Uncle Monsterface, Sock Puppet Rock Band and Multimedia Extravaganza-thon-a-rama is available for bookings AND unique commisions. Sock puppet and humans rocking out together…at long last.
Contact us by writing: team(at)unclemonsterface(dot)com
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Uncle Monsterface Biographical Information-atron-o-meter-bot 1500
Uncle Monsterface. A new rock band for a new rock day. Presenting wicked awesome Sock Puppet Rock for adults and children of adults and sea pets and so forth. There will in all likelihood be portents, signs, dancing, antiquities, and objects (some of which may be thrown about, eaten, or “humped.”)
Save the children, eat your hand, build a heart container, and set out to sea – Uncle Monsterface is your new best friend on the liferaft of the future.
For all the people, all the time: UNCLE MONSTERFACE
photo by www.shannoncaseysplain.com
“Uncle Monsterface is a multi-media experience, a term that does the surreal phenomenon that is this band no justice…If sock puppets, psychedelic prairie dogs and inflatable lobsters aren’t your thing, you should probably move along.” – musicpost.com
In December of 2004 three young men got together to make up some songs. They decided to call themselves Uncle Monsterface.
Initially simply playing weird jingles while frontman Marty Allen occasionally took out a sock puppet to help with the yelling, Monsterface quickly evolved into a band that features an ever-growing multimedia extravaganza – a children’s show gone wrong in all of the best possible ways – a SOCK PUPPET ROCK BAND for the future, several possible pasts, and a totally exhilirating and often overwhelming present.
Uncle Monsterface is Marty Allen yelling and jumping about, (paradise) Dan Brennan playing rock guitar, and (perfect) Jimmy Bernardinelli on the keytar, keyboard, and trombone. Uncle Monsterface also: is a small green puppet with big yellow teeth; is a home-made Tee Vee show on YouTube; is a giant projection of dancing prairie dogs; is songs about Count Chocula and Rocks; is twenty or thirty crazy little puppets singing and flailing inside a colorful puppet theater; is a dance-off between Humanity and Monsterkind; is inflatable lobsters thrown into a crowd; is a megaphone thrust into the air; is a giant monster who comes to life to find treasures and dispel evil for the band; is three grown men wearing sheets and calling them capes; is the audience invited onto the stage to rock out with them at the end of every set. Uncle Monsterface is all these things and quite possibly several others as well…
Marty, James, and Dan first began collaborating together on The Top Shelf Variety Show, an post-art school artist-run local access program outside of Boston showcasing bands, other artists, and various bits of funny business. Amongst several other amazing talents, they saw one another and felt the first tug of the clammy hand of fate upon their backs. Though Top Shelf dissipated naturally and amicably, the various creative parties did not cease to make stuff: Paradise Dan began to establish himself as a top notch recording engineer; Perfect Jimmy continued creating bizarre and amazing animations for both his own Big Castle Productions as well as TROMA entertainment; and Marty made a bunch of sock puppets and 90 or so songs (one a day for three months) and started to play them in front of people.
It wasn’t long before it became clear that Marty could use some help performing these songs, and so the questionably constructed stage was set for an Uncle Monsterface to be born. Not coincidentally, the boys would go on to recruit none other than Jesse Farrell as their lead puppeteer and Monsterface Handler, the gentleman who had most recently been seen hosting the very Top Shelf Variety Show itself.
Fostering artistic collaborations such as this and capitalizing on the giant pool of talent around them has become the norm for Monsterface – in addition to authoring a vast array of their own multimedia animations and videos, Monsterface has taken to asking their friends for help, too. An early recruit was another Top Shelf alum, Ryanne Hodson (now best known as video blogging pioneer at ryanedit.blogspot.com), to author the backdrops for their songs ‘Lobster Building’ and more recently ‘Pets.’
Other collaborators would be found to give a new vision to ‘Count Chocula’ (creative type and local crank Gabriel Duquette) as well as ‘Capes’ (animation giantess and super friend Emil Jean Gobeille – www.zanyparade.com). Still more collaborations of mightiness are being sought with costumes, props, ideas, and happenings – an ever-growing array adding to the multimedia extrvaganza.
One of the most defining of these collaborations occurred with young indie-book rock and roll phenom Harry and the Potters. In March of 2006 Uncle Monsterface hit the road for a two week show with Joe and Paul DeGeorge of Harry and the Potters, an endeavor to be dubbed Potterface 2006. In addition to playing thirteen shows in as many cities over the course of two weeks, the two bands went on to collaboratively create a video and a song to accompany each day while scrupulously keeping journals. The results were premiered in an unparalleled piece on the Boston Phoenix online.
In July of 2008 Uncle Monsterface released their second full-length album, “This is an Adventure!” Once again embracing the ubiquitous weird that is the internet, for one week Monsterface offered the album for “free with a promise” to fans everywhere. They asked only that if you took it, you told people what you thought. Garnering responses from across the globe that were, much to the surprise of Uncle Monsterface, largely positive, the boys followed the album with a six-week national tour – The Unlimited Enthusiasm Exposition (aka Camp Jump & Yell), a DIY summer camp and circus with their good friends Harry and the Potters and Math the Band.
Uncle Monsterface strives to make music awesome and fun while not belittling the intelligence or importance of its audience. Everyone who takes a moment to take in all of their craziness is instantly a member of TEAM monsterface – each as important as anyone else who participates in the band.
And TEAM monsterface has only just begun.
