Monkey See, Monkey Do | If the show fits, you should probably eat it. Makes a helluva show.
DETAILS
Find It...
Monotonix
w/ Desiderata & Mad Cowboys. The Pawn Shop (10551-82 Ave). Dec 27 (9pm). Tickets: $14, available at Ticketmaster (451-8000/ticketmaster.ca), Blackbyrd Myoozik.
It’s the day after Boxing Day, you’ve unwrapped your new iPhone and are buzzing to download a whack of new music. Before you hop on the comp and spend hours avoiding any real social contact, however, ask yourself one question. What was the last time you got out of the house, walked through the colder-than-a-witch’s-you-know-what conditions beyond the couch, and took a chance on a live show? Now, you may have never heard of Tel Aviv’s Monotonix, but these guys are definitely onto something with their absolutely insane brand of rock show.
Hailing from a country that banned them from most venues due to their raucous antics — including but not limited to setting up and playing their set smack in the middle of the floor, disrobing and playing in short shorts, lighting their drums and/or the lead singer’s pants on fire, leading the crowd Pied Piper-style around outside the venue to close the show (we doubt this will happen in minus-40 windchill, but you never know) — the idea of the live show is something that the men of Monotonix take pretty darn seriously.
“Right now, with the whole thing with computers and YouTube, everybody can watch anything they want — you can download any kind of music that you want,” explains frontman Ami Shalev from a rare at-home moment in Israel (Monotonix plays upwards of 200 shows a year). “I think that’s a good thing. But there’s no substitute for real good live show: It’s the vibe, it’s the smell, it’s everything.
“That’s why live shows are very important, and they’re most important in this time when you can get any kind of music you want from the Internet. It’s people gathering together for one purpose, just to see and to have fun and socialize. We try to play our live shows uniquely — we want to give people an experience that they wouldn’t get anywhere else.”
So what is it that makes these guys different than other wild live bands? Shalev thinks it’s the Israeli vibe — even though most popular music in Israel tends to have its roots in Greek and Arabic traditions, Monotonix takes inspiration from their own culture’s tense undercurrents.
“People are pretty wild in the way that they think about things,” he says. “The people here are not very polite, and there’s not a lot of political correctness. They speak very loudly, and if they’re standing in line for a movie or show, well, there’s no line. But it’s fun. It’s very relaxed, but it tense on the other side. Our music is kind of a mix between the fact that we are alive here in Israel — the way that we live, the way that people behave, the way that people stand in lines, the way people drive, they way they do anything.”
From the looks of those YouTube videos and live shots — flaming cymbals, shirtless hairy chests — I though I’d ask Shalev if I should bring a helmet to The Pawn Shop this Saturday. “Nah, the show is not violent,” he laughs. “It’s only about fun. We know how to do it so people won’t get hurt. We don’t do any damage to the venue. People dance and jump, but they don’t get violent. We almost never get a bad reaction to the show — people are very positive about it.”
Post the first comment: (Login or Register)