Scan through Monkey Jacket's site and you're met with line after line of boyish humor. I guess you just don't expect bearded folkies or black turtleneck clad art snobs in a band called "Monkey Jacket." But an AIM conversation with guitarist/vocalist Mick Maslowski quickly toppled my tower of assumptions and changed my mind about the band in a big way. It sounds harsh, but can you blame me? Their gag bio claims their music is "Post-ScreamXcore Indie Skunkrock with a pinch of Jazz influenced XPunkX-XRapX" with "2 electric oboes" and the music itself is upbeat, sax-happy ska played by five teenage guys. Maybe they're not bearded folkies, but the band's diverse influences and depth of skill make a clear statement that this is a band to be taken seriously.
The Overcast: Can you tell me about how the band started?
Mick: Let's see, it started around late 2003... I guess I just decided it would be cool to have a band, I'd been playing guitar for a little while by then and I'd been writing songs, so I started to look for people. I think it really started getting towards a serious kind of thing around late 2003 when I found a good bassist and drummer and we were just playing ska, minus the horns.
So how'd the horns come in?
Mick: Well, there was another band at my school, a punk band, with kids a grade older than us. I decided to ask their guitarist if their band would be interested in playing a show together, and I sent him a song online. After he heard the song, he said he originally didn't expect us to be that good, but when he listened to it he was impressed enough to where he offered to play trumpet for us, which he'd been playing for a good amount of years.
He was really good, but he ended up leaving. While he was here, though, it really inspired the band to grab a horn section since we were so impressed with how it sounded with the added trumpet.
So I ended up asking around, and a friend of mine reffered me to a tenor sax player, who hopped aboard, and ended up finding us our alto sax player, who was a friend of his.
Of course we tried out alot of people in there somewhere in that time period...it just took us a while to find the right mix, but we ended up finding it
So how long has the current group been together?
Mick: We ended up getting a new drummer november of 2004, the other 4 of us have been together since march 2004.
Who are some of your influences? And what got you into ska?
Mick: Well, for what got me into ska, I'm not really sure. I remember listening to it and liking it even before I knew what it was... such as, Goldfinger - Superman, and my brother listened to lots of Sublime, so I did too. I guess just through word of mouth I decided to check out some bands and somehow that got me to what I listen to now and have been for a while.
As for influences, I really listen to any kind of music, so lots of things influence me. I like the catchy, poppy stuff, but on the other hand, I also love orchestral music. I guess that's just an example of my diverse choices of music that I listen to. I admire people's abilities to construct such complex music, like Frank Zappa, or Mr. Bungle. Oingo Boingo is another good one, and to add to that, Danny Elfman, who was the leader of Oingo Boingo, a huge influence of mine, doing such music as the film scores to huge blockbuster movies now. But I think at times it can be just as good to write a song that everyone can easily sing along to or hum the melody.
Wow. That was pretty beautiful.
Mick: Heh, I thought I was babbling a bit, but if you say so, thanks.
You had the Detroit News Battle of the Bands sort of a little while ago, right?
Mick: Yeah, we got to play at the State Theater in Detroit, which is a pretty big venue around here, with nine other bands, and we were in the Detroit News newspaper a few times because of it.
That's pretty sweet... Are those Detroit News clippings hanging on your fridge right now?
Mick: Haha, I got one of them on a bulletin board right next to me.
What's the band up to now?
Mick: Right now we're planning to record a full-length cd and get that out to as many people and places as we can, we're probably going to do that within a few months. The recordings we have now are pretty good, but we're gonna really want people to know us by these new recordings rather than the older ones.
So you're unsigned, still? Any offers or plans or anything?
Mick: Ha, man, if we could get signed... That would be great. I can't really put it into words, other than it's just basically what all of us are shooting for. Speaking for myself, I think rather than wanting to live the rich and famous life, I'd just love to be able to play music for a living and not have to do anything else to make money. That's kind of a driving point to get the band really going. We haven't got any offers yet, but I'm hoping when we record this full length CD we can get it out there so that we can get some attention.
Okay, one last question, just to quell my curiosity. Do you have a favorite song you guys have played?
Mick: Hmm... OUR favorite.. A lot of people like "Hello, Solo," but we've got a newer one that's not recorded yet called... "Tease Me Please Me." We're pretty fond of that one. That's gonna be one we'll be recording soon enough.
Ooh...mysterious...
Mick: Haha. Give it some time and it wont be so much.