with
(conducted by Jeff Roe, May 23rd, 2004, Eagle Rock, CA)
The Monolators are a kick-ass three-piece rock band based in L.A. They have a website, www.themonolators.com, that you should go to. This barely competent reporter went to visit bassist Eli, his drumming wife Mary, and studly guitar player Mike at Mary and Eli's home in Eagle Rock, where we talked about girl bands, Mary's soon-to-end pregnancy, and Madonna's wandering accent. Let's watch...
E is for "Eli" (bass guitar, banjo, and vocals)
M is for "Mary" (drums, babies)
Mk is for "Mike" (guitar)
J is for "Jeff" (interrogator / hamboner)
J[eff]: Let's just start from the beginning: when did your band form? When did you first form a band called The Monolators?
M[ary]: Mike and I started playing together in 1997. And we were just playing in his garage with another guy, Henry, and we just stayed in his garage until I met Eli in 2000. Henry pretty much stopped playing with us, and I started playing with Eli, and then Mike said "Can I just come play with you guys?" since Henry wasn't showing up any more. [Laughing] And then it was another couple years of playing, in not his garage, but in the living room of my house.
E[li]: But we took a lot of time off to do things like get married.
M: And we did one little in-house show in my living room. And in the summer of 2002, when we recorded our EP, we just said this is it it's time. Lets go out.
Mk[Mike]: Let's go out in public.
M: We booked our first gig at Zen [Zen Sushi, a restaurant/nightclub in Silverlake], and then we just kept on booking shows.
J: Were you always called The Monolators?
All: NOO!!
E: When I met them, they didn't have a name.
M: At different times we tossed around a zillion names and we went as HMM for a while, as in Henry, Mike and Mary.
E: Oh, you did? I didn't know that.
Mk: I didn't know that either.
J: In Mary's little world.
M: In my little world... and then we didn't have one, and then for our first little living room gig we went as Lonely451.
E: We liked the lonely part but there were too many number bands: Blink 182 and Matchbox and all that crap.
J: What was the origin of that band name?
Mk: It was a lonely guy on the web.
E: [laughing] Oh God! I forgot about that. We were passing around this guy's web page and it was his personals ad on the web and he was like, "Hello, ladies!" There was his picture and some text and the picture was this guy who looked like Ringo, kind of [he had a Beatles haircut], and he was wearing an ascot and this really flashy suit and pointy shoes and his little personal ad said sometihng like
E+M together: "I am a gigolo!"
E: "And that means a lover of many women," and he says, "Am I not hot? You can tell I am rich because I have all this gold jewelry and it's not the cheap kind Americans wear. It's the good stuff. Here's a picture of my car. I drive a Mercedes." And it wasn't a picture of his car. It was a Mercedes from an ad. And he said, "I've taken my phone number off of this ad because I've been getting too many prank calls. But if you want to e-mail me..." and then his name was lonely451 and we identified with him.
Mk: Because underneath the bling-bling we're all...
E: I liked the name Modulator, but there already is Modulator, so we changed one letter and it became The Monolators.
J: So how did you meet? how did Eli meet Mike and Mary?
M: [pointing to Eli] We met.
E: Mary and I met. It was at a bar. It was a mutual friend's birthday party. She ended up working with some people at Calarts, and I knew those people too. Went to a party, and she was there, and we were trying to think of something to talk about. Somebody mentioned that she played the drums, so that broke the ice.
M: I was talking to his friend, and he asked if I was still drumming, and that's when he [Eli] chimed in.
E: So I could get a drummer, because drummers are hard to find. I should just point out that Taj, our dog, just got the voice box out of his chew toy. He's totally wrecked it. Good job, Taj!
M: So we started dating. Our first date, the big excuse to go out, was to "play music" sometime. It was a couple weeks before we got together to play music.
J: So you ended up at a bar, and one thing leads to another...
M: Exactly. and the next thing you know, we're married with a kid. So we started playing together, and Mike was like, [all mopey] "Hey, can I just come play with you guys?"
Mk: Was that how sad it was?
M: [Laughing] No, No.
Mk: We found that we have a lot of the same tastes, so we would just chat about what we had in common.
E: And make fun of other bands, like Wings. They're so weak.
J: So when you were playing for five years, were you recording anything or were you just writing songs?
Mk: We were just writing songs. One of the things that happened...we were both writng songs and we were trying to do that 50/50 and switch instruments, and it wasn't really until we decided to stop doing that we could get the sound right, and that's part of the reason it took so long, and in the interim we didn't do any recording.
M: There's a videotape of the living room gig.
E: One of Mike's really old songs is on our new album, and a song I wrote twelve years ago. It dates from my college years, and it's really sad to say that that was twelve years ago.
J: What was your college major?
E: I was a film and video studies major. I wanted to be a critic but I realized it was really horrible, and I would be a very bad critic because all I could really say is "I DONT LIKE THAT" and I couldn't really explain why.
J: So what's your songwriting process like now?
E: We write songs seperately now. I will write songs and Mike will write songs. Lately what we've been doing is going out and seeing other bands and making fun of them in new songs, in homage.
M: But it's not really mocking though. We just found a word that they used particularly funny and we built a song around it..
J: So you're going to play shows again in August?
E: We hope.
M: We're going to play. I'm demanding it.
E: It depends on what shape Mary's in.
M: I don't care. It's going to happen. We just practiced today and you can see that I'm huge.
E: We need a roadie.
M: That's what it is, really.
J: It's an investment in your future laziness.
M: As I was saying last night, we have chores to do.
E: I wrote all of my dad's lectures when I was about four. I never got any thanks for that.
J: Your father's a professor?
E: He is a professor. He teaches anthropology at Michigan State University.
J: Where did you go to college?
E: I went to the University of Michigan and then I came out to L.A. to go to the infamous CalArts for experimental animation.
J: [Mocking] I have a useless degree!
E: I have two useless degrees. But I do make animated films still, and I'm going to make a video for The Monolators.
J: Once you have a kid you have all the free time in the world.
E: What I figured is that they don't let you sleep, so I'll use that time to do the video.
J: At your live shows, do you make it a habit to dance? Do you encourage people to dance?
E: We like to, yes. We would like that. The problem is getting them to actually dance is almost impossible.
J: So you encourage all kinds of dancing?
E: Any kind: ballroom, square, disco, breakdancing, the Russian thing where you get down and kick.
J: So how do you guys decide what songs you're going to play?
E: We don't have many songs, so anytime someone brings a song in, we'll do that song.
M: No. There are plenty of songs that we've brought in, and we just couldn't work them, and we would have to give up on it.
E: Or i wrIte a song and I think it's original, but it turns out it's the tune to a different song, like I rewrote "C'mon Feel the Noise" and I wrote new words to "If You're Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands." It's true. She [Mary] had to tell me that.
J: Is there a picture of you with the look on your face right after someone told you?
E: No, but I can recreate it for you anytime [makes sad face with quivering lower lip].
J: Are there any plans to record anything, like for a new album?
E: The one that we're getting back from the pressing plant next week is our first one, and we did that from August to December [of last year]. We have songs written for an EP; we want to put out an EP next. I'd like to make an actual vinyl record.
M: All the songs have been written since our last show [in March].
E: I was sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike, and it never struck, so I figured out that it's something you have to work at, which is kind of a pain in the ass.
J: [to Mike] Are you still writing songs?
Mk: I write all the time, but they're different songs. They're anxious, bummer songs that don't fit in with what The Monolators do. We want people to dance, and to take off their clothes, hopefully. I don't want to bum them out on their night off to go out and have a good time. I play [my songs] in my room and that's where they're staying. I'm trying to learn the ropes of recording and I'll eventually put out a CD of my songs.
M: He's shy about his singing.
J: Will you sing and dance?
Mk: I'll try. Once in a while I'll dance, once in a while I'll disrobe.
J: So what are some of your favorite songs that you've come up with?
E: We really like "Let's Be Best Friends in Space" and we also like "The Rejection Set" and I really like "Summertime in My Car."
M: We have a new one called "We Fell Dead" and I keep singing that one to myself.
[Eli says a bunch of pretentious stuff about expressionist painting and how it reflects his tastes in music and we all laugh at him]
M: Since we've told people we're pregnant, some of the response has been a little weird, like "Oh, I guess that's it for you. You're done." And that's just made me angry and more persistant [that] i'm returning in August. We're going to make it happen.
E: There's no question that it will be harder...
M: But we just have to do it.
E: We're putting together a little babysitter network. Our basic plan [for touring] is to get my brother to come along and watch the kid.
J: Are you going to get little baby-sized earplugs?
E: We'll probably need that...I had this high-tech solution worked out where I was going to get an electronic drum kit, and we'd all play without amplifiers. We'd plug into a stereo system and wear headphones, and then I realized that's just dumb.
J: Any digs, anyone you want to get back at?
Mk: I got no ill will towards anyone.
E: When I was in college, I had this roommate that I didn't like. He was a pain in the ass, and I wanted to get revenge on him being a pain in the ass. I had this cat at the time and she would go out and bring me things from outdoors, and one day she brought me a mouse's head. so I got the ice cube tray and I put the mouse head in the ice cube tray and filled it with water and put it in the freezer, thinking he would make a nice cold drink for [his girlfriend] and she would see there was a mouse head in it, like it would get that far. I thought this was BRILLIANT, and I chickened out at the last minute.
J: Has anyone taken revenge out on you that you know of?
Mk: Everybody, always. At least I think that's what's going on, anyway.
E: The Monolators is a revenge against another band that I was not allowed to be in, so I formed The Monolators in revenge and we're still going and that band is not. HA HA HA HA!
M: He's talking about my all-girl band [with friends and ex-members of the band Emm't Swank]. There were five of us. I've always wanted to be in an all-girl band. I thought we wrote some good songs...
E: Of which I am jealous.
M: We played a grand total of three times in public. We had a really good time. [Before we played] we had the website, we had the photos, we had the outfits chosen...but he [Eli] desperately wanted to be in our band.
E: My version of this is that I found out that Emm't Swank was breaking up, and at the last show, someone made it sound like Summer [singer for Emm't Swank] was going to come and jam with us. And then Mary tells me " No, she's not going to jam with us." She's going to be in another band that I can't be in, because I'm not a girl. I did stuff like naming them [Hope Rides a Pony] and I did their photography and I was [afraid that I] was going to be their roadie and get left in the dust.
M: All the husbands and boyfriends were all jealous. We had all the elements. We had the songs, we had the hot chicks. [But] everybody had too many things going on. It was too hard to coordinate.
J: So we got Mary's side of the story and we got Eli's side of the story. Let's hear the truth.
Mk: We opened up for them at our first show, and they were like "Why do we even play shows anymore?" After seeing the glory of The Monolators, they decided, and rightly so, to bow out and say "Forget it; it's not going to work."
E: And that's my revenge story.
J: So any closing remarks, any plugs, bands you like?
E: We love Maxwell Demon. We have to plug The Leeches, who are now The Screeches.
M: Lizzie [from The Leeches] helped me out on a little short film called "Pinky's Last Stand." It's a revenge chick flick starring stuffed animals. Lizzie helped with a vocal on a techno song [for the soundtrack].
E: We should also mention Smells Like Flan. They're a two piece. One plays the harp and the other plays twelve-string guitar and they write great songs.
Mk: Pete Holland is a folk singer who I think writes fantastic lyrics. peteholland.com.
E: Circus Minor.
M: And Deathhouse Chaplain.
[Mary, at my instigation, waxes philosophic about Madonna's come-and-go British accent. She decides that it's understandable, since her husband...and baby are British.]
E: Our last plug should be for our song of the month service. Anyone can e-mail us and request that we cover a song and we will cover that song and post it on our website for them.
[The conversation than turns to old men and hamboning. I demonstrate my hamboning skills. Mary then comments on her ass hurting and her knitting circle waiting for her]
All: Bye!
M: Thank you no-fi "magazine"!
tthhee eenndd
