BY RICHARD MARTIN
rmartin@wweek.com
The Anti-Oasis? Red Monkey shuns the corporate machine.With all the cash orbiting around bands these days, it's tough to resist the urge to grab a little. As recently as five years ago, many musicians would scoff at the enticements that labels, song publishers and advertising agencies regularly offer today. But "sell-out" doesn't carry the stigma it once did. Bands that seemingly maintain high standards of artistic integrity are perfectly willing to cash in at the first opportunity. Those on the take have a reasonable enough excuse. Throughout the '80s and early '90s, corporations treated musicians like employees in fast-food restaurants, paying an artist as little as possible in exchange for hard work. Now, performers can reap greater financial rewards; where they used to sing for their supper, they can now trade in songs for contracts as sumptuous as a seven-course meal. Red Monkey's having none of it. Unlike their fellow countrymen in the major-label band Supergrass, who last year released an album half-jokingly titled We're in It for the Money, the three musicians in this upstart band from Newcastle are in it for the music. Singer-guitarist Pete Dale says his band's only financial goal is to earn enough to continue playing. "The satisfying parts are getting to travel, meet people, play shows for enthusiastic kids and get something out of playing music for ourselves," he says from a stop on Red Monkey's first U.S. tour. "We get an enormous adrenaline buzz out of doing it. We're all pretty big music fans, and we all love playing. That's the motivation." It sounds like a quaint notion, but to Dale, who runs the independent label Slampt with bassist-vocalist Rachel Holborow, it's a matter of integrity. Holborow, a riot grrl veteran who once toured Japan as bassist for Huggy Bear, formed Red Monkey in late 1996 with drummer Marc Walker; she soon asked longtime friend, former bandmate and Slampt co-owner Dale to join. The three released "Do What You Feel" as a 7-inch in early '97, which earned almost instant attention when famed BBC DJ John Peel added it to his playlist. The band later recorded a batch of songs in a friend's 8-track studio, which became Make the Moment (on Slampt in England and on the New Jersey indie Troubleman Unlimited in the States), an album of raw, well-constructed and brash punk rock. Stylistically and politically, Red Monkey recalls passionate Pacific Northwest bands such as Excuse 17 and Heavens to Betsy--whose members went on to found Sleater-Kinney--and the D.C. area's Fugazi and Slant 6. "I think we're in a British tradition," says Dale, "but more like the labels like Rough Trade--'80s independent music. There's not much in Britain that we would identify with today." He goes on to express disdain for some of the U.K.'s most popular acts. Asked his opinion of the Verve and Oasis, Dale's normally subdued speaking voice becomes agitated. "I'm not interested in those bands," he says. "I find them artistically void. They're just dumb lads, a bunch of guys with only a few brain cells to share between them, playing out some clichéd idea of British rock based on old records like the Beatles or the Small Faces. I find it really boring." Red Monkey songs are the antithesis of the boatloads of Brit-pop singles that keep washing up on these shores. Holborow and Dale trade vocals, shouting their way through blustery songs like "Pro-Choice" and "Litmus Test," while the trio spits out scathing rhythms and Gang of Four-like ricocheting guitar riffs. Many of the tracks carry blunt anti-capitalist messages; in the choppy, low-end tune "Not for Rent," Dale warbles, "We won't be prostitutes/Your hard currency has no meaning/We trade on trust because it's worth more/It can't be possessed." Such sentiments run throughout Make the Moment, as the commodification of culture irks Dale and Holborow almost as much as it does Noam Chomsky--in part because they're on the front lines. As members of the loose-knit riot grrl and homocore collectives that ushered in the '90s in England, D.C. and the Pacific Northwest, Dale and Holborow witnessed the peculiar transition from underground movement to marketable product. "It's a lesson you see repeated over and over in popular culture," Dale says. "Bands like Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear started off doing something radical with strong ideas. Shortly afterwards, Elastica and Echobelly and other female bands emerged with a depoliticized version of the whole thing. And the Spice Girls use that phrase 'Girl Power,' which came from the riot grrl era. "I think it's cool that there are more female musicians in the charts, even if they're on corporate labels and have a depoliticized message. It's a good thing for the generation of people coming up now. But having said that, the message got diluted and lost," he says, pausing for a breath. "But it inspired an awful lot of people." |
