As I explained a while back, we’re currently in the process of making our way through this 180 year old home of ours, and deciding which of our possessions should remain, and which should be jettisoned into the ever-churning gyre of filth and garbage that surrounds us. Well, what follows is my justification for continuing to keep two copies of the first record put out by my one-day-a-year band, The Monkey Power Trio.
TITLE: The Monkey Power Trio’s 1995 release, “The First Hour”
ITEM NUMBER: 0004
BOX NUMBER: 1
DESCRIPTION: This is the second Monkey Power Trio-related entry to make its way into the official family archive. The first, as you may recall, was the t-shirt I was wearing during our first session, recorded in Brooklyn back during the summer of 1995. Well, this 7″ record, which we decided to call, “The First Hour” in recognition of the fact that we’d decided to keep doing the same thing every year, was the result of that first session, and, with its frantic pace and improvisational nature, it laid the foundation for everything that would come afterward in our catalog.
No, it’s not a great record by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s an historic artifact from a point in time that’s important to me — the exact moment when my friends and I decided not to just move away from one another and become adults, but to stay connected over time and geography, bound together by a promise meet and record one day a year until just one of us remains alive.
This 7″ single contains the MPT originals, Baby Eyes, The Theme from the Film: “Daddy, What Was Monkey Power?”, Jehovah’s Shit List, October Throughout History, Kling Kling Bang Bang Pop, and You Like-a the Cheese?.
I could go on, but everything worth saying about this first record, and how it came to be, was already been said in the exhaustive oral history about “The First Hour” I posted with my bandmates Matt Krizowsky and Dan Richardson.
[note: I had thought about including two copies of this particular artifact, with he thought being that, once I’m gone, both Clementine and Arlo should be forced to care for one. Upon further reflection, however, I decided to just put in one copy as a test to see which one of them loves me more.]