Monkey Siren - A little personal history

[Ted]

In a comment on alfstone's latest song, I thought I'd look to see if I could find a link to Monkey Siren, and I found this footage from 1992 that I'd never see before. It was just uploaded to YouTube earlier this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYUubINNeog

I credit this guy, Glen Taylor, for amping up my inspiration, and providing me with the courage to go to Africa. Around 1994, I was fascinated by and drawn to Africa, and at the same time paralyzingly intimidated by the thought of going there. I met Glen in 1995, in Denver, and we jammed a few times. I think he was nurturing the idea of the band that would ultimately become Monkey Siren. (Playing with Glen and his friends was amazing – way above my caliber at the time.) He gave me some mixtapes from music he'd collected during his travels to Africa (Mozambique). (Here's a blog post I wrote, mentioning Glen.) I also credit Glen for opening me up to pedal steel guitar. I've always wanted to play again with a steel player. My recent collab with Jean Paul is the closest I've come since 1995.

When I went back to college, I walked into the office of my college advisor in Arizona, and told him I was certain I wanted to go to Africa, "So what do I need to study?"

"French," he replied.

Oh shit. Glen had told me that everyone spoke English. Well, I reckon in Zimbabwe that was largely true.

I got to see Monkey Siren live a couple of times in 1991 when I passed through Denver again on my way to Cameroon, and I have all three of their albums.

So, when my life story is turned into a movie, there needs to be a pivotal scene where I meet the musician who had been to Africa and returned alive to tell the tale.

[Ted]

There's not much Monkey Siren online. You can find their CDs used some places. I just found this YouTube Playlist. And here's one of my favorite songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ETqfvvGi0

[StephenM]

lots of fun, these folks sure like monkeying around...TIC...

seriously that machine he made is clever.  As a former tech who fixed all sorts of machines, electrical, electronic, pneumatics, hydraulics, mechanical, whatever I found this to be just a tad frightening.  I had flashbacks to industry and some of the crazy machine adj we had to do to get the precision we needed... yikes, all those allen head screws...
I would never have been interested in music like this in those days... but its really good and fun...