OK, so I knew I'd been a bit lax on the "update the news page" front but, blimey, even I didn't think that it had been last NOVEMBER! I know that they recon that no news is good news but that's having a laugh. 

Allow me to apologise for my tardy behaviour but I have some good reason, honest Guv! 

We've had quite a busy 2010 and we've just come to our usual end of season break that we have every year in August. Our last gig was our first gig at The Shark in Harlow, and I must say that we went out with a bang. We had a good enthusiastic crowd and I think that was probably one of our best debut gigs ever at a new venue. Thanks to all of the crowd that made the night so special for us and we look forward to seeing you all again as soon as possible.

While we're discussing Harlow, that brings me on to another reason why I've not been updating the news recently...I've moved there. I moved to Harlow at the end of April and before the move I managed to mangle my tripod for the camcorder that I normally film our gigs with. Consequently, we've had no new videos to post on Youtube and I've only just got my life out of boxes in the last few weeks. 

Anyway, enough of the excuses, how about an update? Well, obviously since the last news page, Nick has rejoined the band as our bass maestro. This seems like really old news now as Nick has been back with us since the start of the year. Regardless, it's great to have him back in the fold. That being said, we had Den's multitalented son Bill standing in for Nick at our July Cauli gig on bass (and what a fine job he did too!).

You may also know Bill as our trombone player in the Brass Monkeys, but maybe you may not know that he is also the bass player in a couple of bands of his own, the Short Stories of London and the MT Hedz. We're all a little jealous of Bill now though because he actually played the O2 Arena a couple of weeks ago where his band won the BlastBeat national competition. We don't have any Monkey See videos to post but here's Bill and the MT Hedz in action at the O2 (can you believe it?). Den is VERY proud, and rightly so.

OK, that's enough living vicariously through our drummer's children for now. :-)

We've been working on some new songs recently and have given debuts to our version of Diamonds & Pearls by Band of Skulls and Bubbles by Biffy Clyro recently. We're shortlisting a few more new tunes for the new season too, so hopefully we'll be back with some fresh material for the autumn (and I'll get my bloody tripod sorted to get some new videos on the site).

By the way, we are looking to freshen up the website a bit and want any photos that you guys may have of us or yourselves at any of our gigs. Just e-mail them to us at Info@monkeysee.co.uk and we'll post them up soon. We really want to get a message board running here soon too but none of us are smart enough to figure out how to do it! :-)

OK, so that's enough of an update. We actually played a double header this weekend as we had the great honour of playing our mate Jamie's wedding on Friday night. We'd like to sign off by wishing Jamie and his lovely wife Gill all the best for their future together.

Monkey See you all in September!

Andy :-)