musical genius people

I’m back from Minnesota.

I was there with four of my friends, writing and recording what will eventually (after about a year of fighting and procrastinating) become the eleventh record by the world’s only one-day-a-year-until-we’re-all-dead band, The Monkey Power Trio.

I feel like I should say something about the experience, but I can’t seem to muster the energy… not even the little bit that it would take to tell you about the Mall of America, where me and the rest of the band went to recharge our “batteries of hate” before stepping into the studio.

(For those of you who care about such things, the official recording of last year’s session should be available in time for Christmas. I was thinking that we should call it, “John Peel Liked Us and Now He’s Dead,” but I suspect that my bandmates will want something a bit more tasteful, like “In the Wake of Janet Jackson’s Nipple”… Actually, I think we’ve already decided to call it “Spiders in the Blood Supply,” but that might be a secret. Anyway, I’ll let you know when it’s available.)

I wish I had something from this year’s session for you to listen to, like a 6-hour podcast of the entire thing from start to finish, complete with the fights over lyrics and the stupid kinds of dick jokes that middle-aged men in one-day-a-year bands make, but there’s nothing. Maybe, once our kids are old enough, we’ll put them in charge of doing such things. (Wouldn’t it be cool if we could stream the whole thing live and let people mix their own tracks?) In the meantime, we’ll just stick with the same old system that’s worked so well for us these past ten years:

The Monkey Power Formula for Success

1) spend lots of money we don’t have to meet one day a year

2) lock ourselves in the smelly basement studio of a stranger with lots of beer

3) hit “record”

4) yell nonsense for a few hours while beating on instruments

5) leave basement, sober up, and all go our separate ways

6) sink into a pit of depression for a few months (at least for me)

7) finally muster up the courage to listen to the tapes of the session

8) argue for a month or so about which songs are most likely to stand the test of time (while not embarrassing us too much in front of our loved ones)

9) press about four of the songs written at the session on vinyl… a format that fewer than one in ten thousand even have the wherewithal to play

10) repeat until dead

In the way of context, I should let you know that the non-Clementine kid featured in the last post (Leah) is the daughter of my old high school friend, and bandmate, Dan, and his wife Jen. It was their family that graciously hosted this year’s reunion.

Oh, one last little anecdote… As Linette, Clementine and I were leaving their house, Jen told us that Leah had just picked up a piece of lint off the bathroom floor and said to her, “I think this is from one of daddy’s friends.” Then, after a moment of pondering it, she added, “…probably Mark.” I’m not sure what I’d done to give her the impression that I left a trail of lint, but I thought that was funny.