Jon Monday (born 1947) is an American producer and distributor of CDs and DVDs across an eclectic range of material such as Swami Prabhavananda, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Huston Smith, and Chalmers Johnson.
[1] In 1980 Monday filmed what turned out to be the very last live poetry reading Charles Bukowski gave, at the Sweetwater in Redondo Beach, which was released as The Last Straw on DVD.
After retiring, his work with Huston Smith and the Vedanta Society of Southern California has created audio and video commercial releases as well as establishing free online archives of the historic material.
Monday got his start in multimedia through his own psychedelic light-show company in the Bay Area in early 1967, providing visuals for concerts by Country Joe and the Fish, Janis Joplin's Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Loading Zone, and Steve Miller's Blues Band at local Berkeley, California venues and The Fillmore in San Francisco.
Eventually, he became Takoma's Vice President and General Manager, and also provided art direction, engineering, and/or produced albums by such artists as George Winston, Norman Blake,[6] Peter Rowan,[7] Jim Kweskin,[8] Loudon Wainwright III,[9] and Joseph Byrd.
Eventually Monday was brought into Chrysalis Records as its Director of Marketing,[14] working with Blondie, Jethro Tull, Huey Lewis, Pat Benatar, Billy Idol, and Toni Basil.
[16] Originally, Monday was hired as Sales Director of Special Markets to provide distribution through the "Rack Jobbers" who got records into Sears, ToysRUs, KMart and other major retailers.
[20][17] Monday was hired as Vice President of PlayNet, working directly with Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, to develop an online jukebox, that was connected to a vast library of songs licensed from the major record companies.
In 1998, Monday was hired by Capcom, a leading video game publisher, to design and implement an entire IT overhaul, including replacing an aging mainframe with a Windows based hardware and enterprise reporting and accounting software.
Monday retired and moved to the San Diego area in 2004 and launched two labels:[21] mondayMEDIA and GemsTone; producing, directing, and distributing original and archival material.
Filmed over several years, interviews included, Bill Moyers, Robert Reich, Van Jones, Phil Donahue, radio talkshow host Ed Schultz, Cenk Uygur, Amy Goodman, Thom Hartmann, radio talkshow host Stacy Taylor, John Nichols, Richard Wolffe, Randi Rhodes, Congressman Bob Filner, Jon Adelstein, Robert McChesney, Bob Edgar, Mike Aguirre, Marjorie Cohn, Michael Krasny, and author Eric Klinenberg.
After the start of the Iraq War, Monday joined Veterans For Peace and became active in the San Diego Chapter, giving talks to local colleges,[40] organizing Arlington West memorials,[41][42][43][44] and speaking at anti-war rallies.