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ABOVE
Eli
Chartkoff enjoying a cup of tea in his living room during
our interview in late 2009.
Photographed
on October 4, 2009. |
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Eli
Chartkoff (with his wife Mary, who plays drums) formed The
Monolators close to eight years ago and have self released
an impressive array of singles, EPs, and LPs. Their music
and performances are often filled with humor and consistently
strike me as fiercely independent, though their D.I.Y. aesthetic
hasn’t at all decreased the quality of their work;
in fact, I’d argue, that it’s clearly increased
the quality of their efforts as they end up pouring so much
time and energy into everything they do. Though they may
not have the highest, local profile, their reputation in
the Silverlake scene as being friendly and helpful is unparalleled
(it’s not uncommon to see bands silk-screening t-shirts
in Eli and Mary’s garage before a tour or record release).
Amongst dozens of bands struggling to find their place,
The Monolators play a key and pivotal role, bringing people
together and helping to make the scene more than just a
collection of bands and venues, but a place of meaning worthwhile
in it’s own right.
I
sat down with Eli in his home in Eagle Rock in October of
2009.
Can
you talk about how you and Mary met and how the Monolators
started?
Eli Chartkoff: We met at a mutual friend's
birthday party at the Good Luck Bar, which I have to admit
we haven't been back to since we met, and the reason I met
her was that I overheard one of my friends talking to her
about her drum lessons and my ears kind of perked up. "Oh,
drum lessons?" So I broke the ice, "you play drums?"
And so we started talking and then I got the courage to
ask her out on a date, it wasn't officially a date, we were
gonna play music together with the obvious subtext that
it was a date. I brought my guitar over to her house and
we played; I don't even remember what we played, I think
we just played some stupid jam thing. But yeah, all our
earliest dates were in the context of playing music together.
And she was in a band that didn't really play shows, they
just practiced in her living room with our original guitar
player Mike. I had been in bands years before but I hadn't
been in band for a long time; I had kind of given up on
the idea cause I thought I'm not nineteen anymore so there's
not really much point. I was doing other stuff too, I was
trying to make movies and things like that but then they
needed a bass player for their little living room band so
I said, "I'll play with you guys." It just sort
of swallowed up my life from there. We started playing together
and we actually did play a show in her living room for about
twenty people. That went okay, but Mike, who was the guitar
player, had this crippling stage fright, probably the worst
I've ever seen in my life. Mary and I got it into our heads
that we wanted to play a show in a club or in front of people,
and that was so stressful for Mike that the original band,
it was called Lonely 451, broke up. Mary and I were still
doing other things, like Mary was making a movie and I was
doing animation and print making, we took some time off
to get married, and then Mary and I decided we wanted to
try playing some shows and we told Mike that we were going
to form a new band and if he wanted to join us he could
but it had to be in context of us actually playing shows.
That's how The Monolators started.
Where
did the name The Monolators come from?
EC: It was a made up word initially. It’s
always been my job to make up names for bands cause nobody
else wants to do it. I like the word modulator a lot but
that had already been used so I started changing syllables,
and so I was like Mobalators, Mockalators, and then I came
up with Monolators and I thought, "aw, that's pretty
good." I looked it up in the dictionary and there was
nothing and I looked it up online and I couldn't find anything,
so I said, “cool, awesome, it's a nonsense word, that’s
great.” But I did not, unfortunately, look it up in
a theological dictionary, it didn't even occur to me. It’s
a theological phrase for a monotheist basically, which was
completely unintended but a lot of people think we're like
a Christian rock band, like a lot of people do. That’s
fine, I think we're nice people, but that was totally unintentional
and if I had to do it over again it would not have been
Monolators. But it stuck.
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What
are some of the names for other bands you were in and created?
EC: I often create names for bands I'm
not in, though I came up with Cobra Lilies. Mary was in
a before The Monolators, an all girl band, and I came up
with their name; that was Hope Rides a Pony. I submitted
them a list of names and I really liked some of the names
I came up with that they didn't like. One of them was Ypsilanti
Bitch Machine, I thought that was pretty good. I also came
up with Ladder to the Bladder and they hated that one. But
they liked Hope Rides a Pony. I tried to name the Damselles,
there was a while before they settled on a name and I tried
to come up with a name and I gave them a list, some of them
were really good, but they didn't take to them. One was
The Sleepovers; I thought that one was good. Red Velvet
Valentine was another one; I thought that was really good.
I end up scavenging a lot of rejected band names for song
titles. So I'll probably use some of those.
What
were some near misses for The Monolators?
EC: There were never any near misses. We
were originally called Lonely 451 which was the name of
this website for this guy who put up personal ads and that
was his little tag, “I'm Lonely 451.” It was
an amazing website, it was like, "Hello Ladies,"
he was from another country and, "in my native country
I'm a gigolo," and then it had a little dictionary
thing that said a gigolo is a lover of many women. It showed
him with his gold chains and it said, "I have a lot
of gold chains and it's not the cheap crap Americans wear,
it’s the real stuff. And here's my car." And
it was a really expensive Mercedes, but it wasn't him with
a Mercedes, it was just a picture out of an ad. "I'm
really lonely and I'm looking for that special someone.
I'm called Lonely 451." The lonely part fit really
well, but the problem was that there were a ton of bands
then with numbers, like you know how everything now is black,
like The Black Lips and The Black Comets and black this
and black that, and everything else is on fire, like Comets
on Fire, we just saw a band called Fire on Fire. At the
time everything was numbers, there was Blink 182, and they
were all really bad bands too, so we thought we can't be
a number band so we changed it. I kinda just volunteered
Monolators and Mike and Mary said, "that's good we'll
use that," and that was it.
Jonathan
and Sean of The Voyeurs keep a list of outrageous band names
on their fridge.
EC: Oh yeah. I think right now we're going
through a period in indie rock especially with really ridiculous
band names.
Like
give me some examples?
EC: Oh...now I can't think of anything.
But if you look at any blog right now the band names are
really long and ridiculous. It just goes through phases.
What
are some band names in L.A. that you really like?
EC: I always thought Bodies of Water was
a great name just because it can be anything you want it
to be. Whereas the problem with The Monolators, apart form
the whole Christian rock thing, is that it sounds very garage/punky,
we are a garage band so it fits, but we also like a lot
of other stuff too and I feel it’s sort of pigeon
holed us a little bit. Happy Hollows is a good name, again
it sort of could be anything.
I
really like band names that have clear abbreviations, for
example The Rolling Stones are The Stones, or The Dandy
Warhols are The Dandies.
EC: Right, we don’t have that. (laughs)
People sometimes call us The Monos.
Like
Silversun Pickups, I just call them Silversun.
EC: And everyone knows what you're talking
about.
I
just really love band names that have those nick names sort
of built into them.
EC:
Yeah, it's hard to come up with a good name. Honestly,
The Beatles is a stupid name. It's a dumb name, nobody even
thinks about it. Little insects but it's got the 'beat'
in it, it's dumb. I don't think it's a good name, but it
sort of doesn't matter. Buddy Holly and the Crickets. The
Crickets, what? That's stupid. It doesn't really matter.
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