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JOEY ALKES OF DJ MONKEY TALKS TO ROCKWIRED ABOUT THE NEW CD '3RD WORLD WAR',PAINTING WITH SOUND, AND BEING HUMAN
INTERVIEWED BY BRIAN LUSH
The 3RD WORLD WAR is now available on CD!!! (Funny that DJ MONKEY never made ROCKWIRED their publicist - That is a hell of a campaign slogan!) DJ MONKEY returns with a collection of tracks that prove that music can mean a damn (...for as long as we've got anyway.) This time around, the balance between hope and chaos is tipped more towards chaos. Whereas their debut CD ANOTHER EVOLUTION painted the picture of a mad society coming together and coming apart, 3RD WORLD WAR takes a series of snapshots of the disintegration. It's devastating and beautiful all at once.
The opening track is the pulsating rocker HARD TIMES, an ode to NYC. The title track 3RD WORLD WAR is a dark tribal chant and just when you think that the band has abandoned that sort of beatnik-meets-Hip-Hop formula that proved the selling point for their debut ANOTHER EVOLUTION, the band finds their old familiar grove with LOVE HAS NO COLOR only to break away from it just slightly with the plaintive country gospel of GOD IS AN UNDERACHIEVER. At turns ambitious and at others humorous, 3RD WORLD WAR is no mere cute title for a clever CD by an innovative bunch. 3RD WORLD WAR is the war on banality in pop music to end all wars on banality in pop music.
This is ROCKWIRED'S second chance to catch up with DJ MONKEY. This time we got a chance to speak with co-founder JOEY ALKES, a prolific songwriter whose most noted contribution to power pop is co-writing the song A MILLION MILES AWAY by the PLIMSOULS with PETER CASE, as well as writing songs with Seattle cult rocker, JIM BASNIGHT (another ROCKWIRED subject.) Here is how it went.
What's up? The heat getting to you?
The heat is getting everyone! It's massive! I'm supposed to be going to New York for two weeks and people are telling me not to bring clothes. Come naked!
The east coast is always that way. I don't know how I lived there for twenty years.
So did I and I don't know how any one lives there and I'm a little sorry that I said that I'd be there for two weeks. It's my oldest buddy. We go back a long way. He's a jazz bass player and a tremendous guy. He's built this beautiful studio totally on the basis of love for the music, not even business. He's paying for my time. He wants to play and practice and push every knob and make sure that everything works, and I could use the trip to New York for business for us (DJ MONKEY). We're talking to WFFU and possibly playing for them.
The new CD 3RD WORLD WAR is out now. Is it everything that you wanted it to be? How does everyone in DJ MONKEY feel about it?
Everybody is a little different, but we're excited because this CD took a long time from the release of the first version of ANOTHER EVOLUTION, we started writing and recording and playing live to back ANOTHER EVOLUTION, we started making this CD. We recorded over 22 songs. And you're hearing 12. You can imagine the politics of those songs and the changes and remixing. This is the third mix of the album (3RD WORLD WAR) and it's finally been released. So, we're relieved. I think that everyone in the band will say that they are relieved. That's the best way I can put it. Of course we're excited but that's because we believe in what we do.
When I spoke to MICK McMAINS the last time, he said that putting the first CD together was an organic process. Was that the case this time around even though the roles and the personalities in the band are already sort of established?
This time around was very different. MICK and I, when we were doing ANOTHER EVOLUTION and the brothers McMAINS', would come in and do background vocals on JERUSALEM, or whenever the original horn player would come in and record, the whole thing was very personal and we really didn't think of ourselves as being good or bad or successful or not. We were just doing a project that we loved and enjoyed. It was different and we accepted that. Very often, we'd kid ourselves and say that no one is going to pay attention to this kind of a project "Where does it fit?" With the success of the first one critically and even the sales of the first one being pretty good considering CDBABY calls on the top 5%, it changed. When you play live and flesh out those parts in a real way, people become more invested in it. It was a harder album to do. It wasn't as organic in some ways and in other ways, it was more organic. For instance the song LOVE KNOWS NO COLOR came out of us messing around during rehearsal for a show we were going to do at Occidental College. It was a week before the show and Mick's son started to play some changes and I started to sing over them, out of nowhere. So that 's pretty organic, but in a different way. I had poem that I thought would work with the track, and as the whole thing grew TIP (JAMAL "LIL' TIP TOE" CRYER) says "...Listen to what I've been writing for the last three hours while you guys were jamming. It's all about diversity and oneness. Like TIP's daughter and my granddaughter. She was the inspiration for the refrain verse. She's black and she's white. She's a Navajo with green eyes. So it was very organic. THE HUM was written a year and a half after the album was supposedly finished. It was a very late song that got added, but it's one of the nicer ones in some ways. People seem to be liking it. Also, we've got a different horn player this time around.
I was about to ask. You've got two new members.
Yeah. One of them came aboard because we felt that a part of our diversity was being left out a little bit.
What do you mean?
A DJ MONKEY composition is more like a painting than a song. We were missing the brush strokes of a woman and it turned out to be CYNTHIA CONTRERAS, who adds a little bit of Latina to the picture. She's from New Mexico and she has a certain sound. It's kind of a cross between Nortena and JERRY BROWN'S ex. Linda Ronstadt. Yeah. She's latina with a pop sound. We've also added a new horn player and a violin player. So we've actually added three people. Actually CYNTHIA sang a little on ANOTHER EVOLUTION. She sang the native sounding parts on RAINDANCE. There's no instrument we can't use. For the third album, we'll probably go totally world music. I have a friend who is the Director of the SOUTH CENTRAL TRIBAL CHOIR. His name is EMIL DWYER, he's West African and French and I'd love to get that choir onto the next album. I don't know what the songs are going to be yet, but that's our thinking. We think of the sounds first and build the music from that. I'd love to combine violin with West African chants. If you're painting, you have to evolve. I feel that our albums are like paintings. Our releases are more like gallery shows. We don't worry about contacting the massive corporate distribution network. We just put it out. We live it. We play it. Every part of our composition is painted that way. It's like "Wow! A violin would add this feeling about the emotions!" or "let's add some chanting here!" or "I'm angry about this war! This war is ridiculous. All war is ridiculous. It's always the poor that die!" So you start with a chant. 3RD WORLD WAR started with me kidding around with MICK about "...If you were a fascist, you'd be chanting, "yeah, let's kill everybody! Let's go to the 3RD WORLD WAR!" It was a joke that turned into a real statement. That's how we do it.
And it's turned into a great CD. The first track HARD TIMES is a powerful opener. Wanna talk about it?
It's an old one. CHRIS FRADKIN, who co-wrote A MILLION MILES AWAY with me and PETER CASE and all of those other PLIMSOULS songs, wrote it with me. It's a song that comes out of the eighties. It's a throwback to the power pop that I used to write.
Another track that stood out for me is GOD IS AN UNDERACHIEVER. Talk about it.
It is the most important song on the album. I'm glad you liked it. The song is a debate. Me, TIP and MICK are debating God in the music. Everybody joins in on the chorus. We did it like an old country-gospel song. My son-in-law TIP doesn't like the song. He and his family come from this strong Christian faith. Tip's a gangsta rapper who has worked with SNOOP DOGG. He's extremely gangsta and raps about things that I'd never sing about, but if you listen to him on that track, I think it's one of his finest moments and competes with KANYE WEST any day. We call that rap of his the bridge. It's as deep a rap in faith as I've ever heard and so pure and honest. It's amazing. My part of the track comes from LENNY BRUCE; in the opening, the whole thing about hiding under a desk in a nuclear attack. It's from a LENNY BRUCE soliloquy. It's not paraphrased or nothing, but it's of that nature.
I remember me and MICK having this conversation where he asked me if I believed in God and I told, "I don't know what I believe, but I believe in love and I believe in Justice." and MICK said, "I believe that God made this planet, but then he got tired of us and left. It's funny! TIP didn't want the song on the album at all but in the end he gave in. .He recognized that it was fair to have the debate. It's a passionate debate.
In keeping with this misunderstanding about "GOD IS AN UNDERACHIEVER", does that sort of conflict happen often within DJ MONKEY?
It does happen, but we pride ourselves on being democratic. We pride ourselves on not squelching anyone and welcoming other points of view. Obviously if your going to give us some nazi skinhead fascist rap-thing, it's not going to happen here. Amongst well-meaning human beings, we will take differences of opinion within one song.
Is it always easy to have that democratic view? Each of you looks like you stepped into the wrong band!
I don't care what the differences are. One of the things I have found with DJ MONKEY is that among equally well-meaning people, no matter what the differences are, we will find a way. There was a time when me and IAN (McMAINS) clashed a little over the original horn player. Bands have fights like that all of the time. If there's any constant clash, it's between me and MICK. We fight a lot. We've got differences of opinion all the time and we're the closest in age and race. I know that you probably know that SYD BARRETT just died. It's amazing how PINK FLOYD used to fight with each other. Such a brilliant band! Such a unique band!
It seems like fighting is a part of the chemistry that is often times elusive in a lot of bands, I was reading that DEBORAH HARRY and CHRIS STEIN fought all of the time.
It's interesting that you should say that. When CHRIS came down ill, with whatever that disease was (Pemphigus Vulgaris) DEBORAH stuck by him. She wasn't a person who had to. She's a good-looking lady. I always used that as an example of DEBORAH'S soul. I knew DEBORAH even before BLONDIE. As a matter of fact, I knew the guy who wrote HANGIN' ON THE TELEPHONE. His name is JACKIE LEE from THE NERVES and this song COMEBACK AND STAY was a hit for John Paul Jones and it was a song he had written for this girl that I was dating at the time. It always pissed me off that he had a big hit with it. But you know what? We're human. We're very human, and that's the problem with being an artist and the key is to forgive oneself to forgive others. To go back to the first CD ANOTHER EVOLUTION, there was this track called JERUSALEM and I'll never forget this one programmer at this radio station who said " There's this big discussion going over this song we're playing here. A lot of people consider it very naive." And I said, " You know, it probably is. We're not political scientists. We'd like to see a better world and that was what we wrote. We didn't say that it could be done. I don't have the answer for the conflict.
But it does seem to me that people expect way too much of songwriters. Look at JOHN LENNON and all the things he said about "...ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE" and someone threw in his face that fact that he left his first wife and his son JULIAN.
JESUS on the cross say "..Father, why have you forsaken me?" We are human. We are faulty. GHANDHI was shot by a Hindu. The human race is faulty and we have a big ego that gets in our way of seeing a higher power. But, the effort has to be there. There has to be the willingness to love, the willingness to change and the willingness to forgive. Perfect humans we are not LENNON was hardly a perfect human being but the fact that he spent so much of his life trying express his hope or his vision of a better world is what matters. I don't care where you go from SHAKESPEARE to DYLAN THOMAS or painters like PICASSO who was a letch and KING DAVID in the Old Testament was an adulterer and a murderer and it's probably true but that doesn't excuse us from the effort to try to grow into something better.
MICK MCMAINS OF DJ MONKEY TALKS TO ROCKWIRED ABOUT MAKING MUSIC THAT'LL GIVE PEOPLE AN ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT,AND THE POSSIBILITY OF PEOPLE BURNING THEIR NEXT CD (WE DON'T MEAN COPYING)
WRITTEN BY BRIAN LUSH
Any band that quotes FRANK HERBERT on it's CD cover is a band that ROCKWIRED wants to know, but DJ MONKEY is no mere band. It's more like a mad artist's rendering of a society coming together and coming apart at the same time. The world has gone to hell and they're shouting it from the fucking rooftops. ROCKWIRED has taken notice. If the music is hard to put a finger on, just take a look at these guys. Quite frankly, they all look like each of them stepped into the wrong band. This adventure in music making began with friends, JOEY ALKES and MICK MCMAINS getting together to write and produce pop songs. Along the way,they eschewed benign pop lyrics for MCMAINS' spoken word readings of ALKES' poetry, got JAMAL "LIL' TIP TOE" CRYER to add some rap, MITCH "COUNT DADDY-O" RAFAL on sax, IAN MCMAINS (MICK's son) on guitar and JEREMY "MR1" ROTH on turntables.Their CD ANOTHER EVOLUTION smashes the notion of pop music into a billion little pieces and puts all back together again in mis-matched pieces. It's an unusual site, but an all-the-more intriguing listen.
MICK MCMAINS, the voice of DJ MONKEY, spoke to ROCKWIRED over the phone. Here is how it went...
I was really eager to find out more about a band that has a quote from FRANK HERBERT on their CD cover.
It's kind of unusual, huh?
I think it's amazing! I love it! I grew up with FRANK HERBERT books (The DUNE Series)
I read DUNE several times. One of my good buddies is trying to get me to read past the second one (DUNE MESSIAH) and read the rest of them because they are supposed to be really good. I tried reading the second one and it didn't realy grab me, but apparently, I should've kept going. So maybe I will. JOEY was the one who found that qoute and it was his idea to put that one there.
The figure drawn on the CD cover even looks like FRANK HERBERT a little bit.
That's accidental. I believe it's supposed to look like DA VINCI.
(PAUSE) That to.
I'm not sure maybe he was thinking of HERBERT.DJ MONKEY looks like a mad science experiment.
You guys look so different from each other.
We are.
How did you guys meet?
It happened really organincally. It wasn't thought out or anything. The only thinking was when I met JOEY, my partner and co-producer of the project. He and I were working for this company in Pasadena. He worked with the publicists and I was working the equipment. This comapny set up shows for people like KOOL & THE GANG, DIONNE WARWICK and STEVIE WONDER whenever they'd come to town. I met JOEY and found out that he wrote the song A MILLION MILES AWAY
THE PLIMSOULS.
Yeah. I was like "You wrote this song?" He co-wrote it with the guy from THE PLIMSOULS. This was first time I had gotten to know someone who had a hit record and I figured "I want to ork with this guy!" As soon as we were free from that company, because it was kind of wild and we couldn't get anything done working for them, we became friends and started hanging out and writing songs together. We weren't thinking we'd be the artists.We thought that we'd write songs and that somebody would like it and they'd cover it. We tried doing that and the stuff we came up with was kind of lame. It wasn't exciting either one of us. One night I was looking through one of JOEY's poetry books that he had lying around in the studio and I started reading the poetry into the mic as the music was playing in the studio and recorded it. JOEY heard it and was like "MICK, that's it! we'll do something unique." This sound had so much more potency to it than the pop songs we were trying to make.We both like pop music. I like all kinds of music actually and both of our collections are as eclectic as any you are going to find. We recorded another song in that fashion and JOEY said "Hey, I've got a son-in-law whose a rapper, let's bring him in and see what that sounds like" A rapper??!!I've never worked with a raper before.LIL'TIP-TOE came into the studio, listened tot he stuff, nodded his head, took out his notebook, started scribbling stuff into this notebook and said "Gimme the mic." After about half an hour, he had worked out his part for TO COOL, which is one of the slower songs on the record there. That was really the first song we had finished with this poetry-rap idea. We listened to what we had so far and thought, 'How about some saxophone?' I had this beatnik buddy of mine, so I called him up. MITCH came down to the studio and added some horn. One day, my son IAN was hanging out. He plays all kinds of instruments. That day he was fiddling with the guitar. At the same time, we were listening back and thinking "Hey, why don't we put that on!" So we put him on the recording and after we were kind of done, we were listening to it and thinking that it needs to be a little more modern. How about some scratchin' like those hip hop guys do? I looked to my son IAN and asked if he knew any scratchers and he's like "My roommate is the best scratcher I've ever heard."and I'm like "Oh, Jeremy! He's a nice kid! Bring him on over."JEREMY shows up with these turn tables and we just let him go.Everyone who contributed, did whatever they felt like. We didn't give any direction to the other musicians. What am I going to tell a scratcher to do?It turned into what it turned into.
Congratulations on being Number One on NEW ARTIST RADIO! (At press time)
I heard about that last night. I got a phone call. That's really exciting.
I just got an e-mail about it from JOEY as a matter of fact.What is NEW ARTIST RADIO?
I've never even heard of it.It's one of those internet sites where they expose new music and they have people e-mail in with votes for who they like. We've been on that chart for a month and a half. I was surprised to see that we've been noticed somewhere. Our music is so different that I just don;t expect anything. i just expect, "What are you doing?" Not many of my guitar playing buddies think of it as a worthwhile pursuit, except for me. I enjoyed making the music and thought it had some substance which I think is lacking in a lot of projects that Ihear and things that I've been involved with in the past. Now, we're just about done with ouur second CD. We've taken a long time to mix. We'd like for it to be really good. We're hoping that it's great and we're being more fussy with this one than we were with the first, which took us a year to make; five days a week for a year.
Are there any tracks off of ANOTHER EVOLUTION that stick out for you?
I like BOOMERANG. That's one that most people talk about. There's something about that track, that's kind of haunting to me. I really like JERUSALEM and the way it came out. The message of it is very timely and important; The whole firgiveness thing. Here in America, people make this big deal about being Christian. Forgiveness was one of the tenants of Christianity and yet it's completely ignored. No one seems to want to get behind it.
I understand. You see, I have the misfortune to live in Orange County. Whenever they make a fuss about putting the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, the same consideration is never given for the Beattitudes like "Blessed are the meek."
They're not getting it.
Because that ain't where the money is at.
Yeah, there is no money in it.
I can't think of too many multi-generational bands at the moment. How does it work for you guys? There is a little bit of a gap there.
It works out well for us. There's energy in youth. They have new ways of thinking of stuff and they play different chords. My son IAN has come up with a lot of the themes on this upcoming record and that's fun for me and quite honestly, if we didn't have rehearsals once and a while, I'd probably never see my kids. Once they've got a car, they're gone.
What is the audience reaction to any lives shows that you've done?
Well, we've done about half a dozen shows, so we've got a little bit of experience in putting the thing out but I have to say that the response has been overwhelmingly positive. People are tired of the same old thing. If there is any complaint about the music business, it's that there is nothing new. We're being fed what the current administration wants to feed us. They sell what they think we will buy and this Hollywood mentality has taken over the music business and with that kind of mentality, you're not going to get anything edgy or unique in the mainstream. You're not gonna turn on your radio, hear something and go, 'What the hell was that?' That's why it's cool to have all of these internet stations. God bless the internet!
What do you want someone to walk away with after hearing the music?
Honestly, I'd like them to walk away with a little bit of an attitude adjustment. Music can change peoples minds. We saw that in the sixties. It can change awareness and open the door to culture that has nothing but closed doors. I want to change the statu quo. I want people to change their minds and how they think about stuff. I know I'm asking alot but we need some changes and humans don't like to change.
Especially now with all of the drugs that they're on.
I visited my family recently and everybody who is in that house is on a dozen perscriptions and it was kind of freaking me out.
Are there any hints that you can give about this upcoming CD?
It's going to be shocking. It's going to be very controversial. We decided what do we have to lose. Lets just say it as we feel it. In that first CD, the most quoted llyric was that thing about Republican and Democrats. I wasn't thinking, I just said it and felt it that day that we were recording and it resonated with people because it's true. We talk about God on this next record which is something we're normally not supposed to talk about. A lot of people will be shocked but if they listen carefully, they won't be upset, they'll get it. There are going to be a lot of people that will want to burn the next CD, if you can actually catch a CD on fire. I haven't tried it yet, but I think we'll find out. We started this new CD out with a rock n roll song. It's called HARD TIMES NEW YORK CITY. It's just this fast hard song. A tribute to New York City. It's not like anything that was on the first CD.Then we have this song called LOVE KNOW NO COLOR which is kind of like a BLACK EYED PEAS' WHERE IS THE LOVE? kind of song. There's also that song about God but I don;t want to give it away. It is going to piss some people off. You have to piss people off because that's the only way anyone is going to do anything. Everybody gripes but nobody is getting out of there chair. People just go along with it
