NLM was State of the Art!

It’s not often we get to really make a difference. Much less make a difference while having a Hell of a good time. But we did it, and public nudity wasn’t even a part of the experience.... Although it could have been, since we had some of our favorite flashers in the crowd!!

NLM had the opportunity, nay, the privilege, of playing for the 4th annual Hayes Hitzeman Foundation State of the Art Ball on September 17th. The supremely altruistic organization funds research into the prevention of and the education about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). We couldn’t have played for a better crowd of dedicated and optimistic people. They even cheered when I screeched out the last verse of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap! So hats off to Kyra Hitzeman and all of the great people who came together to remind us that our health is important and celebrating life is some serious business. You guys rocked!

By the way, the very insistent crowd there convinced us that we needed to polish up more songs from our 80s portfolio. If I hear one more person ask us to play “Jessie’s Girl,” I’m going to return all of my official Rick Springfield Fan Club paraphernalia!

All together now: “Whoa-oh! We’re halfway there-er! Whoa-oh! Living on a pray-yer!”

Another Saturday night in the Bottom

Man, what a great gig last Saturday night! The crowd was rockin’, the beer was flowing, and the music transported us to a magical, higher place where all our worldly cares drifted away in the love that comes from pure art poured straight from our souls...RETCH! Sometimes I gross myself out with that flowery, purple prose! Ewww.

But, man, what a great gig last Saturday night! Thanks to everybody that contributed to the fun. Between the bachelorette and the birthday parties, we certainly had a lot of celebrating to do. Siné is just one of those places where the crowd can vary in composition, but never in their desire to have a good time. You guys certainly reminded us that we need to learn some more Rick Springfield and Counting Crows. And we hope you are enjoying the new NLM schwag – those t-shirts and hats kick boo-tay!

We met some great new friends and caught up with some of our old friends, too. And the prevailing hope is that Angela’s crew of dedicated party women all got home safely. You should have seen Chris tripping all over himself to be the hero when their van’s battery crapped out on them! And Angela – we took a vote and decided that we’d love to play your Mardi Gras party, but do we have to wait that long? Surely a resourceful New Orleans native such as yourself can think of an excuse to throw a party between now and next February!

Don’t forget to come back out to Siné on March 19th for their off-da-hook St. Patrick’s Day Celebration. Bands and beer all day (starting at 1:30pm) and into the night. No cover if you are there early! Catch us in the 7:30 – 9:30 slot, but don’t just come for us. I mean, when else do you have an excuse to drink like a fish and let it all hang out? I mean, besides last weekend? Hmm. Well, why stop now?!

So what's in a name?

A whole lot apparently!

So after years of being “the monkey band” or “the monkey boys”--Or “the naughty little monkeys,” which is incorrect—by the way. As I’ve said, “Collectively, we are but one monkey.”

Anyway, now for 2005, nlm was considering a gradual fade-out of the monkey icon and the full name—naughty little monkey, in favor of the short, sweet, “nlm.” We figured, we’re not kids anymore and our audience is getting older too. And we’d like to wiggle into some of the gigs in the corporate area, which seems a little more “mature.”

After much conversation and deliberation over the past few weeks, we had all but kicked the chair out from under the monkey. We’d come up with a cool alternative icon focusing on “nlm” and some pretty creative images to help fill the void—or at least to help de-emphasize the line monkey, as we like to call him. We’d even put the breaks on a t-shirt order that was monkey-heavy, and we were ready to start operation “phase out.”

Then came Feb.12. I guess our first indication that de-monkeying might not be a good idea was when sax-player Chris King first heard of the plan. Chris is generally a pretty jovial guy, but there was no smile on his face as we told him what we intended. “Ya can’t get rid of the monkey. People love it!” he said.

I must say that I agree—and did then too. We’d just created our first baseball caps (get yours soon!) with an embroidered monkey and the small letters “nlm.” I’ve said all along that we can sell a hat with a monkey on it, but that (unfortunately) we probably can’t sell too many hats with just “nlm.”

So for the Feb. 12 gig at Sin’e (if you missed it, you missed a great time), we’d prepared our shwag bag with t-shirts, caps, stickers, CDs, and our new promo materials. Once we got there I created a little display on the shelf behind Dave (bass). So here’s where we started to realize that the monkey deserves to stick around. Before I got a shirt on a hanger for display, I overheard two girls commenting on the shwag. One of them said, “No, it’s got to have the word “naughty” on it or I don’t want it.” That’s when I realized the shirt wasn’t hanging. It does say “naughty little monkey” on it. But all they could see was the caps and stickers which don’t contain the full name. And keep in mind that the new t-shirt design (if we made the change) would not have the whole name.

So a bit later, as we’re waiting for one of our own to arrive—that’s a whole ‘nother story, ask me sometime—I began talking to a young couple who had approached our little shwag shelf. One of the first things they said was, “We just love the name—and the logo is really cool.” That synched it for me. It seemed that everyone that I talked to (without being prompted) said they love the name “naughty little monkey” and the line monkey.
And the other guys in the band experienced the same thing.

So we went ahead with the new t-shirt design, complete with “naughty little monkey” on the front and lots of little line monkeys on the back. We should have them by the March 5 gig at Sin’e. This is the first time we’ve gotten several different colors of shirt so I think you’ll dig them. And the new hats are pretty cool too. And you can expect to see some of the additional creative stuff on the website soon.

Incidentally Mike came up with the line monkey) came up with as alternatives to the monkey—I’ll try to get him to tell that story sometime. It’s a pretty good one. But don’t worry, the line monkey is safe and sound.

NLM shoots for the Big Game

If we said we have been selected to compete in the Emergenza Festival 2005, you’d probably say “What?” Heck, googling “Emergenza” gets you more websites in Italian than English! (Probably because “emergenza” is Italian for “emergency.” But I digress!).

The Emergenza Music Festival is a colossal international battle of the bands contest, with competitions from Albuquerque to Zurich. Almost 2,000 bands in the U.S. will compete in 21 cities over the first few months of this year, with progressively fewer bands advancing to the U.S. finals in June in Boston, then to the worldwide finals in August in Germany. The winner of the competition gets a primo spot on the Vans Warped Tour 2006 (and lots of exposure!).

And thus, Naughty Little Monkey is setting off on our shot at the Big Show! We’ve been selected by the Emergenza committee and our first round is March 26th at the Velvet Lounge in DC. We’ll be playing our 30 minute set along with seven other bands, so it will be a quick set. (Doing the math, let’s see, 8 bands times 30 minutes, is…carry the 2, umm…a long night of good music!) Needless to say, we’d love to see you there!

The four bands with the most votes from the audience that night will advance to the next round, so the more NLM fans we can bring out, the better our chances. Email us if you are interested in tickets ($10 from us in advance, $15 at the door) and make a road trip out of it! And if you can’t make it on the 26th, plan on coming up for the second round (think positive, visualize success…)! We’d love to see you at one of our gigs in the next couple of months where we’ll be trying out different sets of songs to see what works for the festival. Or go here to vote for your favorite NLM song – we’ll make sure to play the top fan favorite in DC on March 26th!