Anti-War Noise Rock From 1966

Meet The Monks—electrified banjo wielding anti-war US GIs

In 2009, reissue label Light in the Attic put out a new edition of 1966’s unhinged proto-punk album Black Monk Time by The Monks, an obscure group of five American soldiers stationed in Germany. Released alongside a collection of demos, Early Years: 1964-1965, the reissue helped cement the band’s experimental rock mythos.

Perhaps you’ve heard their gem, “I Hate You,” soundtracking Walter’s intense square off in the bowling alley with Smokey in The Big Lebowski, or know them from the expanded version of Lenny Kaye’s seminal compilation Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968, released in 1998, the same year as the Coen Bros slacker noir classic. Or perhaps you have heard artists like Jello Biafra, Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, or Jack White of The White Stripes praise The Monks’ caterwauling glory.

Or perhaps you haven’t heard The Monks at all. In the summer of 2009, I was obsessed with Black Monk Time and Early Years, and when I was commissioned to review the two albums for online magazine Tiny Mix Tapes, I took to the assignment with gusto. TMT is currently offline, but thanks to the Wayback Machine, I’m pleased to share this 17 year old piece, which I have only edited in a few key instances.

Originally published July 2, 2009

“Stop it, stop it, it’s too loud for my ears...Stop it, I don’t like it,” lead Monk Gary Burger sings over “Monk Time,” the opening cut off The Monks’ revolutionary record, 1966’s Black Monk Time.

The band—Larry, Dave, Eddie, Roger, and Gary—couldn’t have come equipped with a stranger backstory: five American GIs stationed in Germany during the [Vietnam] war, they formed a beat group, covering Chuck Berry and playing to scattered crowds. After being discharged, they stayed in Germany and, under the watchful eye of Walther Niemann and Karl-Heinz Remy, two German existentialist impresarios, fashioned themselves into an off kilter, manic rock unit, morphing from their innocuous beginnings as a mild-mannered Five Torquays into the radical Monks: hair shaved into tonsures, black robes, noose around neck, and feedback blaring.

The music was scuzzy, violent, and explosive, the group reportedly aiming for “anti-Beatles” status. Yet it’s difficult to imagine the future noisenik side of John Lennon not being green with jealousy at what The Monks accomplished with their incredibly brief career. And while the hippies back home sang honey drop “protest” music, The Monks employed a decidedly more radical approach to anti-war art: With bursts of bleating organ, fuzz bass, and guitars that traded chords for scratchy bits of white noise, The Monks’ sound couldn’t have been farther removed from all but the most marginalized American acts.

The Monks’ secret weapon was Dave Day’s modified banjo, souped up with an electric pickup that defined the band’s sound, its percussive, tinny effect perfectly accentuating the prickly aesthetic. The music is so decidedly “future” it’s almost baffling. They quietly laid down the foundation for Krautrock’s grinding minimalism and punk’s aggressive sonics, while retaining an awkwardly soulful sensibility, mirroring the energy of Detroit garage rock with purely rhythmic shuffle.

“Hey well I hate you with a passion baby/ Oh you know my hate is everlasting baby,” Gary sang on the aptly titled “I Hate You,” and the kids with flowers in the hair were appalled. Released by Polydor in 1966, the feedback assaults purportedly impressed Jimi Hendrix, but general audiences just couldn’t handle the Dadaist chants, the nightmare treble-stabs, the propulsive driving drums, and subsequently ignored the record. Folks in Germany were inspired to more than indifference: one audience member rushed the stage and tried choking to death Monk Gary for “blasphemous” acts.

It’s easy to see why the music caused such a stir. “Complication” works as a perfect example of the band’s political and aural manifesto, finger-pointing “People die, people kill for you” at governmental and religious institutions. Song like “Oh How to Do Now” feature fairly straightforward lyrics (“Well, I wanna make you mine”), but twist the goofy romantic nonsense of normal pop music into something more menacing, coming across wild-eyed and insane. Like all things demented, The Monks truly had a firm grasp on their sense of otherworldly humor. “Drunken Maria” is a bouncy, hilarious take, less than two minutes of the band call and responding “Sleepy Maria, don’t sleep/ Drunken Maria, don’t drink” over a ramshackle bass line. “Blast Off!” finds the band at its spaciest, a surfy instrumental that prompts the question, “What would Joe Meek have done with a band this far out?”

“Love Came Tumblin’ Down” and “That’s My Girl” are tuneful and restrained, both tracks more focused on melody than their peers. The former finds Gary singing of romantic bliss, while the latter details a case of sexual frustration, ending the record with shrieks of “That’s my girl! You can’t have my girl!” These two songs most clearly demonstrate the alchemy of their sound; beneath the squeals and rumbles, the basic structure maintains its pop form and pop appeal.

Further illustrating this point is Early Years: 1964-1965, released with Black Monk Time by Seattle’s Light in the Attic, who have firmly established themselves as an authority on overlooked gems through reissues of Rodriguez, Karen Dalton, Noel Ellis and the Free Design. Early Years finds the band, still labeled as the Five Torquays, exploring the dynamic they would perfect on Black Monk Time. Essentially demos, the songs serve as much more than that, often exposing the song structure that isn’t immediately apparent with the addition of the more extreme elements that would later define the band. The songs on Early Years are uniquely gorgeous, and the organ work of Larry Clark is at the forefront, lending the songs a stately, entirely church service ready vibe.

Brian Eno famously stated that though The Velvet Underground never sold a lot of records, everyone who listened to them wanted to start a band. Nothing as hyperbolic can be said about The Monks, but their influence tends to create truly singular bands: The Beastie Boys, The Fall, The Gossip, Jon Spencer, Faust, The Silver Apples.

While none of these acts directly aspire to recreate the sounds found on Black Monk Time, all share a kinship with the band, managing to subvert traditional forms and mate them with abrasive ones, to use humor and absurdist methods to point at a greater sonic truth. The Monks didn’t last much longer than this one album, but their gospel has indeed outlived them, and their radical sound, even contextualized within the immense framework of modern experimental music, still sounds baffling, exhilarating, and slightly terrifying. “It’s black Monk time,” indeed.