Sock monkeys? Tails to tell of Lennon, Cradle

If you're going to Sean Lennon's Friday night show at Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill, take along a sock monkey. Maybe, just maybe, it will jog Lennon's memory of his last monkey experience at the Cradle.

Way back in 1993, Lennon played there with the band Cibo Matto. Michael Pilmer of Raleigh attended the show with his then-girlfriend, Dianna Mayo. They took along Pilmer's sock monkey, Chumpy, for an odd little art project they'd just begun.

"We used to take the monkey around with us everywhere," Pilmer recalls. "For some reason, it was always a good backstage pass. People would be intrigued why someone was carrying around a sock monkey. So we'd meet all kinds of people and get pictures of the monkey in weird situations."

One of their monkey portrait subjects was Lennon, whom Pilmer approached at the Cradle.

"It was as simple as walking through the crowd, seeing Sean and asking, 'Hey, would you mind posing with this monkey?' " Pilmer says. "He put it on his shoulder, I snapped the picture and away he went. I remember that he had a big food stain of some sort on his shirt, coffee or something, but I took it off."

In 1997, Lump Gallery/Projects in Raleigh included Pilmer and Mayo's sock monkey collection and portraits in a show called "Red Lips, Red Ass." A decade later, Chumpy, Lump and others who have engaged in sock monkey art have found new exposure in a new book, B.K. Connelly's "Everything's Coming Up Sock Monkeys!" (2006, In My Own Dream Publishing). This loving and deeply obsessive history of the humble stuffed animal includes a two-page spread on the Lump show, complete with Pilmer's photos of Chumpy with Lennon, Devo and Joey Ramone.

By now, however, Pilmer doesn't do many sock monkey portraits anymore.

"I still have Chumpy and he's always ready for photos," Pilmer says. "But I don't take him around much anymore. Everybody I know and work with, they've already had their pictures taken with him."