Feed Us A Live Insect

The Talk

For those of you who weren't able to see our set last night, we made an announcement.  Here is (more or less) what I said:

Over the past ten years Mary and I have been privileged to have so many wonderful people playing with us in the Monolators, and we're grateful for the time, energy, and love they gave to be a part of it.  Inevitably life and family and school and work does get in the way, and the time comes for them to step down and move on to a new part of their lives.  It's Ray's turn now, he needs to spend more time concentrating on his education and his work--so last night's show was actually the second-to-last that he'll play with us.  We will miss him very much, but we're also very proud of him and we know he's doing the right thing.

This puts the future of the Monolators into question.  We aren't looking right now to replace Ray, and we aren't  interested in having the band go back to a two-piece, so we have decided to put Monolators on hold for now.  Of course we aren't going to stop making music--Mary and I have already been playing as a duo called Dawn Of Sequins, and it makes more sense to us right now to put our energy into that band instead.  You can expect more Dawn of Sequins shows in the future and a full-length record in 2013, which we're very excited about.

But Dawn of Sequins isn't just Monolators Lite plus sequins.  No, it is a different entity, with its own repertoire and aesthetic.  Plus sequins.  So please bear that in mind.

I want to be clear on something: I'm not saying that we're DONE done with the Monolators.  It's really, really hard for us to say goodbye to something that we've both poured so much of our lives into for the past ten years.  Neither of us likes the idea that we'll never play the Monolators songs again (I'm not gonna lie--tears have been shed at the prospect), and honestly when we did our ten year anniversary show in September I felt that we still had a lot of life left in the machine.  There may very well come a time when our situation changes and we want to make another garage rock record, and at that point the Monolators will play again.  I truly do want that to happen, I just don't know when it will be.

So: we are going to play one last show sometime after the New Year.  I'm not sure what day or venue yet, we're still trying to figure that out.  We have decided that the only thing to do is to make it an ALL REQUEST SHOW.  Do you have a song of ours that you really really want to hear?  Send us your request!  Doesn't matter what it is, we will do it, whatever it is (obviously it has to be a song from one of our records--we're not re-creating our God Of Thunder cover, sorry).  If we get three requests, our last show will be three songs long.  If we get twelve, it will be twelve.  And I think we're going to have to limit it to one request per person, unfortunately--no "please do the entire side A of the Don't Dance LP."  Give us a single song.  You can send it to mail[at]themonolators[dot]com or send us a facebook message, either is fine.  I will let you all know when we have our date and venue nailed down.

Oh and don't bother requesting Best Friends In Space, because that one's a given.  Of course we're playing that one.

I think that's it for right now.  Writing this makes me sadder than I can describe, and yet Mary and I are both looking towards the future.  It looks pretty good.

Thanks everybody.  We love you all.

-Ray, Mary, and Eli
The Monolators

posted by Eli Monolator @ 9:42 AM