STEVE: Yeah, we toured around the world before we toured New Zealand - sort of did things back to front.
CARL: Probably through frustration of our old band. We decided to do things differently in this band.
STEVE: Yeah
CARL: Anything that, you know, didn't work then we avoid now.
STEVE: But in a way, that works in your favour because sometimes in the industry here, you know, you've got to be known overseas before you can make some headway in New Zealand. To actually go and play overseas has served us well. We can say we've been there and done that, and people might actually sit up and take a bit of notice.

MILES: No throwing peanuts in the back row please. Here's this weeks uncharted guests.

CARL: Hi ... we're Uncle Monkey ... I'm Carl
SAM: I'm Sam
STEVE: and I'm Steve
HIRAM: I'm Hiram
STEVE: This is Hiram - he's from Alaska. He's just on tour with us at the moment as our general roadie, photographer, security...
CARL: .....Slash dogs body (eruption of laughter)
STEVE: Actually, we all met at University. We just did the 'play for some extra money' sort of thing you know, when our student loans were creeping up, so we did the covers band thing for a while, then we formed a band called Each, we were playing our own material, and we released a single and had a video with that, and thats really about it, I mean, that covers several years. At the end of 'Each', Uncle Monkey was formed and that was 2 and a half years ago or there abouts.
SAM: There is a long story, if you've got the time - when going from say Nelson to Dunedin, we'll give the involved version of that story.
CARL: Yeah, Steve's going to write the book one day.
STEVE: Yeah, I plan to write the book.

MILES: Literally aspirations aside, here's why 'Each' scaled down from band with big amps to a far more portable 3-piece Uncle Monkey.

CARL: Ah, we decided to have alot of fun and make things cheaper, economise on instruments we were using, and all of a sudden, we realised we actually had half a decent band.
SAM: I was, I played keyboards in the band Each, so, the inception of Uncle Monkey was basically a fundamental change, I started playing bass ...
STEVE: ... and I just started playing stand up snare drum ...
SAM: ... from full drum kit, so the whole sound went from a produced kind of ...
CARL: ... 5-piece rock band ...
SAM: ... to a 3-piece sort of acoustic ...
CARL: ... femmes'y type thing ...
SAM: ... crowded house'ishy ...
CARL: ... and, and we started talking over the mic alot chatting with our audiences and joking amoungst ourselves and ...
STEVE: ... that was actually a direct result of the six jugs of beer that we used to drink before going on in our early days, you know, there's a few ramblings sort of emerged, but ah ...
HIRAM: The crowd must be aware, they get heckled.
STEVE: Well, thats right. It's part of our show now, you know, we don't even have to have six jugs of beer anymore.
SAM: We welcome Hecklers, but if you're gonna Heckle, Heckle loud, cause we wanna hear ya - thats what I tell people.
STEVE: We encourage all sorts of banter, in fact some of our shows we do, it's actually in the job description, is to give the crowd alot of stick and they expect it and encourage it and welcome it.
SAM: ... and we give it.
STEVE: We do.
SAM: Gladly.
STEVE: We try not to disappoint, although sometimes you feel a wee bit under pressure...
CARL: To be funny guys.
STEVE: Yeah, like it's some kind of comedy show and you've gotta be funny.

MILES: Getting to and from Uncle Monkey shows is achieved in a yellow Holden station wagon with, no wuprise, 3 monkeys painted on the back.

CARL: It was one of those early kind of wretched things that we set our minds on getting a Holden and painting it bright yellow.
SAM: Yep.
CARL: That was more important than the music actually.
SAM: We, we struggled pretty hard to save up to buy it. We look back on that now, we spent 3 times that amount on recording albums and overseas trips and this that and everything else, and we look back on the pitiful amount that we struggled to save in the early days just to buy this car. Sometimes our expenses for the month, we could probably buy 2 or 3 of them two years on.
STEVE: It's 2 years older than the one in the Te Papa museum. We're pretty proud of that fact, but yeah, it all fits in the back and...
CARL: We've just spent a small fortune on that small fact though.
STEVE: Yes, we did, but ah, you know, travel in style, so ...
SAM: We were just talking today, if we really wanted to increase the um, size of the P.A. and instruments and stuff, we'd probably have to employ Hiram here, to ah, drive it round just to fit all the gear in, cause we've gotta have enough room for, you know, people that we pick up along the way.
CARL: Like Hiram.
SAM: Like Hiram.
HIRAM: Scraps along the road.
SAM: People are always waiting to jump in the back of the Holden, I mean, usually they're school girls, but we tell them, look, we don't want to go to jail, so...

MILES: You're listening to Uncle Monkey and this is uncharted. In New Zealand, you'll hear us on any of the B net stations like 99.4 in Palmerston North, the CBAA satalite sends this programme to all sorts of bits of Australia and 4ZZZ play us on the New Zealand music show in Brisbane. Uncharted is produced with funding from the broadcasting fee through NZ on air. We're back now with Uncle Monkey and one place they didn't drive their Holden to.

STEVE: London town. We basically went over to see it, you know, as from a travellers perspective as well as taking our music over there. Got out the phone books once we were there, started looking up people and ringing them and sending stuff to people and we ended up ah...
CARL: We were quite lucky, cause Steves brother is the accountant at EMI. He gave us a book of contacts and we just flipped through it, looking for alot of managers and record companies we thought would suit our material and sent it off!!
SAM: Also, Steve has, um, British Citizenship, so as a way of avoiding the whole non work permit thing, we gave him all the band gear, and Carl and I went through seperatly with back packs on us...
CARL: ... ha, ha, as travellers
SAM: (In Sweedish accent) My name is Helga, I come from Sweeden, I am touring.
STEVE: I am on holiday.
SAM: I am not intending on working.
STEVE: So yeah, we went over there and ended up getting a number of gigs, probably the most significant ones being two that we played support for Paul Kelly, the Australian...
CARL: Legend...
STEVE: Country rock icon, yeah, couple of shows there - they were really good.
CARL: We played at a small venue called the Kashimir Club which is an underground type industry venue.
SAM: Very supportive of local acts and touring original bands.
CARL: Kind of known by word of mouth and stuff and they had, ah, it was hosted by a guy every night of the week, and it was live on the net and everything. It was a really professionally run, little venue. It was awesome and we started out there with a 2 song audition, you know, they let us, but that only came about after driving from Manchester to London and then through 2 hours of traffic and we were all at our wits end, and went there with our instruments and said well if we wanna play , we've gotta be there in their faces with our instruments, and they put us on and really liked us and invited us back and we ended up doing I think 4 shows at the Kashmir Club and by the last one, the Kiwi Aussie grapevine had worked quite well for us and we had full houses. It was really good.
STEVE: We also played up in Manchester. A place called the Roadhouse of kind of Oasis fame and stuff but...
SAM: they weren't there thank goodness.
STEVE: Yeah
SAM: Wouldn't have had too much to say to Oasis - think he's a bit of a pillick.
CARL: They were spitting the dummy at the time I think?
STEVE: I was asked the other day what it was like to play at the place where Oasis and the Verve and stuff, you know, gained their stripes and it was like, well, to be honest it was a bit of a dive. (eruption of laughter)
STEVE: Nothing flash about it whatsovever, however, I don't suppose the Cavern Club in Liverpool was very flash either, but it served the Beatles well, so.

MILES: Uncle Monkey have also made their way across the Atlantic ditch

SAM: We tended to Motel it when we were in the States. We went to the States for about a month and...
CARL: Went to Alaska where we met Hiram for 8 days, played at a wee bar in Juneau and flogged off some albums and stuff.
HIRAM: Ran around the bushes hiding from the bears.
CARL: Yeah, we spent some time out at a cabin in the woods, that was pretty cool, playing guitar and singing to the wolves and bears.
STEVE: I don't know, but we'd be one of the first New Zealand bands to probably play in Juneau, Alaska.
HIRAM: I think so.
SAM: Let alone Gustavus.
HIRAM: Not too many New Zealander's passing through
SAM: Carl played in Turkey.
CARL: Yeah, I did a gig in Turkey. We're hoping to get down to Antarctica as a band actually, thats one of our next goals.
SAM: We've got some contacts down there now. We like playing in isolated places - thats the plan.
STEVE: Hiram's just come from Antarctica you see, so...
SAM: He's from McMurdoh
CARL: He's been giving us some hints and stuff on who to contact and where to go and what time of the year.
STEVE: Yeah, you could view it as being a big fish in a small pond, so if you get enough small ponds together, well...
SAM: You make a big splash everywhere you go.
STEVE: You know, famous in Ruatoria.
SAM: Specially with a yellow holden kingswood.
STEVE: Oh yeah, although I do have it on authority that the locals up on the East Cape wouldn't be seen dead in our yellow Holden because of its colour, and I was told that by a local, so we're quite safe when we go up there that they're not gonna steal it, then again they could always strip it down overnight and paint it black.
CARL: No one would know.
STEVE: Yeah.
SAM: Unless they forgot to change the plates which read Monk1e.
STEVE: Mmmmm
SAM: Which would be a rather silly oversight in the whole scheme of things.

INT: Theft, unfortunately, is very much to the fore front of the 3 Uncle Monkey minds.

CARL: In the last week, Sam had his wallet stolen from his bedroom while he was in the shower for 10 minutes.
SAM: 10 minutes, 10 minutes.
CARL: and...
SAM: ... the remnants of it were found in a garden nearby
CARL: and it was only days later when we went to Palmerston North that my leather jacket and band cellphone got stolen from the back of the stage and the headmaster very coily brought if out to us after about half and hour later.
STEVE: We were playing at a school
CARL: Yeah
STEVE: Just fo clarify that.
CARL: No questions asked, just gave it back and then we ended up in Hastings in the Post Office delivering some stuff and Steve's wallet got stolen and he found it...
STEVE: In the public toilets.
SAM: It was returned to him at the Police Station by some guy that just walked up, said nothing, handed him his wallet, said "found this in the toilet"!
HIRAM: But only after we pursued some other shadey character
STEVE: Yeah, we actually followed someone else home...
SAM: and confonted him at his door and said, "we've lost our wallet"
STEVE: Yeah, we had Hiram, so we felt safe
CARL: Yeah, so we're just waiting for something of Hiram's to be stolen now, then the puzzle will be complete. Maybe it was Hiram all along!
HIRAM: You never know.

MILES: Turning to other matters, Uncle Monkey, after doing bits of the Northern Hemisphere, are now making their way around New Zealand.

STEVE: We're on tour at the moment around New Zealand. It's our first real tour of New Zealand as Uncle Monkey, so we've been working up alot of new material, with a view to record a second album.
SAM: But thats sort of in the pipeline - the focus really is the album at the moment, outside of the Wellington, Palmerston North region no one knows who the hell we are, much less that we have an album available, so its distributing it to retail and getting it to DJ's and sort of getting the name out there, that sort of thing. We're very outside topical music in general and even the New Zealand music scene I think pretty much reflects alot of overseas influence, they struggle to get outside of the grunge square or the techno square or so alternative you cant go away remembering anything they played square.
CARL: Yeah, thats right
SAM: So in some ways, we're kind of an alternative band in itself, we sound like a radio band and thats what we wanna be, its like, we wanna appeal to the most amount of people possible, write songs we like singing ourselves.
STEVE: Yeah
SAM: Accessable music, you know
STEVE: Try to be melodic
SAM: Not ... life isn't that bad
CARL: Be gone the 90's
CARL: We tried to reflect that a little bit in our album, that we have a bit of fun on the stage, and can be quirky and you know, have a good time and stuff.
SAM: If you ask someone thats seen an Uncle Monkey show what do they play? They'll probably say, "anything and everything"!

MILES: This week uncharted talked to Uncle Monkey.