By: Michael Madavi
If you haven’t heard of The Monks, your entire perspective on music after the mid 60′s is incomplete and needs to be re-adjusted to account for their presence. Without a doubt, the strange and unbelievably unique Monks are one of the greatest musical groups ever, casting a gargantuan, deeply-rooted influence on most music to follow their run. There’s a number of washed-out clichés that are attributed to so many bands from the time period: “Groundbreaking,” “Visionary,” “Fore-fathers,” and the classic “Ahead of their time.” While the bands who have earned these labels should not be discounted (no denying that they deserve them), The Monks are indubitably in the upper pendulum of influential bands of the time, yet they remain unknown to most, even the most obsessive fans of their contemporaries. The reasoning behind their obscurity is easy enough to discover: The Monks don’t sound like anyone else. Their sound is totally and unquestionably original; this is the archetypal origin of a band that breaks from everything going on around them to try something no one else is. Their story is genuine, their music is truly and completely “ahead of their time,” and their whole persona is so strange and unheard of that it still baffles the listener today as intensely as it did in the mid 60′s.
Bonus: Check out this video from 1965 of The Monks playing on German TV. This recording was the first live performance of “Monk Chant” and they had not yet completed the song, thus a part of it is improvised. This is the magic of The Monks at work before your eyes:
Read the rest of this in depth review of The Monks’ career and music, and grab some PromoTracks after the jump…
The Monks grew from a humble musical beginning. Hailing from different parts of the US, in 1961 the five members all signed up for the army and found themselves in the small German town of Gelnhausen where they would be stationed for the next few years. The Army-life’s rigid and demanding ways proved stressful so guitarist Gary Burger and Dave Day would often hang out in the base’s Army Service Club where one could check out trumpets, saxophones, and guitars for therapy and a sweet distraction. The two ended up sharing a practice room and began to write songs, eventually performing in the local GI bar. Realizing that playing the songs they loved (Elvis, Country, and the Rock n’ Roll greats) was generating a comfy bonus income, the duo decided to form a full band. After rotating through numerous bass players and drummers the group was eventually finalized as Burger and Day playing guitar with Larry Clark, a R&B Keyboardist from Chicago, Rodger Johnston, a swing-loving Texan drummer, and Nevadan Eddie Shaw on Bass. The five called themselves The Torquays and began backing up a variety of singers from American Doo-Wop vocalists to Italian touring artists. Soon they had secured a weekly gig at bars, singing and playing crowd favorites like Chuck Berry, Elvis, Little Richard, and Ray Charles (sound oddly familiar? English-speaking young men singing American rock n’ roll in a small German bar?) while constantly adding new songs to their repertoire. The mix of American GI’s and local Germans who were barely recovering from the damages their country endured after World War II proved to be a hot combination, resulting in regular “Saturday Night Fights” (as they came to be known) that often created unruly mobs and the need for military police to intervene. The band grew under these tense and demanding conditions, constantly improving their live performance while keeping the crowds entertained. Outside the bars, The Torquays were recruited by their base’s commander to play at hospitals, rest-homes, and various military function, further honing the five-piece’s performance.
After their term of service had expired in 1964, the band decided to stay in Germany over returning home, giving playing music full-time a try. With nothing to lose, the Torquays played seven nights a week in clubs all around central and southern Germany (the same clubs that veteraned The Beatles). It was during this time that the band started to first create original songs. While their sets were generally comprised of the beat music that was driving the German youth so crazy at the time, the Torquays began to experiment with sound. During a practice session, Burger left his guitar leaning up against his amplifier, which he forgot to turn off before. The result was a loud, raucous noise that jolted and intrigued the whole band: this was one of the first occurrences of guitar feedback (ipso facto, most alternative rock bands from the late 80′s and early 90′s owe a whole lot to these guys). Contrary to all musical reason of the time, the band actually liked the feedback and began to play along with it, eventually incorporating it into their live shows to shock their unsuspecting audiences. This is where the foundations of the Monk’s unusual, aggressive, heavy sound are clearly taking root. They continued to gain more local residencies and turn out memorable and unique live performances while occasionally recording demos of their emerging material (which they sold off the top of Clark’s organ after shows) until attracting the attention of two young advertising executives (Karl Remy and Walther Niemann) who had an undeterable interest in managing the band. The two prophesized that the group was the future of beat music, but insisted that if the band was to live up to its potential, it would have to change its name, image, and push further into the progressive sound they had been developing. Thus the marriage of music and image that birthed one of the most influential and groundbreaking groups ever was formed: Remy and Niemann set out to groom the future of the five-piece.
Setting their initial skepticism of the manager’s prophecy aside, the Torquays began their musical and physical transformation. The plan was to follow the band’s initial instinct to work progressively against the sugar-coated groups who had dominated the contemporary German music scene. In 1964, The Beatles had lead the charge of the Byritish Invasion in America and all that was on the radio were pop groups playing Girl-Boy relationship songs, consistently with catchy melodic hooks and twist-inducing rhythms. This is the beginnings of “Alternative” music: a sound that is intentionally and self-referentially an alternate, a move away-from, the musical norm of the time (think alt-rock in the late 80′s and early 90′s rebelling against the hair metal that had dominated in the decade past). Their philosophy was to emphasize simplicity, energy, repetition, opposition, and brevity while abandoning the verse-chorus-verse standard of most popular songs.
The Monks were formed under many of the same ideas that contributed to the unparalleled success of The Beatles, but almost always in the most polar way possible. The input of the musicians’ managers on appearance and public persona was vital to their image; Brian Epstein told the Fab Four to act like good young men in nice, matching suits while Remy and Niemann dressed the former Torquays in all black monks’ clothing with a rope tied in a sailor’s knot around their necks. Mild controversy over The Beatle’s long hairstyle was aroused, slightly damaging their good-boy image; The Monks all decided to shave the top of their heads in the tonsure style of actual monks for the shock value. The Beatles wrote most of their early songs based on catchy hooks and melodies; The Monks ignored melody (with the exception of Clark’s Keyboard) and focused intensely on creating songs around pounding, repetitive, and minimalist rhythms. The Beatles used vocal harmonies to sweeten their songs; The Monks all sang the same line in the same notes to reinforce the power behind the lines as well as droning, almost-Gregorian chants (early gang-vocals). George Harrison used a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar for its sweet, chorus-saturated harmonial tone; Dave Day switched from a guitar to a six-string, gut-strung banjo that he could play the same guitar parts on with a more metallic, scratchy sound. Ringo Starr would occasionally sing on certain songs as a treat for his portion of the female audience; Rodger Johnston would sing on almost all of The Monks songs, or at least take part in their strange chants or gang vocals. The result of all these strange, new stylings was a sound that was unheard of at the time. A combination of what was to become punk, garage, psychedelic, drone, krautrock, and noise music, The Monks experimented with elements that would define the music that would evolve into full-genres during the next 50 years.
To appreciate exactly how revolutionary and unorthodox The Monks were, one must paint a picture of the musical landscape as it stood in the sixties. When The Monks started performing under the new name and image, the Beatles had already conquered America and every band was trying to follow their formula (it wasn’t till December of 65′ that the group would release Rubber Soul and begin their true musical experimentation). 1965 was the first year U.S. combat units were deployed to Vietnam due to an escalating conflict between communist and western nations. While many protesters of the flower generation of the late 60′s demonstrated and voiced their opinions against the war, few musicians were as blatantly vocal about their anti-war views as The Monks. Iggy Pop calls them “the only legitimate anti-war rock group to come out of the 60′s,” citing that they, “are the only guys who actually joined up.” Pop is not the only punk rock godfather who cites The Monks as one of his inspirations: the group has been heralded as the forefathers of punk music by a long list of artists including Krist Novoselic of Nirvana, Jack White, Colin Greenwood of Radiohead, and Anton Alfred Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre. The praise is not inaccurate or unwarranted: The Monks were one of the first bands to rebel against the musical bandwagon of their time by doing everything that no one expected. Raw, rhythm driven, primitive punk anthems like “Shut Up” (compare that song title to any Beatles song from 64′ or earlier) and “Complication” rage against authority before anyone else thought to feature yelled, aggressive lyrics such as “Complication! Constipation! (People Kill, People kill for you!).” They incorporated the use of a Gibson fuzz pedal (an early distortion effect) on Shaw’s bass in songs like “Monk Chant” and “Pretty Suzanne,” years before distortion became a common part of playing electric guitar. It is said that Jimmy Hendrix first saw a wah-wah pedal during a Monks performance. “I Hate You” features vocals that are repeated over and over with increasing emphasis and speed, just like Robert Plant would become so well known for in Led Zeppelin. Every song is unique and unlike everything else around it at the time. One careful listen to Black Monk Time, their 1965 full length album, is sure to yield surprise after surprise and tons of similarities to bands in The Monks’ musical wake.
Now, for the first time in far too many years, Light In the Attic Records is re-issuing The Monks’ recorded legacy for public consumption. Black Monk Time (with bonus material from 7” singles released after the album) as well as The Early Years 1964 – 1965 (a gathering of demos and pre-Monk recordings) are both up for public consumption to the joy and gratitude of music-lovers everywhere. The label that has an uncanny knack for finding the best old artists that were forgotten over time and re-issuing their material for a second, more glorious round has struck again. Now those who managed to miss The Monks in their musical travels will have a chance to catch up and appreciate their lasting and considerably important hand in the evolution of music as we know it. In Attic’s words, “If you aren’t already converted, it won’t take long… And while there’s no need to shave your head, you’ll certainly flip your wig. Come on everybody, its Monk Time!”
The Monks
“Monk Time” (mp3)
from “Black Monk Time”
(Light In The Attic)
The Monks
“Love Came Tumblin’ Down” (mp3)
from “The Early Years 1964 – 1965″
(Light In The Attic)
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