Alright alright alright alright!
Around here it’s been a busy few weeks. That is just the nature of the terrifying GREEN MONKEY BEAST. Oh wait. It’s not October yet, just September so scratch that terrifying business.
Let start out with ye olde Green Pajamas shall we? It’s a brand new album, all new , all shiny, all groovy. It’s Forever For A Little While!. We must wholeheartedly recommend this for placement on your short stack of essential listening spins for the fall of 2022. Very much a follow-up to last year’s, Sunlight Might Weigh Even More (both have five words in the title!), this album again features stunning Jeff Kelly song-craft steeped in classic Green Pajamas neo-psychedelic production sensibilities. You know you want that.
IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH: Today is the official release date and oops – as of this morning, we don’t have the discs. We ran into some “technical difficulties” that delayed the manufacturing and expect to have them in later today. This is the first release in 250 or so we have missed having the goods in hand and hopefully it won’t become a habit. For all of you that have pre-ordered, we expect the discs to arrive this afternoon and we will get them out to you in today’s post.
Now back to our regular programming.
Jeff: “The last album was influenced by Strung so I was thinking a bit about its follow-up, Meagan’s Bed, when putting this one together. It’s a little more autumnal than Sunlight, which I kind of regard as a mostly sunny record.” Jeff also cites as influences, living life during the pandemic, the planets, Persian music, Erik Satie, Japanese films by Akira Kurosawa, and even singer/actress Meiko Kaji’s Female Prisoner, Scorpion, and Lady Snowblood movies. “‘Menthol Woman’ was a song I wrote when I was a teenager. I wanted to record it so I took the original nonsensical lyrics out and turned it into a kinda Meiko Kaji tribute!”
Other songs go way back as well. Someone with a bootleg cassette of one of the band’s earliest live performances might just recognize “I Love the Way You Smile,” and “Under the Martian Sun” was written around the time Jeff was in art school in the late 1970s. Though Jeff performed almost all of the music on this album himself, long-time PJs, Eric, Laura, and Joe contribute songs, each singing their own compositions.
Jeff has a trippin’ new video for “The Hidden Fortress.”
Add it all up, it’s yet another collection of startling depth and variety, nearly a double-album’s worth of pop invention laced with 4-string Persian setar, tablas, synthesizers, and Jeff’s trusty Telecaster guitars and Rickenbacker bass. It is available on CD and download right now. We expect a somewhat shorter version to be released on vinyl in the new year by our friends in Greece, Sound Effect Records. https://greenmonkeyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/forever-for-a-little-while
Next! We have a brand new Rendition album (their third), Peaks Distort. Thirty-six minutes and 44 seconds of improvised goodness for Mark and Ruth plus new drummer Steven. I really like this one. Steven: “Rendition create a sound that is restrained in tone, but unfettered in scope. As improvisation it is avant-garde, but it remains more ethereal than cerebral, more exploratory than explosive. Each performance offers a cinematic score to accompany the images it evokes. This piece was composed as it was performed, and was designed to allow for an ebb and flow of dynamics. Listeners can expect group movements to give way to solo moments, and individual excursions to bloom into collective actions.” Exactly what I would have said if asked. You want to start digging this right now. https://greenmonkeyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/peaks-distort
Meanwhile,
in the wayback machine, for friends of the most ancient sounds, we have made available for the first time ever on Bandcamp (for free!), the second ever GMR AotM, Steve Rabow’s 1982 Best of the KZAM Local Tape Extravaganza
Steve, who was king of KZAM in Seattle and was the first person to play my racket on the actual radio, sez: “I’m about to open up a free-access website which includes dregs from the past, including a few radio shows and local-tape extravaganzas” Could I put it back up? Sure!
You can read everything Steve and I had to say about it in 2009 right here: https://greenmonkeyrecords.com/sept-2009-steve-rabows-1982-best-of-the-kzam-local-tape-extravaganza/ And as was the case in 2009, we don’t know who most of these people are, so if you hear on and know who it is, drop a line and we’ll update it.
One of the tunes on that Rabow tape was Al Bloch’s Wenis, which we released a couple years ago. Al is cranking stuff out at an unbelievable rate. He has a new album and single with his band The Dual Gravitons and another with his bother Kurt, Bad Scene II, that totally rips. Your President totally recommends you buy each of these albums today!
Anything else?
Oh yes, those darn True Olympians. Well, after much wiggling and waggling, jiggling and joggling, Olympia: A True Story has an official release date, Oct. 14. The 40 song, 3 CD, 80 page book monster is out the door and being manufactured. So damn exciting. Here’s a mockup of the counter-top CD holder we will have for stores to carry it.
We just got a fantastic write up in ThurstonTalk that you should read and memorize each glorious word:
Of course I will be telling you even more about is next month. But for now, you want to know, there will be a record release spectacular show at the historic Olympia Ballroom right here in downtown Olympia on Friday, November 4. We hope to bring onstage many Olympia Superstar guests (there are over 100 Olympia musicians on the album) and expect to have a whole lotta fun. Advance tickets will be available for this OLYMPIA EVENT OF THE YEAR! So keep an eye out for that, children.
Busy, busy, busy!
td Sept. 2012