Part Chimp Cup

[Monitor; 2007]

Styles: you’re in a garage; you’re playing rock ‘n’ roll, loud; you love it
Others: Smile (the band), shades of most projects Rick Froberg and John Reis have worked on: Drive Like Jehu/Pitchfork/Rocket From The Crypt/Hot Snakes (yes, there also exists a band called Pitchfork), Suici

Monkeys slumping around in a crowded cage, beating their chests and letting out feral 'whoops' and primal hollers as a gaggle of onlookers gawk and take pictures. The monkeys are peeved because their kids are going to have to grow up in a fucking zoo, spending the rest of their lives crammed in a stolid man-made environment without the means size-wise to pull off a King Kong-style romp through the city. “What a sell-out gig!” they say to themselves as they give the people what they want: antics. They farcically lick and scratch themselves and act primitive because that's what people expect of them when they pay good money for their ticket. But in secret, the monkeys get together at night to discuss the merit of Proust and the ramifications of genocide in Sudan. Deep down it kills them to perpetuate this illusion, but it's all they know. They're afraid a worse fate might await them if they reveal their true mental capacity.

One sprightly Part Chimp, while following The Man's rules to a certain point (he's still confined to a cage, etc.), refuses to let his instincts be contained. He realizes he's no smarter or dumber than any other monkey. He's never on- or offstage; he's just himself. He turns his back when the zoo-goers run to his side of the cage partition, grinding his buttcheeks into the viewing window before retreating back to his cave until the yuppies go home. “Poor humans,” he thinks while he puts a brew on, getting ready to launch into an activity his fellow monkeys just don't understand: Rocking the FUCK OUT with no pretensions. As soon as he plugs his guitar into his amp, a shower of hot-orange sparks fly about his domicile, singeing his fur. But he doesn't give a damn; this is the only means of expression he's got. He squints through the storm of flying fire, turning his amp up higher with every ditty until he's so in-the-red he's spitting blood and ready to go commie.

The other monkeys can't fathom the actions of their rogue compatriot. “What a pea-brained brute” they say, as they share a hot round of Chai and watch the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour. They think he's cranking up the voltage because he's not intelligent enough to enjoy the subtleties of melody, but they're wrong. Far from a half-wit primate, this misfit monkey realizes something the other flea-bitten, wanna-be sophisticates don't: That the best modes of expression need not be complicated. While the rest of the monkeys try their damndest to appear refined, he seeks purity in the places his cellmates have written off as exceedingly non-erudite and crude. They think he's not trying, but in reality, it is they who have erred, as they try much, much too hard to appear complicated.

But whom do they think they're fooling? They're monkeys; they can run away from their instincts all they want -- it's all window dressing, like a rich kid pretending to be a poor hippie or a lukewarm talent heaping piles of instruments on a simple composition to make it seem... important. As this Part Chimp goes through his rounds night after night with little fanfare, he knows, deep down, that compared to the other cage-dwellers he's relatively pose-free. And that has made all the difference.

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