The Monks: the 1960s’ most shocking avant-garde band?
One of the core rules of rock and roll is not giving a shit about what anyone thinks of you. No matter if three people of 3,000 are in front of the stage, it’s important for every artist to put their best foot forward and say what’s on their mind rather than cater to what they think their audience wants to hear. Although most people were still getting used to rock and roll in the 1960s, no one had heard anything like The Monks, and they might have accidentally made one of the greatest avant-garde records ever.
But these guys didn’t exactly have the same rock biopic style introduction to music. After being stationed together in the US Army, five GIs began making music that caught steam in Germany. While no one’s first pick for musical instruments in rock and roll would have been the banjo, hearing their slapdash version of rock and roll was a far cry from the kind of bubblegum pop that was clogging up the charts half a world away at home.
Coming out around the same time that flower power was getting started, this was another group highly critical of the Vietnam War. Since everyone had been seeing graphic footage of soldiers being dismembered, this was a group of soldiers taking shots at how the US was treating servicemen coming home from a war they never wanted to see in the first place.
In fact, The Monks may have been a subtle bit of commentary on the way that the group saw the war. Most of their songs sounded like everyone playing was absolutely pissed, so having them dress as literal monks with shaved heads and ropes around their necks almost gives off the impression of an impassioned preacher smiting down someone who dared to support the war.
But remember how much these guys were such a big hit in Germany? Yeah, not so much in the US, with the government banning the group’s only album from being sold in stores, deeming it way too political for mass consumption. Granted, if you tell a kid that they can’t buy something because it’s not meant for them, the first thing that they’re going to want to do is see what it is.
Outside of the amateurish vocal chops and the blasts of noise, though, this was punk rock years before the genre even had a name. Thanks to its brilliant use of feedback and the ramshackle production, this feels like the basis for what acts like Ramones and The Clash would be trying to do almost a decade later once the mainstream rock scene got way too overblown.
This is a full year before The Velvet Underground and the Summer of Love, so The Monks are actually pretty early on the garage rock train. There may have been garage rock bands before, but this took what acts like The Sonics were doing and made it much nastier than anyone had ever intended.
The Monks does stand more as a blip on the radar these days, but them channelling their frustration and anger into every song on Black Monk Time was about more than just fury. The album might not stop screaming at the listener until the needle runs off the groove, but somewhere in the album is a restless spirit that nearly every rock fan can relate to.
