Music

Monkey Time

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Feehan and Kelley spent the early part of the Nineties in Stun Guns, while Orcutt and then-girlfriend Adris Hoyos were making a very precise kind of racket as Harry Pussy, often performing at the Alliance Cinema. After Harry Pussy's second single was issued in 1992, Feehan was enlisted by Orcutt. "Bill decided he wanted a little extra noise, so he called me," Feehan says matter-of-factly. "At that point they were totally ignored. But we used to play five and six nights a week at the Alliance, and we managed to chase a bunch of people out of Churchill's." Feehan was with the group for about four years, long enough to hang around for several singles and a few national tours. Eventually the grind of touring and practicing, combined with a near-nonexistent cash flow, drove Feehan from the band. "It came to a point where I'd come back from a tour and I could just barely pay the rent, then I'd have a month where I wouldn't have a single penny. We'd tour, come back, have two weeks to practice, then we were back in the van. Bill wanted to do more tours, but it wasn't going to pay my rent."

He may not get rich with the revived Trash Monkeys, but the slightly revamped lineup(with local punk legend the Eat's Michael O'Brien on drums) has been writing new songs and gigging steadily to receptive audiences throughout the area. And whatever the status of the group's finances, the upcoming release of Pass Out will at least affirm this Trash Monkeys' long-time commitment to innovation and experimentation for the sheer hell of it, as well as for the sheer fun of it. Not that it will be easy, as Feehan knows all too well. "It's been so long trying to get [the CD] together, but that's the way the Trash Monkeys are," he admits. "It's all so fractious. They can't do anything. They're just incapable. It's hard enough to get out to a gig, let alone get a CD out."

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