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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
By Erin Schroeder
Staff Writer
What a mess! The place is littered with beer bottles, mugs, plastic cups, shot glasses, hundreds of those thick paper beer coasters and litter are everywhere. Odd, hand-made signs reminiscent of a protest lay strewn across the floor in front of the stage. It is obvious that a major event happened in this St. Louis bar. Either a tornado hit this place or The Monads did.
It was The Monads who hit Off Broadway in South City St. Louis, MO. The sold-out show marked the release of their appropriately named CD, “Ornery”. The show was an 18 and up admittance, and people ages 18 to 60 showed up to express their fanatic devotion to this unique and new style of music. The place was filled to capacity and many disappointed fans were turned away. Off Broadway had a quickly scribbled sign on the front door, “Monads are sold out. Sorry.”
“Even some of our friends couldn’t get in the show because it was already filled to capacity. I had to talk to the door man so my folks could get in.” remarked Jenna, the upright bass player for the Monads. What those other poor souls missed was a rip-roarin’, foot stompin’, hand-clappin’, whoopin’, moshpit slammin’ good time!
An Elvis Presley impersonating clown named, Clownvis Presley, hosted the night. He entertained the crowd between band sets with magic tricks and a “King-like” presence. According to the promotional flyers, the other opening acts supporting The Monad’s CD release were “the River City garage lords, The Vultures and ‘the freshiest man in show business,’ ‘Pokey LaFarge’…” The Vultures, who also hail from the south city area, started out the night with high-energy garage punk. After that, a fairly young, Kentuckian, Pokey LaFarge, brought a very different energy with his good ol’ blues ramblin’. The energy may not have been the same as The Vultures, but the crowd’s attention was no less. He captured them with his twainy strums and eclectic bluesy sound. The songs could be described as 21st century lyrics meet the 1920’s guitar blues.
After Pokey, the anticipation of The Monads devotees began to crescendo. As the old-timey, mustachioed Monads were gearing up for their show, the packed fans held up the signs and chanted “Monads, Monads, Monads.” After band members introduced themselves, the quartette didn’t even give the revelers a chance to scream before they slammed into their first explosive number. With only acoustic instruments and no modern enhancements other than amplification, this black and bluegrass band played at punk speed accompanied with a hardedge bluegrass flare. The multitude never sat during the entire performance. In fact, the stomping literally bowed the floor and tested its durability. A mosh pit quickly developed, but never got out of control. Hundreds of those thick, paper beer coasters were being tossed into the air by the audience all night. The night peaked when they sang their new song, “Evil Donkey.” Every time the Monads yelled “Evil Donkey” the crowd would yell back “Bad Ass.” Of course, it could also be argued that the night peaked when they started tossing out their new CDs to the crowd for free
The band’s combination of raw talent and well-balanced musical chemistry has brought them a lot of notoriety in St. Louis. They have also played across the country in such places as Tulsa, New York City, and even here. They are signed locally with a small, but growing record label, Big Muddy Records. Although they had a huge success with their CD release show, they are not getting that “rock-star” attitude about themselves. “We want to keep it in perspective,” comments multi-instrumentalist Matt Shivelbine. “We are excited about where we are going and the success we had with this show, but we aren’t getting that rock-star kind of attitude you might expect,” Jenna said. Their attitude, The Monads say, is that their music is about a “good time and just having fun.” Shivelbine describes the attitude of their music as “fast and mean; on the edge of out of control.” So fast, mean, edge of out of control, good time, and having fun are all words that could sum up this evening with the The Monads.
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