The Blow Monkeys

The Blow Monkeys are unique with a career spanning over 40 years. Always making new music, always stretching their own musical boundaries. With worldwide hits such as the classics ‘Digging Your Scene’ and ‘It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way’, they became household names but there was always so much more going on with these soulful troubadours.

From the 1980s onwards, the band’s musical styles advanced from a sound once dubbed “jazz punk” to a more soulful, jazzy style and an ever-increasing adoption of dance music. The Blow Monkeys of their rare, indie debut single ‘Live Today Love Tomorrow’ (recorded on a shoestring in 1981) would be barely recognisable to those who bought the Balearic remix of ‘La Passionara’ from 1990. And yet a soulful, spiritually uplifting strain has continued to run through their music – and, indeed, that of Robert’s solo recordings – to this day.

Their relentless desire to move forward, to collaborate, to be socially engaged and to have something to contribute. Back in the 80’s they worked with people as varied as Curtis Mayfield, Paul Weller, Cheb Khaled and even Jamaican Toaster EEK-a-Mouse!

“No band since The Clash in their early 80’s heyday had attempted to act as a sounding board for such politically engaged, eclectic music”

The Blow Monkeys

Less