the fringe denizens of South Florida's eclectic, often
infuriating music scene: Music
Generated by Geographical Seclusion and Beer. That isolation can no
doubt be a deterrent for experimental artists working in a town that has
little tolerance for indulgences such as feedback and left-field mayhem. Yet
it also has produced a collective body of work defined by a sense of freedom,
from the surreal punk-pop of Kreamy 'Lectric Santa to the blistering
avant-garde scree of Harry Pussy and Laundry Room Squelchers. Before them
both, though, were the Trash Monkeys, a brilliantly skewed quartet formed in
the mid-Eighties by 35-year-old guitarist Mark Feehan, birthed in Connecticut
but a South Floridian since 1972. Born from the ashes of Feehan's early
Eighties group Broken Talent, the Trash Monkeys came off like a whacked
version of Guided by Voices, with a passel of bent but utterly catchy pop
tunes that chronicled their obsession with Jesus, television, and housewives,
as well as fuzzy guitar hooks that were alternately inventive and rooted in
the minimalist pop of postpunk outfits such as Television Personalities and
Beat Happening. The group
split in the late Eighties, with Feehan going on to found Stun Guns and, in
1993, joining Harry Pussy with ex-Trash Monkey drummer Bill Orcutt. The
Monkeys issued three cassettes during their brief existence, the cream of
which has finally been compiled on Pass
Out, a nineteen-song CD that is an invaluable document of the wiggy,
weird, and visionary work of four people making the most out of their
geographic seclusion and, as the disc's insert puts it in the thank-you's,
"barley, malt, and hops." As is typical
in a city where musical oddballs are sadly outnumbered by cover bands and
professional musicians, the Trash Monkeys just sort of "fell
together," as Feehan puts it. "When Broken Talent broke up, I was
sitting around for a while. I had been hanging out with Bill, and he would
come over and I would show him guitar licks -- stupid stuff, like
"Jumpin' Jack Flash." Soon some of Orcutt's friends began dropping
by and a core lineup was formed, with Orcutt on drums, Feehan playing guitar,
Lloyd Johnson on vocals, and George Kelley on bass. "We practiced for
about six months," Feehan recalls. "We did this awful stuff, long
rambling stuff. We were into Flipper, so we were doing this atonal thing
where you have a riff and then make all this noise on top of it and just play
forever. Then we found that we were being really self-indulgent, so we
started writing real songs." After the
band's maiden show at Churchill's in July 1986, the group became a fixture at
the city's most tolerant live venue, also playing gigs at now-defunct joints
such as Club Banal and the Wet Paint House, all the while committing their
screwy sonic creations to four-track. "We would have different themes we
would work on for several months," Feehan explains. "We had this
idea that we would do a tape of made-up TV theme songs, like 'Clairvoyant
Housewife.' And we had this Jesus thing going for a while: 'Jesus Is My
Boyfriend,' 'Jesus Eyes,' 'Spank Me Jesus.' It was just completely
insane." As were most
of the group's live gigs, which were free-for-all combinations of
confrontational performance art and punk-fueled madness that made them an
easy band either to abhor or adore. With a laugh Feehan recalls that while
Churchill's owner Dave Daniels was very supportive, "the bartender hated
us. He had a T-shirt that said, 'I hate this band' that he would put on
whenever we'd come on." In honor of singer Lloyd Johnson, "We had
Lloyd's 'Vaseline Night,' where he came out covered in the stuff and throwing
it at people. Then there was 'Rotten Meat Night,' when Lloyd brought a bag of
rotten meat and was just forcing it at people. There was always something
screwed up going on at Trash Monkeys shows." The group
gradually developed a local following of sorts, but by 1989 the Trash Monkeys
hung it up. "By then we were pretty much 'that wacky band,'" Feehan
remarks, dispiritedly. "Bill wanted to go off and do other things, and
even though there were all these tremendously talented people, there were
also these tremendous egos. And it was just totally frustrating trying to get
it out there. No one knows who you are, so it's hard to get gigs. Whenever
you'd tell people you're from Miami, they'd say, 'Huh?' They couldn't believe
that anything like that could come from Miami. It's not even on their radar
screen -- any kind of unusual music coming from here." Feehan and
Kelley spent the early part of the Nineties in Stun Guns, while Orcutt and then-girlfriend
Adris Hoyos were making a very precise kind of racket as Harry Pussy, often
performing at the Alliance Cinema. After Harry Pussy's second single was
issued in 1992, Feehan was enlisted by Orcutt. "Bill decided he wanted a
little extra noise, so he called me," Feehan says matter-of-factly.
"At that point they were totally ignored. But we used to play five and
six nights a week at the Alliance, and we managed to chase a bunch of people
out of Churchill's." Feehan was with the group for about four years,
long enough to hang around for several singles and a few national tours.
Eventually the grind of touring and practicing, combined with a
near-nonexistent cash flow, drove Feehan from the band. "It came to a
point where I'd come back from a tour and I could just barely pay the rent,
then I'd have a month where I wouldn't have a single penny. We'd tour, come
back, have two weeks to practice, then we were back in the van. Bill wanted
to do more tours, but it wasn't going to pay my rent." He may not get rich with the revived Trash Monkeys, but
the slightly revamped lineup(with local punk legend the Eat's Michael O'Brien
on drums) has been writing new songs and gigging steadily to receptive
audiences throughout the area. And whatever the status of the group's
finances, the upcoming release of Pass
Out will at least affirm this Trash Monkeys' long-time commitment to
innovation and experimentation for the sheer hell of it, as well as for the
sheer fun of it. Not that it will be easy, as Feehan knows all too well.
"It's been so long trying to get [the CD] together, but that's the way
the Trash Monkeys are," he admits. "It's all so fractious. They
can't do anything. They're just incapable. It's hard enough to get out to a
gig, let alone get a CD out. |
