Photo Credit: Ray Rod
Einstein’s Riceboys; Cherry Cake; Boy Dirt Car; Impact Test; F/i; Vocokesh; Samurai Rock Band; The River Westerners; Peder Hedman Quartet; Voot Warnings; One Fish, Blue Fish; Dark Façade; Violent Femmes; Sound-Sound; Nev and Dupah. If you could take all the music associated with Monkey Bar, it would reach around the Sun and back. Well, maybe not quite but you get the idea.
The Milwaukee quintet’s branch of the local-music family tree is an impressive one. They are finally getting a sense of due with a self-titled new album of music recorded in 1990 by Chris Grunert. It is a concise Polaroid Instamatic photograph of a band captured in time.
Front man Steve Whalen delivered his lyrics like there was a clock ticking inside his head, just waiting get out. His songwriting collaborators, Tim Taylor (Guitar) and Bobby Friedman (keyboards and saxophone), recall the ease at which Whalen would open his notebooks as they played some music.
“I can remember having the chords for ‘Sick on the Porch’ written. Steve heard them and started writing lyrics and a melody without a hitch. He was done in the time it took to play through it three times. That’s ridiculous,” recalls Friedman.
Taylor claims to have little recollection of the band’s days, but then goes on to detail how well all the pieces fit together—n particular, praising his bandmates work ethic. Taylor’s guitar parts often act as a counterpoint to Whalen’s voice, adding understated solos and riffs that complement the songs. The band’s sound is rock with pop hooks, topped by what could easily be first-person lyrics.
“Considering all the records I’ve been on I really think it sounds better than some of the money we wasted …” Whalen laughs. He says over the years, time went by and the band forgot about the project.
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They all knew each other from other bands. He says Monkey Bar came together at a good time.
“The first day I met Tim, he had five songs already written without vocals. I walked over to his house, we got out a bottle of Early Times; we did it all in one afternoon,” Whalen says. “Pretty much the same with Bob. We were older and new how to write a song. We wanted to be Mott the Hoople!”
Practice All Night Long
He says the band wrote and practiced all the time. “Once we decided what to do, we still had fun, but between Tim and Bob—they could be taskmasters. We went in well-prepared. Every Tuesday night … we couldn’t wait because we could practice as long as we wanted. We weren’t bothering anyone at Ninth and Walker!”
Monkey Bar had an urgent intensity that gets captured on this LP culled from the two-sessions. In hindsight, the recording-on-a budget philosophy works in the band’s favor. Thinking back to music from this era, technology and studio gadgets often steal attention from songs and musicianship.
Not here. The lack of gimmickry lends a timeless feel to the songs. According to drummer (and “new guy”) Rusty Olson, it was recorded on a six channel 4-track Tascam cassette recorder. They had to record everything live then bounce tracks down to make room for vocals, sax and solos. Olson had only been playing with Monkey Bar six weeks before the recording session.
“Not a lot of room for error,” he recalls. “And if there was, you had to live with it. We mixed down to a Sony Beta Hi-Fi video recorder. At the time the price of DAT machines was insane and it was the best option we had.”
The characterization of Olson’s greenhorn status fills in the complexity of the band. “It was compromised of employees from (music store) Record Head and people that had been working together in bands in the past. Some were married or had been married, had kids, homes and car payments. I, on the other hand, was none of these things, I was 21 and working at a local art supply store. I didn't know anyone at all, really at that point.”
Unbridled Enthusiasm
Bands often thrive on personality dynamics. Whalen’s unbridled enthusiasm, especially in the live setting captured a fair share of the attention. Bassist Greg Kurczewski recalls, “Rusty and I are a couple years younger than the other three guys, so we really liked the more rocking songs in the set, as opposed to the ballads. In hindsight, the ballads were as good or better than the rockers!”
Another example of the cosmos working in its own way, Kurczewski would open Rockhaus musical instrument store in 1990. When he moved to Virginia, Olson took over the business in 2003. The Monkey Bar album is sixth release on the Rockhaus label.
Thanks to connections with the late Milwaukee music promoter Tony Selig and other friends in the music scene Monkey Bar scored a few high-profile shows including Jane's Addiction, Die Kreuzen, Plasticland, Voot Warnings, The Frogs, Couch Flambeau Killdozer, Tar Babies and Down By Law.
Projects like this album have a way of setting perspective. All five members relay a level of respect for their bandmates after decades of life experiences. Whalen says it was a pleasure being in a group, confident the players would hit their marks musically and the blend of veterans with an intelligent, youthful rhythm section. He says it is a kind of a redemption for the fact that it didn’t come out when it should. “I’m glad people can hear it,” he says
Friedman gets the last word. “People who came see us had a hard time pegging us as any particular type of music—which I consider the best thing you can say about a band.”
