I’m sitting at The Tank, at 10:30 in the morning, dressed like some hot pink and black combination of The Eat Me / Beat Me Lady, Cindy Lauper, and, I’ll admit it, Avril Lavigne (who bit my style, not the other way around). Shaun and I are beside ourselves with excitment over tonight’s RES party, exchanging twitterpated texts and texting to Twitter (add us– we’re at www.twitter.com/resmag). There’s a staged reading of a musical about Lady Bathory called, appropriately enough Bathery, that is about to premier, and the stage manager is outside of my door periodically saying “Please help yourself to coffee and madeleines, we’re just waiting on the pianist to arrive,” but his enunciation makes it sound like he’s saying they’re waiting on the “penis” to arrive. This is something I L-O-V-E love about The Tank. This afternoon, there’s a musical. Tonight, there’s RESRawk. (By the time you read this on Monday morning, we’ll have just thrown the second in our kick ass new monthly of awesome, awesome music– be sure and come back on June 20th for MOAR!).
And at The Tank on June 6th at 7:00, Uncle Monsterface, the Sock Puppet Rock Band, will be blowing minds with the premier of “Mashed Potato vs. Vampire,” in which a giant mashed potato and a giant vampire will fight each other on stage. FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER (that anyone knows of, anyway).
When I first heard about Uncle Monsterface, I have to admit I felt ambivalence. I mean, yes, what’s cooler than PUPPETS? Nothing, that’s what. BUT… it’s easy for a band with this kind of schtick to rest on its knitted, wooly heels and just let the gimmick do the work. Though Marty, who makes the sock puppets and also sells their portraits in NYC’s Union Square and, currently, from The Tank lobby gallery, gave me a stack of their albums, it wasn’t until I was at work one day, bored with all the music that I currently had on my computer that I turned to my co-worker and said, “Should we listen to Uncle Monsterface?” Her enthusiastic “YES! They’re so good! They sound like Math the Band!” wasn’t exactly the recommendation I was looking for, and I was still wary… After the first chords of the title track off of This is and Adventure!, I was sold.
While there are appropriately nerdy anthems like “The Gary Gygax Song” and “Save Our Superheroes,” which are lyrically (obviously) dorky but musically sound with great back beats, there are just straight up punky, snarly rock songs. “Kill Your Boyfriend!” details an ex’s desire to rid the world of his rival (though, apparently, this song is now performed as “Kill Your Fiancé!” and soon to be “Kill Your Husband!”) and “Mashed Potato vs. Vampire” is a driving, pogo-worthy bouncey bit of surrealism. I, for one, am pulling for the Mashed Potato, if only because I want to know what a mashed potato looks like.
Check out the preview video for the show:
And, for your listening enjoyment:
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Kill Your Boyfriend! - Uncle Monsterface
See you on June 6th @ 7:00 at The Tank! I’ll be singing along to all of the songs– you should buy the albums and do the same.
