HOW THE ONLY THE LABEL VERSION OF '(THEME FROM) THE MONKEES' CAME TO BE

One of the most unusual recordings to emerge from the indie music community created by Only The Host is '(Theme From) The Monkees' by Captain Chemical, Pixie Post, and Sean Faust. It's a medieval chant version of the well-known Monkees' TV show theme song, with 24 separate vocal tracks, instrumented with hand bells, bagpipes, and a nylon-string guitar (meant to approximate the sound of a medieval lute), all underpinned with 21st century EDM beats, resolving into a version of the 18th century hymn 'Amazing Grace.' The track really can't be described; it has to be heard to be understood. But how and why did such a bizarre recording even come into existence?

In 2022 Only the Host created the Indie Music Hunt, a daily indie livestream broadcast. His show attracted a large number of indie artists eager to share their own work with other artists and fans. Uncle Funkbeard, Pixie Post, and Sean Faust were early regulars on the show, which rapidly gained a large following. In early 2023, the original drummer for the Captain Chemical Band had a stroke and became incapacitated, which put all band activities on hold for nearly a year. During this hiatus, the Captain himself discovered the Indie Music Hunt and quickly became a regular participant. Several collaborative projects were launched in conjunction with the show. One of these was the creation of Only The Label, a bandcamp label which, among other things, was used to distribute collaborations by OTL artists. Another was Uncle Funkbeard's announcement of The Monkees Project, which invited OTL artists to cover Monkees songs. These projects were coordinated on the OTL discord server, which allowed artists to communicate and share files.

Several other Monkees songs had been recorded by OTL artists before Captain Chemical got the idea to 'put the monk in the Monkees.' His original idea was to record a version of the Monkees theme song as a medieval chant, in something like bardcore style. (Bardcore is a subgenre popular on YouTube in which artists record modern songs in a style that mirrors medieval and renaissance musical forms.) Because the vocals would have lengthy reverb, these chants would have to be sung at a relatively slow 110 bpm tempo for the lyrics to be understandable. So the Captain thought it might be interesting to introduce a modern element into the mix: electronic dance beats. He contacted Pixie Post as the most accomplished EDM artist he knew. The two of them discussed the idea, and Pixie was a bit skeptical at first, but she created four different beats for the track. The Captain mixed and matched these samples into a short prototype recording, and Pixie was intrigued. The project was up and running, and the Captain began recording the full song.

At this stage, the recording literally consisted of just vocals and beats. The Captain and Pixie quickly realized that making the entire song like this would create a monotonous wall of sound. They agreed that the track would benefit from having multiple human voices and some additional instrumentation. Sean Faust was unaware of the effort at this point, but he happened to mention on discord that he enjoyed layering lots of vocal tracks in the studio. So the Captain described their project to Sean and asked if he wanted to participate. Sean eagerly agreed and went off to record 14 of the 24 distinct vocal parts - in seven part harmony! Meanwhile, the Captain continued to add instrumentation to fill out the sonic landscape, determined to keep things as close to authentically medieval as possible. In this way, handbells, a bass drone (representing the drone of a medieval harmonium), and the nylon guitar (standing in for a lute) part were added. The Captain also thought that adding a bagpipe lead might work for the instrumental break in the song, and he recorded a prototype version of this using the riff from the song 'In A Big Country' to demonstrate how bagpipes might work. Sean loved it, but Pixie was dubious when she first heard the idea. However, hearing the Big Country riff won her over. Sadly, the 'Big Country' version of this track was erased. (It would have been a copyright nightmare: a cover song that interpolates two other covers.) Instead, the bagpipe part became an original riff that the Captain came up with, plus a version of 'Amazing Grace.' The latter was incorporated because Sean mentioned in passing that 'Amazing Grace' was one of his favorite melodies. And it worked.

All three artists weighed in on the final mix, which was no simple thing. This was a track with 24 distinct vocal parts - a veritable tabernacle choir of monks - and a whole lot of unusual instruments, with EDM beats underneath it all. Plus everything was drenched in ridiculous amounts of reverb, to give the song the feel of having been recorded in a cavernous cathedral. These are elements that are rarely heard together - OK, never heard together - so there is simply no manual for how to properly mix such a concoction. In the end, two final mixes were made: the version that was released, and the 'monastic mix' with only the vocals and no other instrumentation whatsoever.

In April 2024, the artists turned their creation over to Uncle Funkbeard, who then handled distribution in conjunction with the rest of the Monkees Project he was curating. The track got its world premiere on the Indie Music Hunt on May 28th 2024, where it surprised nearly everyone listening. People called the track 'a mind bomb' and described 'awesome vocals,' 'lovely harmonies,' and 'digging the beat drops.' Others noted that a Pixie Post-Captain Chemical-Sean Faust collaboration was 'never expected' but 'worked like magic.' Elsewhere, other commenters called the track 'unreal' and wondered out loud how such a 'mashup of genres' even came to be. Now you know the story.

The rest of the Monkees Project vanished with Only The Label, but '(Theme From) The Monkees' by Only The Label can be heard on most streaming platforms to this day.

https://open.spotify.com/album/2d2baUNguZAAXkQCAYXLlS

https://music.apple.com/us/album/theme-from-the-monkees-feat-captain-chemical-band/1747621708?i=1747621711

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FQ9IBIMvZI&list=RD1FQ9IBIMvZI&start_radio=1

https://www.pandora.com/artist/only-the-label/theme-from-the-monkees/theme-from-the-monkees-feat-captain-chemical-band-pixie-post-and-sean-faust/TRPgZq7gxpPhJjc