Monalia's World

Selfie I took after my SKANKSTERS reunion gig (June 2017)

2 weeks after returning from Greece I flew solo to LA for the 35 year reunion of my band The Skanksters, who were popular in LA in the 80’s and 90’s. It was Roger Steffan’s 75th birthday.
Roger is a well known music producer, author, archivist and scholar who supported our band from the get go. His birthday is what inspired the band reunion. Back in the day he would often emcee in his deep, booming voice, announcing our band with infectious enthusiasm. We’d open for UB40, Black Uhuru, Burning Spear and other popular Jamaica influenced bands of the time.

Despite not having played together in so many decades, and despite the fact all us original members now live in different cities, and in my case, another country – with 4 rehearsals we pulled off two gigs. I recruited 2 of my hotshot LA guys to enhance our sound for the Cinema Club, and our friend Tommy videotaped that performance for us. It was great fun to get to relive my popular band experience, and a perk I had never expected from life.

Since this 2017 band reunion I’ve become more of a musician again, less of a writer. So just for the chronology of my blog and the chronicling of my projects, I post some of the songs we performed live at the Cinema Club in L.A. in June 2017:

Just like in the old days, we opened with an instrumental, called Rastasurfari:

Classic Skanksters song, I FEEL RUDE tonight

Microwave Babies is one of the first songs I’ve ever written. Although originally I wrote it for this band, later when I joined DEVO spin-off band, Visiting Kids, I gave them the song and this is how it sounded then, with Bob Mothersbaugh on guitar:

Original Skankster guitarist Kyle Johnson wrote the SKANKSTERS hit called “What I Got”. Here it is, 35 years later…:

Bass player Arlo Zoos sings the next song

She also sings our L.A: theme song:

It was so fun to relive the height of my youth in this way. Since then, having seen myself back on video, I went back to Barcelona and shed 20 pounds.

Our drummer Alibob also wrote and sings a song which I leave you with. Its a bit long, but its great too, about the man named Mehmet Adja who shot the pope: