George Clinton, Duchamp, Memphis, Prince, Basquiat, Bootsy Collins, Skittles sweets and angels in the recipe of this heir to the best funk. MonoNeon is an extraterrestrial, indisputable descendant of those that the great George Clinton created for his eight-album saga about the Manichean struggle of good (Dr. Funkenstein) against evil (Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk), in those glorious 70s. It could, for example, perfectly be “Mr. Wiggles”, the worm DJ who plays underwater.
Photo: Marcelo Chaparro
With a shrill voice, last weekend, the bassist MonoNeón made guttural sounds almost from a comic, he was wearing a public works worker’s overalls the color… neon! that someone gave him that night, a mask of acid colors crocheted, he hid behind a pair of yellow glasses even more neon if possible; covering the neck of his electric bass with a yellow and salmon striped sock. In this way, he executed his already mythical colorful Fender with astonishing mastery; so he managed to shine and stay in the shade at the same time. The band that accompanied him showed his good taste when directing: Charlie Brown (keyboards), Peter Knudsen (guitar), Xavier Lynnan electric guitar monster, and Devin Way (drums) who gave a master class with his chops and set the tone on which the band dazzled us all. there was funk to the James Brown, P-funk, something similar to calypso, something rock and some encores that reminded The Time and Thundercat.
Known artistically as MonoNeon, Dywane Thomas Jr., this good guy born from a hyperfunky multiverse, is quite the experimental musician, singer and songwriter. He has been making music for years; in 2015 he worked with Prince and since then he has become famous for his prolific catalogue, his microtonal compositions and for uploading dozens of clips on Youtube in which he harmonizes his bass riffs with trending topic videos / memes. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee (08/06/1990), Thomas is a rope juggler turned bizarre internet icon (the one who praises and applauds geeks). It is on his website where he unleashes his most experimental jazz-funk side and what-the-fuck. There you can see him improvising free-style musical skits for bass on the go, playing to the tune of anything, anything goes: a Formula 1 race, a aunt freaking out after eating an ultra-spicy chili pepper, a political debate or Dave Chappelle covering Rick James on “Fuck You Couch”. Special mention deserves its adaptation of the Youtube series Angry Grandpahilarious, hilarious, highly creative and musically virtuoso.
Thomas was raised in a musical family. The son of a bassist father (Dywane Thomas) and a jazz pianist grandfather (Charles Thomas), he began playing bass at the age of four. “My father plays the bass with his right hand, I don’t know why when he put the guitar in my hands, I turned it over and played it backwards, thus taking me away from formal lessons.” When he was about 11 or 12 years old, he performed with the Bar-Kays, playing bass. He did a brief stay at the prestigious Berklee College of Music. He used to practice playing music by Denise LaSalle (I’m So Hot), Ann Peebles, Al Green, The Bar-Kays, Johnnie Taylor, Parliament or the album Peace To The Neighborhood from Pops Staples. “I was rehearsing that shit all the time.”
Behind his mask hides a virtuoso who one day decided to play a right-handed bass, but turned inside out, as if he were left-handed (or as if we were seeing him through the mirror), something very difficult to imitate. His technique is quite unprecedented because it interchanges the “logical” order of the strings, we are before an iconoclast. Result: nobody -neither left-handed nor right-handed, neither modern nor classical- plays like him.
There Goes That Man Again Turning Water Into Gin & Juice. 2022
The quilt guy
Currently, MonoNeon is immersed in The Quilted One Tour (the one with the quilt, in English) that will take you to France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and England. He came to our country, saw and won in the promotion of his latest album -with a cover like Pedro Bell- There Goes That Man Again Turning Water Into Gin & Juice (Diggers Factory, 2022), and two days after releasing his single “Quilted!” Both his parishioners and the big shots of specialized critics, all gathered in the Sala Sol in the capital of the kingdom, fell at his feet after almost two hours of vintage/futuristic deflagration. “The best visit to funk since Thundercat,” said Pedro García, one of the great connoisseurs of the genre and owner of the largest collection of P-funk vinyl in these parts. “Mixture of many musical legacies, but singular and virtuous. With guys like that, funk will never die,” said Frank Steinherr, a music journalist. “He is the hybrid between George Clinton and Prince,” claimed Miguel Sutil, director of Enlace Funk magazine and publisher. The hyperboles and comparisons are justified.
| I was looking forward to this day! To tell you that you will be my love Let’s take a good walk through your favorite ghetto Let’s go to the supermarket on the corner to get some spicy Cheetos.
“Hot Cheetos” (MonoNeonMy Feelings Be Peelings, 2019). | 2:05 p.m. All the supermarkets have just closed Let’s get some fish & chips And we go to that place we call home. You are my Love.
“Fish, Chips and Sweat” (Funkadelic, Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow1970). |
“Hot Cheetos”, that nice nod to Funkadelic’s mischief, was among the gems that MonoNeon played that night. He fell in love with bursts of metal in “Supermane”, with flow in “Invisible” (apparently, his manifesto), with slyness and pro-weed militancy in “Women, Water, Weed”, with self-esteem and empowerment in “Basquiat & Skittles”” and with that memorable encore “Life Is A Glittery Fuckery” (among many others) that evidenced the state of grace that he has been going through for at least five years now. In the midst of the reggaeton era, MonoNeon keeps funk alive precisely because he reminds us of the rhythms of P-funk and Parliament, of Bootsy and Prince. This is what good music sounded like before it was artificially sampled and mixed by software engineering.
MonoNeon has recorded more than twenty solo albums, to which are added multiple collaborations with remarkable colleagues. His experimental approach has been compared to that of John Cage. The notion of conceptual art plays a defining role as reflected in his recordings from early 2011, the year in which he changed his pseudonym from Polyneon to MonoNeon (on October 26, to be exact). He started developing his crazy idea of accompanying what he heard on AM/FM stations with bass improvisations (some of them can be heard on his album Introspection of PolyNeon). The concept “Polyneon” came to him through introspection, just as he stopped thinking about becoming a great musician, according to his own account.
Wouldn’t you like to be invisible?
Being present without the world seeing you?
Be who you want to be without anyone judging you?
Invisible (MonoNeon2020).
Orange Sports FigureJean-Michel Basquiat. 1982
Basquiat, VanGogh, Duchamp and Dadaism
Heavily influenced by the art of Marcel Duchamp, MonoNeon has undoubtedly become one of the most enigmatic rising stars in the bass world in recent years. “It is freedom, anarchy, rebellion, autonomy that I gravitate towards in Dadaism. Marcel Duchamp was the first Dadaist I became aware of when reading about John Cage.” The plastic seems to acquire importance in the musical. Thomas Jr. is famous for his “readymade bass,” inspired by his love of Dada and other avant-garde art movements. The main features of the “readymade bass” are the ordinary sock that covers the entire headstock, and the name “Polyneon” or “MonoNeon” on the body. The use of colorful duct tape and other mundane elements has become his defining visual style. Van Gogh and Basquiat also appear in his cosmos; as for the multicolored painter from New York, the bass player has always described him as “a neon angel”.
I’m thinking of the colors of the rainbow
with a pot full of gold at the end
I’m standing, pretending to be Basquiat
I eat my skittles, I wear my crown
And I turn my frown around.
Basquiat & Skittles (Basquiat & Skittles Album, 2021).
prince, the godfather
Thomas was the last bassist Prince worked with before his unexpected death in 2016. The song “Ruff Enuff” that was released as a single on the Tidal platform (January 2016) is one that the purple genius was polishing. when he left us; his fans’ long-awaited posthumous album is optionally titled Black Is The New Black and it has a MonoNeon of only 25 years, Kirk Johnson (drums) and Adrian Crutchfield (saxophone and electronic winds). They played about six gigs in Paisley, also recorded; From there, the quilt alien became known throughout the world. «Prince hired me as a bassist for Judith Hill’s band (one of his protected), that was in early 2015. Then in late 2015, he invited me to Paisley Park to play in his band. He would let me play whatever I wanted, never telling me what to do unless he heard something that didn’t add up to him.”[1]
[1] Sharma, Amit. “Try To Transcribe Stuff; Go Out And Find Things That You Can Use In Your Own Playing”, Guitar World, 05/11/2020.
The Neon Man has won a Grammy Award for his participation in Nas’s 2020 album King’s Disease. Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers has referred to him as “the best fucking electric bassist”. MonoNeon has collaborated with the likes of Mavis Staples, George Clinton, Pete Rock, Ne-Yo, Mac Miller, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Phil Lassiter, Ghost-Note, and has played at the Newport Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival , SummerCamp Music Festival, Melbourne International Jazz Festival and many more.
Today, even the prestigious Fender has joined the list of show business pillars that recognize and reward his more than indisputable talent. A microtonal bass built for MonoNeon by Tim Cloonan of CallowHill Guitars was designed to play quarter tones. The “MonoNeon Jazz Bass V” is a statement of intent: half cool, half serious business. The Fender (Musical Instruments Corporation or FMIC) invented it to honor the uniqueness of the bassist and to invite artists from around the world to approach the instrument with the same curious and inventive spirit that has fueled the career of the Memphis musician. The electric bass features an alder body with a striking neon yellow urethane finish, complemented by a neon orange painted headstock and pickguard. “Designing an instrument that encapsulated the spirit and skill of MonoNeon was a difficult task, honoring him with a Fender bass is a privilege,” said Justin Norvell, Executive Vice President. “We worked closely with him to create a bass that not only visually embodies his charismatic personality, but also embodies his microtonal, abstract funk-inspired playing.”
To see this funk prodigy live is to contemplate the past, present and future of a genre that represents freedom (true freedom), the cool, the virtuous. It is a lesson in music to the extent that the greatest appear in his art, but above all because in his already extensive catalog you can find that tranquility that provides the verification on site that good music will never die, that the human being is beautifully complex and that ordinary mortals will always have a place to take refuge, to safeguard ourselves from this maelstrom that is modern life. Even if it means huddling around with beers and good herbs while appreciating beauty and music in a cavern that casts neon shadows.