Happy now, just sitting on the couch

So, I picked up a cd by a band called Monkey a couple of weeks ago called !Changito!, on Deluxe Records. The name sounded familiar when I found this disc in a dollar bin, and since it was ska… and monkeys… I was sold. After listening to the disc, I discovered that I had heard Monkey’s “Bachelor” on Stub Daddy‘s Potluck comp years back. Catchy damn song.

Monkey is a damn catchy band, too. They play a mambo / jazz influenced take on ska. There’s a Skavoovie & the Epitones flavor to the vocal delivery, but the band definitely takes their music in the direction of another California ska stalwart, Jump With Joey. Very Latin.

Thanks to the folks in the LiveJournal ska community, I was able to discover that !Changito! is their first album, and they’ve recently released their third, Cruel Tutleage on Asian Man (who also put their split 7″ with Unsteady). Monkey had a second release is called Station Wagon Living, which was also released on Deluxe. Lastly, they were on the Freedom Sounds tribute to the Skatalites on Shanachie, doing “Freedom Sounds.”

Monkey is San Jose’s oldest (if only) ska band and one of the hardest working NorCal ska bands, and recently played their 10th Anniversary show the Blank Club in San Jose. They are up for an opening slot at the International Ska Circus in Las Vegas on March 11. Go MySpace.

This is an incredibly long and pointless post to talk about just one song, but “Bachelor” is perhaps the most accurate musical description I’ve heard of a single man living alone. Not too long ago, I was unmarried and living in a shitty apartment in what is colorfully reffered to as the “student ghetto.” Needless to say, it was a house divided into five apartments, and, well… the layous reflected that. I was also amazingly poor. Walking to work because I couldn’t afoord gas, losing 15-20 pounds in a month, that sort of thing. Had I remembered this song at the time, I think I might have been in a cheerier mood. It goes out to all the poor-ass single men out there.

Monkey – “Bachelor
Monkey – “Summertime Sun