Also this issue: Here We Are Now -Patrick Rapa The Hangman James Lewes is documenting a very perishable part of the local rock scene. -Patrick Rapa Where They Were Then From Studio to salon to saloon, old-heads recall the scene they can¹t exactly remember. -A.D. Amorosi Punk Calling Diary of a man in a local band (or two) in the early 䢔s. -179Frank Blank² Moriarty Getting to the point the bryn mawr club knows where it¹s going, and where it¹s been. -Mary Armstrong Those were the frickin¹ days Rolling stone¹s david fricke remembers the main point -Patrick Rapa The Lowdown Peaks, valleys and what finally put a fork in The Low Road. -Lori Hill Deep Thoughts with The Low Road

October 17-23, 2002

cover story

No More Monkey Business

RECOGNITION SCENE: ³I feel bad for the Chino guys,² says Kowalchuk of the way Monkey 101 casts a shadow on his new band. ³That¹s all they ever hear about.²

Will synchronicity finally catch up with Paul Kowalchuk?

by Brian Howard Photo by michael t. regan

There were only 500 copies pressed, and that was back in 1989. Just two little songs. But people remember.

The two songs, “French Feelings” and “Now That You Have Left Me,” were gritty, low-fi pop-punk nuggets that would fit in almost eerily well with today’s garage rock revival. The songs made their creators, the members of erstwhile Philly band Monkey 101, indie rock urban legends. The little single on the then-fledgling Siltbreeze label comprised exactly half of the band’s released output. (The band put out another single, “First I Walk, Then I Run, Then I Fall”; an album, Rusts, Smuts and Heart Rot, has never seen the light of day.) Yet the trio is remembered.

And remembered fondly. Paul Kowalchuk, once Monkey 101's leader, recently entered and won a contest on the Matador Records website to meet Robert Pollard, lead singer of indie-rock stalwart Guided By Voices and renowned writer of catchy-as-hell songs, at a New York performance. At the show, Pollard didn't just remember Kowalchuk from a brief meeting the two shared years ago at The Khyber, but Pollard and the Matador folks asked Kowalchuk if he and his most recent band, Chino, wouldn't open a few dates for Guided By Voices.

"It's hard to imagine," recounts an incredibly easygoing Kowalchuk, 38, over a turkey club at Silk City Diner. "I was just in New York, I'm talking to Bob Pollard and the Matador people. They all remember Monkey 101. They all have the single; they were all like, ŒAh! That's you!'"

The recent wave of re-recognition doesn't stop there, though. Kowalchuk had been in touch with a radio host on New York's WFMU where Chino was scheduled to perform a set recently. "She e-mailed me," explains Kowalchuk, "and she said, ŒHey, did you write ŒFrench Feelings'?'"

Throw in a few other random encounters, and you get the feeling something's afoot.

While some might look at being remembered for a 14-year-old record as a curse, Kowalchuk is mostly happy for the recognition. "On the one hand, it's really complimentary; on the other hand, it's like Œwhoa'." he reasons. "I'm really glad. I feel bad for the Chino guys, because that's all they ever hear about."

After all, Chino -- filled out by drummer Rob Feeney and guitarist Mike Schuldt -- has been together longer than Monkey 101 ever was. That trio disbanded after about three or four years (Kowalchuk is unsure of the band's exact starting and end points since the members had all been friends for some time before the band started). Chino has been playing together for going on five years. While his newer band's existence has been relatively subdued, playing just occasional shows and with a couple of self-released CDs to their credit, this recent bout of "synchronicity," as Kowalchuk puts it, could play out well for the band.

Their most recent effort, Living Room, is a 13-song chunk of trebly, high-strung punk that pops with the kind of hooks that made Monkey 101's flash in the proverbial pan so memorable. On "Home" you can hear the gnash-blues of Dead Moon; "Love It or Leave It" boasts a glam metal stomp; "You Gotta Take Chances" wouldn't feel out of place ratcheted up by Jack White; while "Everyone Likes a Lie" recalls vintage three-chord, shout-along punk.

Kowalchuk may have been relatively quiet in years since his most memorable moment, but this, and another Chino album, Chino Surrenders!, prove he's rarely stopped writing songs, nor has he lost the touch. "Rock and roll is so cyclical," figures Kowalchuk. "Maybe that's part of the whole synchronistic thing. Rock music just keeps going, reinventing."

Is it possible now could be the time for Chino? Their recent relative flurry of shows (warming up for their two GBV dates) and a new record in the works highlight a recent gearing-up period for the band.

The band finds it difficult to play out too often, given that, according to Kowalchuk, "We're all old working people, we'll never go out on a weeknight."

It's so obvious it's hardly worth mentioning, but Kowalchuk's hero, a certain Mr. Pollard, toiled in relative obscurity, doing the workaday thing, until he watched his career as a rock-and-roller jumpstart at an age when most men are entering mid-life crises.

But whether or not Chino goes the way of GBV or, well, continues in the manner of Chino, Kowalchuk is happy, describing the band as "a meant-to-be."

"I'm more into playing the music than getting it out [on a label]," he says. "You kind of go through that mill. It's important to me just to do it and have a body of work."

One gets the sense that Kowalchuk, who also devotes his time to painting and odd-ball art projects, will be happy however things play out.