Monkey Bar “Monkey Bar” 1990/2021. Rockhaus records, limited release of 200. Today, September 7th, is our friend, Monkey Bar’s bassist and former Rockhaus Guitars owner Greg Kurczewski’s 65th birthday (second from left on the LP’s cover). He’s back in Milwaukee from Washington DC (where’s lived for over 20 years at this point) this weekend and we got dinner Friday night and plan to head out to his family’s lake house this afternoon for the Labor Day holiday (photo is of Joe, Greg and me at Vanguard on Friday). The band was an alternative rock grungey garagey lofi band out of Milwaukee active from 1988-1993 with Greg on bass, Steve Wahlen (who was in a a zillion Milwaukee bands including Einstein’s Riceboys in the early 80’s, Figgy Figgy and Cherry Cake, both in the mid-to-late 80’s, and then too many more to list 80’s through the 2000’s) on vocals; Rusty Olson (Rockhaus owner after Greg moved, in Couch Flambeau, F/I and others) on drums; Tim Taylor (Buck Byron & The Little Seizures, Ghostly Trio) on guitar, and Bobby Friedman (owner of Sound Sound Studios) on keys and sax.

Monkey Bar’s first album was recorded in 1990 at Grunert Sound (from what Greg tells us this was Chris Grunert’s basement) onto a 4-track cassette in 1990 but wasn’t released until 30+ years later. They released just one more record, in 1997 (That’s It which is likely an after-the-fact comp however Couch Flambeau’s Jay Tiller is credited with drums on a couple of the tracks that appear on both the S/T and That’s It so not entirely sure of the timeline of multiple recording sessions). Some of the tracks that appear on both include “Kill Chevy,” the bluesy “Going Blind,” Existence” the hard jangle-rocker “Sick on the Porch” and a couple of others. (Sadly “Die Kreuzen” isn’t on Monkey Bar so I’m not sure if it’s a salutatory ode or a snide slap.) My top track is the slowish grungy ass-shaking rocker “I’ll Be There.” “Math Song” is fun, too, with an excellent bass groove. Some tracks are a bit hard to listen to like “Love Hate and Pain” which is really strained – think a tinny version of a painful grunge ballad. Same with “Petrol” which has the bones of an anthemic rocker (great beat, solid bass-line, respectable guitar solo) but falls short because of the tortured vocals. As Greg wrote in the note he attached to the album when he sent it a couple years ago “The vocals are cringe worthy at times, but here you go!”