Artikel über 100 Monkeys

Hab hier einen Artikel gefunden, der zwar schon vom July ist, aber ich finde ihn sehr interessant. Darin erzählt Ben G. ein bisschen was über die Bandgeschichte und was noch so neues ansteht.

Monkeys invade Hermosa
by Michael Hixon

100 Monkeys will be performing at Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach Tuesday, July 20.

With a summer tour starting next week and a new album set for release later this year, the “funky rock ’n’ roll band” 100 Monkeys is set to have an extremely busy year. But the Los Angeles-based group is no stranger to the film world either, with many ties to the industry, from low-budget indies to worldwide blockbusters.

Featuring Jackson Rathbone, Jerad Anderson, Lawrence Abrams (Uncle Larry), Ben Johnson and Ben Graupner, 100 Monkeys has already released three EPs and a studio album, “Grape,” last year, while mainly on the road touring in between Rathbone’s stint as Confederate Army major-turned-vampire Jasper Hale in the immensely popular “Twilight” series or filming his other hit currently in theaters, “The Last Airbender.” The band, which will be at Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach Tuesday, July 20, will release the first part of the two-CD “Live and Kickin’ Part 1,” which was taped during the first half of its fan-picked 100-city tour, July 19 for download and July 21 on CD. The band’s Saint Rocke gig kicks offs the second part of the tour, culminating in the second CD of the live collection.

Rathbone and Graupner met about eight years ago at Interlochen Arts Academy boarding school in northern Michigan where they were roommates. Before the band started, they would make CDs while sitting in traffic on the 405 under the name Ben and J or sometimes BJ’s Special Bus. They started using the name 100 Monkeys when new recordings involved other people.

“It (100 Monkeys) started with ‘Monster de Lux,’ which was an album Jackson and Ben Johnson and myself made,” Graupner said. “We put it together in a living room with strange improvised recordings way back in the day. We put that together and at the same time Jay (Jackson) and I were doing a movie called ‘The Daze’ that’s actually just coming out now. On the set of that movie we met a guy, Uncle Larry, Lawrence Abrams, who’s a pretty prominent jazz musician around L.A. and we started going down to his studio, Jazz Rhythms Unlimited, which is in downtown Los Angeles. Before we knew it, we bought reserved parking spaces next to his studio because we were spending every free minute of time we had there. Then the producer of ‘The Daze’ had recently bought a nightclub called the 25 Karat Lounge. We started playing there every Tuesday night. That residency is when the band really came together. That’s when we started playing with Jerad Anderson as well. I think we did 60 performances there, it was a long start in this kind of dingy weird little bar.”

With a new album on the way, the band also worked on a score for the new film, “Girlfriend,” a story about a young man with Down syndrome who has a romantic interest in a woman in an abusive relationship. Jackson and Anderson star while the band worked on the score. Graupner said it was a whole new process of creating music, but at the same time a challenge creating the score mainly on the road. While Rathbone might spend two weeks in Vancouver shooting “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” or more time in Pennsylvania filming “Girlfriend,” they still could “get some real serious tracking down.”

“We have a mobile recording rig and we took over one or two hotel rooms,” he said. “That was a really fantastic project to work on. I can’t wait to see the finished film come out and see how the film pulls the scene along and plays with your emotions as you watch it.”

While working around all of their busy schedules can be a challenge, Graupner said the band’s outside fame could be a beneficial aspect in getting its name recognized.

“When we were recording ‘Monster de Lux’ before the first ‘Twilight’ movie was shot, they pushed it back a month,” Graupner said. “That was the month we made ‘Monster de Lux.’ We had no idea any of this was going to be as big as it was. We have all of these people coming out because they were interested in the books and interested in the people who are in the movies. It’s really fantastic because it has given us a whole new audience I don’t think we would be reaching or would have thought to reach out to otherwise. At the same time, we look at bands like 30 Seconds to Mars (Jared Leto), The Honey Brothers (Adrien Grenier), the Bacon Brothers (Kevin Bacon), there’s all of these bands that have celebrities or high-profile movies attached to them. We look at some of the things they do and some of the things we don’t do, and we’re being really careful on how we promote ourselves in conjunction with those.”

The band is also heavily involved in the Spencer Bell Legacy Project, an organization that honors the short life of the musician/writer who died young from adrenal cancer. The band will perform at the annual benefit concert in Auburn Hills, Mich., which is already sold out, that will raise money for adrenal cancer research. Bell’s short life had a profound impact on Graupner.

“I started playing in college, it was about four or five years ago,” said Graupner. “I remember I was supposed to play ‘Ring of Fire,’ the Johnny Cash song, so I learned how to play it on guitar for a walk-on part in this show that actually got written out of the show. Then I started carrying this guitar around. I borrowed it from my friend and in no time I was completely absorbed in it. Then very shortly after that Spencer passed away, that was that winter that I was picking that up. The combination of those two things, the love of music personally and seeing how important that art you create during your lifetime, how that’s going to live on after you and affect people long after you’re dead. The two of those kind of came together and it was like wow, better get working.”

Available for sale or for a free listen, the single “Kolpix” and its B-side, “Future Radio,” which are on the band’s Web site, www.100monkeysmusic .com, could be a preview to its upcoming untitled album that is expected to be released in January 2011. Other future projects the band is looking at are a feature-length movie, something in the vein of The Rolling Stones’ “Rock ’n’ Roll Circus” or the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.” But whatever the future holds, the band wants to keep “people on their toes.”

“We’re trying to put out something different every time,” he said. “It might be a country song. It might be a dance song. It might be a really weird song that has almost an ambient feel to it. I think we’re trying to stay true to who we are as we continue to make music.”

Link:http://www.tbrnews.com/articles/2010/07/15/stepping_out/step1.txt