(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes channels his simian muse with the story behind the song.)
I wrote “Monkey Planet” in 1996 after watching a complete “Planet of the Apes” marathon on late-night cable. I originally saw the film in a theater when I was five years old, and the image of the Statue of Liberty on the beach stayed with me a long time afterward, even if I didn’t fully understand it at the time. I later saw all of the films in the series multiple times. One of my favorites is “Escape from the Planet of the Apes,” the one in which Cornelius and Zira return to the Earth in the early ’70s, and from which the picture on the sleeve was taken.