Well, once again it's been a mad couple of months in the Monkey See camp. March and April have seen a lot going on for us, but the big news is that our bass player, Nick, has decided to finally throw in the musical towel and find something altogether more interesting to do with his Saturday nights than spend them with a bunch of old wannabes like us! :-) Yes, Nick, one of the founders of the band with Terry over 5 years ago, has decided that he's off to devote more time to his family and other interests.
As a band, we want to thank Nick for all of the years of hard work and dedication that he has put in to making Monkey See what it is today (whatever that is exactly?). I'm sure that Nick will be back to play the odd guest spot with us on occasion and we all wish him the best for the future. Au revoir Nick - you will be sadly missed by the band and the fans alike!
Nick played his last gig with us at The Cauliflower on Saturday. I sadly couldn't make it that night as I had another committment, but Den's son Bill did a great job learning to play our set on guitar so that he could stand in for me. He did an amazing job for us (and bailed me out at the same time) was a great hit with the crowd too apparently - or at least with a couple of attractive swedish ladies who took a shine to our young axeman by all accounts! Typical, I'm in the band for years without a sniff of a groupie and Bill gets swedish attention on his first night! Well, he is 30 years younger than me and has all his own hair, so I suppose it's understandable. :-) Seriously though, Bill did great for us and made his old man Dennis very, very proud! - WELL DONE BILL!
Lastly, I suppose you must be all wondering who will be replacing Nick on bass now? Well, knowing what a discerning bunch Monkey See fans all are, we scoured the length and breadth of the country (Ok, so we sent a couple of text messages!) to find someone that could follow a bass player of Nick's talent. We think that we might have found a worthy successor and are proud to announce that our new bass player is Paul Gold, one time bass kingpin of 90s rock band Two Tribes and old friend of the band. Paul is busily learning songs now to get up and running and his first gig with us will be at The Loaded Dog in Leytonstone on Friday 8th May. Hopefully some of you will be able to make it down to welcome Paul to the Monkey See family in style? For those of you that want a preview of what Paul can do, here's the video for Two Tribes 1992 single "Back to Love" (apologies for the poor picture quality).
Not bad eh? See you all at The Loaded Dog then? :-)
Andy