{"id":5155,"date":"2011-06-08T19:37:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T19:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/monte-vista-speaks-of-lovingkindness\/"},"modified":"2011-06-08T19:37:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-08T19:37:00","slug":"monte-vista-speaks-of-lovingkindness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/monte-vista-speaks-of-lovingkindness","title":{"rendered":"Monte Vista Speaks of Lovingkindness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Tom Holland, a.k.a. Monte Vista<\/em>
 <\/span>
4:15pm | <\/strong><\/span>Tom Holland, a.k.a. Monte Vista, was a staple of the Long Beach music scene in the late ’80s early ’90s until he was undone by steady employment, adult responsibilities and karaoke. Following is an interview with the man, the legend, the mountain.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span>
<\/span>
Daniel deBoom: <\/strong>Have you always wanted to be a musician?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
Tom Holland:<\/strong> Yeah, I guess I always loved music, but one moment I remember was in elementary school, we had a talent contest and I lip-synced to \u201cAmerican Pie.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB: <\/strong>The whole thing? That song goes on forever.<\/em><\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
TH:<\/strong> Yeah, and … people picked on me a lot in elementary school, and everybody gave me a standing ovation at the end of it and I thought, \u201cWOW, this is cool!\u201d I found out only later that they were just f**king with me, but for that moment I was like \u201cYeah, I want to be a musician!\u201d<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB: <\/strong>You have a wide range of musical influences as is evident in your stage performances. <\/em>Is there a period or style of music that takes precedence above all others for you?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
TH: <\/strong>No. Nah, I love all music, all different styles of music. What we started off doing was playing mellow love tunes from the ’70s, but then we branched out and started doing lounge music because no one else was doing that. Basically, we were a punk band that wanted to bother people and punk was pass\u00e9 at that point, it was dead, and we found that was a good way to annoy people.<\/span>
<\/span>
DdB:<\/strong> What year was it?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
TH: <\/strong>In \u201985 with a band called the Hive Give Touch that Greg Gardner, our guitar player, had formed. They were an industrial noise band and I joined the group and we started doing the theme from “Love Story.”<\/span>
<\/span><\/em>
DdB:<\/strong> (laughing) So people were coming to hear industrial noise and they got the theme from <\/em>Love Story?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
TH:<\/strong> (laughing as well) Yeah \u2026 that\u2019s where that whole concept started breeding.<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB: <\/strong>And that\u2019s when you started pissing people off for the first time?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH:<\/strong> Yeah, but it was mainly our friends. Later on we would set up at concerts where we\u2019d be opening for friends’ bands, and people were unsuspecting victims to our treachery.<\/span>
<\/span>
DdB:<\/strong> Lovingkindness collected bad reviews like Elvis and the Beatles collected gold records. <\/em>I mean, in your fliers and stuff you guys use all the bad reviews. Were those serious or \u2026 ?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
TH:<\/strong> No, those are seriously bad reviews.Yyou know [Tim] Grobaty does them somewhat in jest, but I\u2019m sure he means it.<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB:<\/strong> Like the one in <\/em>Ben Is Dead magazine, where Darby described you as, \u201cThe worst band <\/em>I have ever seen in my whole entire life. God, it was scary!\u201d<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH: <\/strong>Yeah, the Ben is Dead<\/em>, completely real. I knew she was talking about us because we were the only band playing in the lounge that night, and I confirmed it with her later.<\/span>
<\/span>
DdB:<\/strong> So, would you describe Lovingkindness as lounge punk?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH:<\/strong> I would call it garage lounge, or I would say we\u2019re a garage band but we play lounge music very poorly, like a garage band would.<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB: <\/strong>So there wasn\u2019t really anything like you back then, right?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH: <\/strong>Well, no, not for that scene, the scene we played in, but of course there was like \u2026. The early influences for me were Tony Clifton, of course, the Andy Kaufman character. There was this guy on “Fernwood 2 Night” called Tony Rolletti that was a bad lounge singer that always had to adjust his toupee while he was singing and was just horrible. And another influence was Tom Monroe from SCTV that did lounge versions of “Turning Japanese,” and we ended up doing some of that. We would, like, do Black Flag covers in a lounge style.<\/span>
<\/span>
DdB: <\/strong>So people must have liked you at the same time, right? I mean, your pissing people off; <\/em>there must have been some fans.<\/em><\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
TH: <\/strong>There are some people that do like us. At certain times I can sing adequately, but people enjoy what we did, you know, it was funny. It\u2019s a humorous thing, so of course people got into that aspect of it. Now, did people get into it because they loved how we played the music? I really don\u2019t know. I would hope, somehow, that that could be true, but I kinda doubt it. (laughing)<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB:<\/strong> Other bands appreciated you, though?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
TH:<\/strong> At that time we were one of the Vandals’ favorite bands. Jazz Butcher was a big fan of ours back then. If you were in the know, you dug it.<\/span>
<\/span>
DdB: <\/strong>What does Lovingkindness mean?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH: <\/strong>Russell Ripple, our bass player, got it from the Bible. We were looking for a name and I picked a cheesy name like The Bamboozlers, which was, like, really stupid. Russell came up with, \u201cHey I\u2019m some computer programmer nerd and this word is used the most in the Bible: lovingkindness,” and then I was like, “You know, that fits with us doing the mellow ’70s Bread,” that kind of thing. So yeah Lovingkindness. We\u2019re loving and we\u2019re kind; our audience is loving kindness when we perform; kill them with loving kindness.<\/span>
<\/span>
DdB:<\/strong> Is this when you started calling yourself Monte Vista?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH:<\/strong> No, the first singer for Lovingkindness, which was me, was Che Walter Butterworth. And I wore, like, golfing hats and sweaters, sort of like Bing Crosby, and had a pipe. Sort of a mellow, nervous cat. And I really didn\u2019t have the whole smarmy lounge thing down in the beginning. But then after maybe six months of doing it, Monte Vista was born. It was a street. I used to go camping out in Joshua Tree and there was a street out there called Monte Vista, which would translate to Mountain View. It\u2019s a great fat joke on me so you know, Monte Vista, that\u2019s a great name!<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB:<\/strong> So, when did you guys stop performing? Did bar karaoke kill your gimmick?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH: <\/strong>What happened was, yeah karaoke came around. I remember playing at the Long Beach Museum of Art at an art fair where we were extremely hungover and it was, like, one of our worst shows ever, and I remember these two old ladies walking past me going, \u201cI can\u2019t believe they hired karaoke for this art fair,\u201d and a light went off, just going, “Oh man, karaoke killed the Lovingkindness. You can go see a drunk guy performing standards in any bar now in any town!”<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB:<\/strong> Did you guys ever open for anybody big?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH:<\/strong> Uh, well, John Waters you know about, we got to open for him twice. The second time we got to open for him we actually had two bands. The other band was Chuck: A Tribute to Charles Manson, where we did Charlie Manson covers. He [Waters] wasn\u2019t too happy with that because he was trying to get Leslie Van Houton out on parole and he was concerned that the press was going to be there. Luckily no press was going to be there, at that show. But yeah that, the Dickies. We almost caused a riot at the Dickies show and got covered in spit. I was trying to hide behind the drum kit but the drummer kept on pushing me away <\/span>saying, “They\u2019re aiming at you, get away from me!\u201d Beer bottles are breaking all around.<\/span>
<\/span>
DdB:<\/strong> What do the Carpenters and Exene Cervenka have in common with Monte Vista?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH:<\/strong> Well, I\u2019ve had an unfortunate accident with them. At one point I was working at Middle Earth Records and Richard Carpenter was coming in, so I opened the door for him and he puts his kid right in front of the door so I knocked over his kid. I\u2019m sorry, Richard, but why are you putting your kid right in front of the door? And then Exene, she\u2019s coming to play at Bogart\u2019s and I open the door for her; both these doors you can\u2019t see down below. I open the door and boom, knocked her kid down. She screams at me, \u201cYou knocked my kid down you idiot!\u201d What can I do?<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB:<\/strong> Have you stopped opening doors for people?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
TH:<\/strong> Never! I will never stop opening doors! Get your kid away from the front of door!<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB:<\/strong> The last time you were at diPiazza\u2019s you performed the entire soundtrack to Scorpio <\/em>Rising while the film played on a screen in the background. What are you doing this time?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH:<\/strong> We\u2019re going back to our lounge roots and covering the greatest hits of the American songbook like “MacArthur Park” and “Taxi” by Harry Chapin, “On a Clear Day,” that kind of thing. Songs that used to be on KMPC back in the early ’80s. They called that “easy listening.” Now people confuse beautiful music with easy listening, but yeah, there was a format called easy listening.<\/span>
<\/span>
DdB:<\/strong> So, do you still incite, or does the crowd still get upset seeing you, or did that change?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH:<\/strong> No, It\u2019s usually shock, you know, people will be there with like, \u201cWhat is this? I don\u2019t understand why they\u2019re doing this. Who are they, why do they suck so much? Why am I having to see this?\u201d So a lot of our friends come. But mainly right now we\u2019re all old and the irony has worn off. When we started, it was ironic for these kids to be playing lounge music. Unfortunately, time has taken its toll and now I am that old man playing lounge music. I turned into what we were making fun of. So, that\u2019s where that is. The irony is gone, our friends come to see us play and remember the good times. And you never know what will happen. I\u2019m planning on finishing the show with “You Light Up My Life” on helium, so who knows what could happen. It could be my last show ever.<\/span>
<\/span><\/strong>
DdB:<\/strong> Joe Brooks, who wrote that song, just killed himself. Are you planning suicide on <\/em>stage?<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
TH: <\/strong>Well, I have a plastic bag, I have a helium tank and I\u2019m going to sing the song, so maybe I will be lucky in my Houdini-like thing and come out of this okay, or maybe there will be no encore.<\/span>

—<\/span>
Lovingkindness plays at diPiazza’s on Saturday, June 11, at 10:30 p.m. diPiazza’s is located at 5205 E. Pacific Coast Highway.<\/em><\/span>
<\/span>
For more information, <\/a>click here<\/a>. <\/span>

 <\/span>Photos by Daniel DeBoom<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"Tom Holland, a.k.a. Monte Vista, performing with Lovingkindness.<\/em>
 <\/span><\/p>\n

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