Bugs Skully (Monkeychow's Band)

RaZor

Just listened to the full version, awesome. Listened to it 4 times, and now I'm in the mood to listen to CD again. Lol

I'm putting this song in a playlist with CD and OMG, and I'll be listening to it for a while. Can't wait for the next one.

Olorin

I think its awesome, got it off Amazon. The guitar at the end is my favourite part, but I think all the particulars of how you put this together is superb, I'm guessing you contacted Juan after seeing his GNR covers? I think that is so fuckin cool

Me_Wise_Magic

monkeychow wrote:

smoke wrote:
Are there more releases or an album in sight? I just bought your tune from amazon - full support!
Thanks so much!
I'm putting out a rockier track around the end of the year I hope. I'd sort of describe it as Snakepit-eque but with crazy high vocals. But it's sort of the rocker to compliment this ballad.

Beyond that it's going to take a while, and by while I mean an Axl style wait, as I have many songs written but not too much recorded. Unfortunately due to a combination of a pain-issue I have, lack of cash and working too much I tend to make these in slow motion! However, I'm def planning on doing more, as I have a few songs sort of sitting around in draft forms.
Thanks also for your other comments about the song! That was exactly what I was aiming for pretty much...so it's really very happy making to me that you're hearing that stuff!
war wrote:
good shit! Is that you singing?
Thanks man
That's Juan "The Beast" Rodriguez singing. I wrote the song though including the vocals...basically I record a version in my cracking fucked up nasty voice and send it to juan who puts on his dragon magic and it turns into those powerhouse vocals.
I'm really happy to have him sing this as I looked for ages for someone with the right combination of being able to sing sweetly and warm but also bring out the rasp and angst and power when it's needed.
I now have the biggest bromance with Juan, he's great.
He also sings on the one I'm releasing later in the year, and beyond that I'd love to do more with him as he really seems to have the voice I wish I had!
Me_Wise_Magic wrote:
Monkey, I just want to say congrats and what a sick tune you got here. You did it man. Love the dark nature of the lyrics and production with the guitar work. Juan has some killer pipes and like most of you guys, I'm happy to hear something original from his voice. His GNR vocal covers were amazing and spot on. You got some great session guys helping you out. By the way did you help with the piano and constructing the background instrumentation with the band's playing?
Thanks so much!
Yeah I wrote all the instrumentation other than the drums and bass. All the melodies, vocals, guitars, stings and piano was composed by me It was a fun process actually as some of it kind of came in stages. Originally wrote it on guitar then swapped a lot of it to piano, and once I was messing with piano other bits sort of came into it just by nature of doing it that way, and then the string part just sort of fell into place one night.
Thanks for all the kind words folks...I'm really happy to be sharing it as I've been working on it for ages

That's impressive dude! All that work and time put into the song paid off in spades. I have it on my Spotify song playlist at the moment. smile So happy to hear Juan is a cool guy and easy to work with.

Gibbo

Killer monkey I'll download it when I get home from work

Smoking Guns

Can't wait to get home and hear this. I have a shitty data connection at the moment.

monkeychow

Olorin wrote:

I'm guessing you contacted Juan after seeing his GNR covers?

Actually it was a bit more round-about than that.

I really like high pitch/power/raspy vocals (no surprise huh?) and in my songwriting I have several tracks that are basically written for that style, but I've had a lot of trouble finding anyone locally who could sing in that way.

There's only so many musicians around where I live, and that 80s style power vocals sound is a pretty specific request I guess - not just anyone can do it - and it's also not always in fashion. Not to mention the broader issue that even if you find someone you need to be able to talk them into working together. This is harder than it sounds as due to the importance of singing in the music it's quite logical that anyone who has discovered they have massive pipes, or trained their voice or whatever, usually has their own plans to get noticed or their own bands and projects or whatever and they may not have the time or they might see it as diluting the attention they get on their own or that you're going to make it look like you sing using their voice or whatever. Then you have to add in a further dimension that of course they have to like the song too and the personality/musical taste issues and all that. So it was a challenge to find someone that really suited.

Anyway, so I'd literally been looking for years and come up with no one and it was a real stress to me. One night I couldn't sleep and decided to throw on a DVD. I dunno why I chose it but I decided to watch the 2001 film Rockstar with Mark Walberg. I'd seen it before when it came out but not in a long time. Anyway, so I'm watching this, and I became super impressed with the vocals coming out of mark's character. I soon realised that there's no way it was his real voice in the sense that it was too killer to be from anyone other than a full on pro singer and not an actor.

So I read the credits at the end and discover the vocals were done by Miljenko Matijevic. Now I'll confess...I was totally ignorant and hadn't heard of Miljenko or even his band steelheart (some of the 'steel dragon' songs in the movie are actually re-done steelheart tracks). I'm not sure why I'd never heard it, I put it down to my own obsession with GNR back in the day, think I probably just didn't listen to anything else long enough. Anyway...so I jump online and look up Milkenko and Steelheart and I'm blown away by his technique and power.

Anyway so I'm day dreaming fantasising about how I might go about asking him to sing my song (How does that approach even go? "Hi, I notice you sang for a multimillion dollar movie with big Hollywood stars, would you like to ignore your own band and work with an unknown dude from the other side of the world who is not a professional musician?"!! But at 4am it seemed like a slightly plausible idea compared to my other strategy known as "Ask Axl" wink

So there I am dreaming of such things and so I start watching Miljenko videos online and doing that I run into a video of Juan covering "Stand Up and Shout" from the movie rockstar. He really nails it to the point where when I first watched it I was just like "this must be faked" not because there's anything sus about it but just because you really don't run into people with that kind of voice too often. So i start watching Juans videos, and discover he kills on everything - all the GNR tracks he's got of course, and Skid Row and similar things - but he's also very underrated as a clean singer too. I love the rasp and the powerhits and all that of course, but when he sings cleanly he also has a really warm beautiful tone - he's got an alternate channel where he sings a lot of music I wouldn't normally listen to - songs in spanish and so on - but I watched a ton of them that night and was amazed. I was just like "this is the guy I've been looking for" - not only was he not famous already so it makes it a lot more realistic for me to work with him than my odds of getting an Axl or Miljenko (although in fairness to them i never got as far as asking wink but he really has that balance of sweet and power that I'd always wanted. He's just outright the guy that should have always been singing that song!

So yeah it's history from there. These days I think he does a bit of 'singer for hire' work and has a metal originals project but at that stage I don't think he'd done anything like that he was just doing his epic covers on youtube. Thankfully he agreed and I love the way he sings it!

So yeah...it sort of comes down to blind luck...and good fortune that I watched the movie rockstar that night...I sometimes wonder if I'd gone to bed or done something else if it would have happened!

Me_Wise_Magic

Pretty fucking cool experience! Everything worked out!

metallex78

Yeah, great story Monkey. It's funny how some choices we make lead us down different paths. Who knows where you wouldve ended up if you didn't find Juan

Smoking Guns

Having a hard time on spotify getting it to play. gonna have to buy it to hear how it sounds I guess. lol.

monkeychow

^ I appreciate the support but I'm disturbed it's not playing for you on spotify. I know it works in Australia but it's supposed to be global...what error do you get?

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