Review: Getting Wild and Weird With Monotonix

“Not sexy or too sexy?” The singer yelled from on top of the bar, referring to his scrawny, sweaty body.

A chorus of gruff voices eagerly replied, “Too sexy!”

The singer wasn’t having it. “No gentlemen! Just ladies. Gentlemen, shut up! Ladies, not sexy or too sexy?”

And all the girls cooed, “Too sexy!”

Of course, this prompted the dripping little man to drop his tight red shorts and moon the crowd at the Uptown Bar and Cafe. The smile on my face only got bigger.

Let’s take a step back. I had heard about Monotonix. I knew they had a reputation for getting pretty wild. I’m always happy to check out a band that knows how to push the boundaries in a live setting, but I’m also a very jaded music fan. I’ve seen some of the most notorious live acts around. I’ve seen fires. I’ve seen jumping off walls. I’ve dodged folding chairs thrown at me from the stage. I’ve failed to dodge urine.

So, as I waited through the blah opening acts, watching the tide of hipsters flow in and out, I wondered if this whole thing was going to be a waste of my time. Maybe it was just a bunch of hype.

My friend said, “If this band doesn’t make you smile, you’re a dork.” That sounded like a challenge.

Around midnight, after a crushingly boring set by a band that made me feel like I had stepped into a Christopher Guest mockumentary about bar bands, Monotonix finally decided to do their thing.

They set up on the floor a few feet in front of the stage. The crowd nestled in around them. From my jaded music fan spot in the back of the room, I couldn’t see much. I heard some rumblings. Fuzzy guitar riffs. Cagey drumming. Wild shouting. No bass? Ooooohhh, how avant garde. Typical garage band stuff. I saw heads nodding, but I didn’t see much action. Yawn.

Then I saw the singer, already covered with sweat, rise above the crowd. As he moved across the sea of hands, he kept singing. Okay, I thought, so he can crowd surf. How many bands have I seen crowd surf? Is that all they’ve got?

Nope. They had more. A lot more.

The singer got tired of simply crowd surfing. He needed to improve the art by crowd surfing in a garbage can or while standing on top of the bass drum. I wondered, where is the drumming coming from if the drums are floating around on top of the crowd with the singer riding on them? I had no fucking clue, but the music still filled the room.

It wasn’t just the music that filled the room either. The band wouldn’t stay in one spot. Nor would they stay together. After a while in front of the stage, the singer and guitar player moved over to the other side of the room. They stood on one of the tiny tables together, their long curly hair flailing around as they rocked out.

When they got sick of that, they moved over closer to where I stood. They reunited with their drummer and made it seem like the most natural thing in the world that they had already seemingly played in every corner of the room.

And the music wasn’t just an afterthought either. The bare naked rock is what fueled the whole ordeal. It turned out to be way beyond your generic garage rock fare. Yeah, the guitar was fuzzed out, but somehow it stayed cheerful. The riffs were goddamn musical smiles, good buddies wrapping their arms around your neck and pulling you back into the party. The drumming, despite always seeming to be teetering on the edge of disaster, managed to keep everything moving forward, not willing to leave anyone in the crowd behind. And the lack of bass? Who the fuck cares?

After the singer finished the butt show, he looked around the room. Guitar still rockin’, he realized he had missed one important corner of the bar: the outside corner.

The guitar player held tight near the bar as the singer and drummer made their way through the crowd toward the place’s covered patio. The crowd followed behind. When I got to the exit, I was surprised to see the singer standing beside the door, smiling wide and ushering everyone out. When he was satisfied that the patio was reasonably full, he climbed onto the metal rafters.

“Yasoo!” he yelled.

“Yasoo!” everyone on the patio replied in unison, banging on the drums that seemed to be riding around the crowd on their own.

“Sit down!” the singer yelled.

Everyone sat down.

As he hung from the rafters, he told everyone that on the count of four, everyone should stand up and he would dive down and everything would go crazy. At that point, I think the music had technically stopped, but somehow it was so infectious that it was still in my head and, presumably, everybody else’s.

As promised, the singer counted to four, jumped into the crowd and everyone stood and went crazy one last time.

I walked away with a big smile on my face. Monotonix refuse to let anyone remain jaded at their shows. They simply won’t allow it.

(Monotonix played at the Uptown Bar and Cafe in Minneapolis on 9/24/08)