i wish more people had heard of monsterland the most out of all of these bands. it's hard to explain why they mean so much to me, but i have been a fan for at least ten years now. i think i first discovered them when i wrote to almost every record label i could find in various music magazines and requested a catalog. seed records was just starting out around then, and they sent me a lot of stuff including a sampler cd called i lick you because i love you. this disc had two monsterland songs on it: "insulation" and "lobsterhead." both songs were great, but i listened to "insulation" constantly. and i knew that i had to find more music by this band. being that i was about 15, i didn't have a lot of money. my cheapest option was to order the monsterland tape i had seen in the tpos catalog. when i received it in an envelope made of another tpos catalog folded in half and sealed around the edges with packing tape, i really liked it. i didn't know until many years later that it was recorded at the wrong speed, but it sounded good to me at the time anyway. shortly after that, i was at some huge store with my parents and found a copy of destroy what you love for sale. it must have been my birthday or something because i talked them into buying it for me. when i finally got to listen to it, i loved it. i felt like an insider because i already had the original version of "twice at the end." it took me a while to get their final release, the at one with time ep. i remember buying it at sunburst records in huntsville, alabama, where i had also previously acquired a used copy of loser friendly. jay, the owner (who even remembered me when i went there last year), was kind of drunk and gave me $2 off of it because he said it had "been here a while." the songs on this disc became my favorite monsterland songs.
sometime in 1996, when the internet was getting popular, i noticed that nobody had any information about monsterland available. so i decided to make my own. it was really just one long page on geocities, consisting of images i scanned poorly from the cds and a transcription of an interview from flipside magazine (back when i had a subscription). i even included a scan of the envelope that was returned to me after i tried to write to the p.o. box listed in the liner notes. a few people found it, and i occasionally got emails asking where to find their cds or what happened to them. but i didn't know anything. after a couple years, somebody wrote to me saying that they knew greg vegas and showed him the page. shortly after that, i got an email from greg. i couldn't believe that anything had actually happened as a result of making that webpage. greg was really nice and sent me all of the records that i didn't already own. he also got their old attorney to send me a bunch of old posters and flyers. he even sent me a christmas present. this was a dream for me, and i was so grateful. we have kept in touch on and off ever since.
not too long after getting in touch with greg, i got an email from thom monahan. he is worse than me about replying to emails, so we didn't really communicate very much. but in the summer of 2001, i made my friend seth take a trip up to chattanooga with me to see the pernice brothers. we got there early, and before the show started, i saw thom sitting by himself. i walked up to him and tried to start up a conversation, which isn't very easy for me to do in the first place. thom didn't recognize me, altho' i didn't really expect that he would. so i introduced myself, and his reaction showed that he was actually excited to meet me. we talked throughout the night, except when he was playing with the band, of course. among the things we talked about, he told me that my monsterland page had helped him and greg to be friends again. i don't know how much i believe that, but it still meant a lot that he said it. he bought seth and i a beer and gave us each a copy of the new pernice brothers album before. i have also kept in touch with thom on and off ever since.
as you can see, this band means a lot to me personally, in a way much different than the other bands on this site. two of the members actually became friends of mine and are a couple of the nicest people i've ever known. (i've never met or had any contact with todd, but i'm sure he's nice as well. and chris mitchell's wife actually contacted me to make sure that i didn't forget about him on this page.) but i may have never known them if i didn't first know and love their music.
(an actual bio will have to wait. i have to find my old emails from greg to assemble one. if you want a postcard announcing the release of destroy what you love, be one of the next 9 people to send me your postal mailing address. this is a serious offer. i know it's not the same as getting it in the mail in 1993, but it's still cool.)
