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The Monks

All Acting Regiment

02:39 / 04.04.06

I'm interested in this band and want to know more. Unfortunately, I know Squat. Please help me out. Your opinions and recomendations please madams and sirs.

MacDara

06:39 / 04.04.06

Here's what I know: allegedly they were US servicemen stationed in Germany who banded together, wrote some crazy shit, recorded an album (Black Monk Time) that's still hailed today as a garage rock masterpiece, and then disappeared off the face of the earth soon after. (Whether all this is true or not? Well...)

Now I'm no garage connoisseur, so that album never really did much for me -- I would presume it's more the loony streak that inspired punks in the late '60s and '70s (like The Fall, as you mention) to shake off rock conformity and do things their own way.

lord nuneaton savage

07:54 / 04.04.06

OK. Breathe deeply. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Repeat after me...

BLACK. MONK. TIME. IS. THE. GREATEST. ALBUM. EVER. MADE.

It is the maddest, funniest, scariest, weirdest, loudest, catchiest, nastiest and every other est. It is the entire history of punk rock captured in one 30 minute album, recorded by men who had absolutely no idea what they were doing or why they were doing it.

All the stuff about them being GIs is true. Also, in Eddie Shaw's ludicrous autobiography, he claims that the Monks invented feedback. It was, and I quote, "Like discovering Fire". They are everything you've ever wanted a rock'n'roll band to sound like. Simultaneously the dumbest and most profound thing you've ever heard.

Yeah, I quite like them...

More later.

haus of fraser

08:27 / 04.04.06

I only know Complication (which is a bloody amazing track) from Nuggets- like many of the Nuggets bands i've never tracked down much other stuff- but on the strength of your post i found this pretty good article: here.

I like the fact that the entire band have Monk haircuts as you can see in the picture:

i'm now getting curious about black monk time, maybe time to try some downloading.

GogMickGog

09:09 / 04.04.06

There are a couple of fan-bloody-tastic videos of the monks up on youtube.com which give a winderful impression of the band's sheer lunacy and tribal thud-dud-dud (I would post em', but my steam powered PC is taking an age just to cope with the lith').

Love this band!

Jack Fear

13:44 / 04.04.06

Electric.

Banjo.

All you need to know.

Actually, no, there's more: the Monks explicitly set out to be the anti-Beatles, all menace and negativity where the moptops were sunny cheer. The sound is very basic garage blues, the vocals a sore-throat holler.

My favorite bit o' Monkslore: See those odd neckties in the photo above? They're pieces of rope—suggestive of a monk's belt, but also of the hangman's noose—and each of the Monks tied his in a different style of knot, each with alleged personal significance. Collect 'em all.

Chiropteran

18:14 / 04.04.06

The Monks' Official Site.

I haven't done more than skim it yet, but it looks pretty extensive.

MacDara

08:49 / 22.04.06

Someone just posted an exhaustive entry on the Monks at MetaFilter, if anyone is interested.

16:28 / 25.04.06

Didn't one of the Monks just recently pass away? Did anyone get to see them on their reunion tour a couple of years back?

haus of fraser

10:03 / 01.10.06

HOLY SHIT- The Monks are gonna play their first ever and only UK gig at the Dirty Water club on Thursday 19th October!!!

Only a couple of weeks notice i know but i thought many a barbelither would want to be there!

any thoughts folks?

illmatic

11:08 / 01.10.06

There's a chapter about them in Julian Cope's Krautrock Sampler. Any band that accidentally inspired the entirety of Kraurock are, um, worth a listen.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

19:47 / 17.10.06

Only a couple of weeks notice i know but i thought many a barbelither would want to be there!

I would indeed looove to be there. But at 26 quid a ticket, I don't think I can afford to. Damn. Is anyone from here going to go to the gig?

lord nuneaton savage

13:28 / 26.10.06

I went! I went! I went! I....ARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!

It were fuckin' smashing. Exactly as you'd want it to be. Fast, furious, hilarious, inept and godlike in equal measure. Utterly thrilling.

And, let's face it, it helps that they're the only band of the sixties where it doesn't matter how old they get, dunnit? Hair loss was not going to get in the way of their Monks-dom.

Mightymightymightymightymightymightymighty. GIGODERYEAR.

haus of fraser

15:44 / 26.10.06

I missed it due to extreme skintness (i'm sure that when i originally posted tickets were six quid!)

Tell me more, tell me more..... (cue grease gag).

Were they noisy, what did they play? all their own stuff or did they do covers.... we need to know..

lord nuneaton savage

09:34 / 30.10.06

'Twas all 100 percent Monks material. "Black Monk Time" in its entirety plus the singles ("Cuckoo" etc) and the b-sides. In all they were on for about 45 minutes. Perfection, even at 26 quid.

And, yep, they were well noisy.

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