Eli | Mike | Mary - click for individual bio

February 18 , 2004

I was reading an old journal entry from back in September where I confidently announced our album would be finished and ready for sale by October 2003.  Ha, ha, what a joke.  In fact, while we managed to wrap up the actual recording sessions in our garage back in December, the album's still being mixed and mastered.  We're going to meet with the engineer tonight and listen to what he's come up with-I'd give his name here, but apparently he'd rather have it discretely left off-and try to get the thing pressed up by the time of our last show
in March.  This may come off or it may not; I hope it will, but by now I've learned to be patient.

We'd also planned on shooting a Monolators video!  Although, to be honest, we're not sure for which song yet.  We haven't really figured out what our "hit" is-we think it might be a new one, "Summertime In My Car," but sometimes things we think are brilliant sort of flop around like dying fish when actually exposed to an audience.  For instance, last month we worked up what we thought was a nicely brooding cover of "Solitary Man" by Neil Diamond.  I won't say that it actually bombed, but the reaction was just sort of.clammy.  Like when I shook the hand of this guy who had been cajoled into coming to one of our shows but clearly despised us.  Tepid.

Anyway, I have to admit that, for the time being, things are slowing down slightly for the Monolators.  Mary and I are going on maternity leave (incidentally, we just found out yesterday that it's going to be a boy!) from April until probably about August, which will mean no more live shows until then, apart from our big bash at El Cid that we're planning for the end of March.  I must admit that while I'm kind of looking forward to the break I'm also going to miss the Mono shows and ripping my shirt off in public.  I hope the El Cid gig goes well-I almost felt that our Lava Lounge spectacle in January with the Lips was so good that we might have wanted to end it there.  I actually smashed my bass during "Prom Queen"-inadvertently, of course, but I understand that it looked pretty neat
when it happened.  The neck came right off! 



Yeah, if I could afford to indulge myself in this kind of showmanship on a regular basis, I would, but clearly that's not in the band budget at the moment.  And now I miss having that bass, which was really the only one I owned that would reliably stay in tune.  I'll get it fixed, of course, but I have to say that smashing it was, if totally derivative, quite a lot of fun!  Every so often I've been seized with an urge to build my own bass, despite lacking both the tools and the basic skill to do so.  A while back, after watching "The Kids Are Alright," I turned to Mary and said, "you know, I should make a bass with a paper-mache body that I could smash every night and then just re-paper for the next show.  Isn't that a great idea?"  Mary replied with one of those looks that was a mixture of concern about
the stupidity of the idea and also the calm conviction that I'd never actually attempt it.  I think you know that look.

Well, maybe I will, maybe I won't.  We'll just have to see in August.

Eli