Jake Austen’s favorite monkey scene takes place in the film The Son of Kong. “At the beginning they go to a bar and monkeys are playing music,” he says. “There’s one on violin playing the melody, two drummers, and a dancing monkey doing flips that’s dressed like a belly dancer. The violinist plays badly and hits the wrong notes, and the drums are not on the beat. It looks like they’re really playing. If they’re not, the special effects are better than Jurassic Park. It means that the actual musicians sat down and synchronized the playing along with the monkeys’ mistakes. But I like to believe that monkeys can really play music.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Monkeys–along with rock music, midgets, and masks–are among Austen’s current obsessions. The theme of the latest issue of his Roctober Cartoons and Music zine is “Monkey Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Inside there’s an exhaustive ten-page history of monkey references in rock ‘n’ roll as well as monkey comics, monkey jokes, and monkey anecdotes. The mix is equal parts cartoons, rock, and monkeys.
“I want to do things that the audience is happy about, that they would appreciate and like,” he says. To that end, most of the stories in the zine include extensive background information. “So even if your grandmother who didn’t know anything about rock music started reading it, she’d get it, and the actual content would be entertaining enough that she’d keep reading.”
Roctober number 16 is available at Quimby’s Queer Store, Ajax Records, Shake Rattle & Read, 57th Street Books, and Blackout Records. Austen will appear Wednesday at 6 at Quimby’s, 1328 N. Damen, as part of the Kill Zinesters tour; also on hand will be the publishers of Ben Is Dead, Bunnyhop, Genetic Disorder, and Lumpen Times. The Roctober radio show airs alternating Wednesdays at 3 PM on WHPK (88.5 FM). Chic-a-Go-Go appears on Channel 19 at various times. For information on the Quimby appearance call 342-0910.
