The Monks

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The Monks
The monks 1966.jpg
General information
origin Gelnhausen , West Germany
Genre (s) Garage rock , protopunk
founding 1964 as The Five Torquays
1965 as The Monks
1999
resolution 1967, 2007
Website the-monks.com
Founding members
Gary Burger († March 14, 2014)
Eddie Shaw
Roger Johnston († November 8, 2004)
Larry Clark
Banjo , guitar
 Dave Day († January 10, 2008)

The Monks (German: "The Monks") were an influential rock band that was active between 1964 and 1967 in what was then the Federal Republic of Germany . The garage band consisted of US soldiers stationed in Germany. Between 1999 and 2007 the group gave concerts together again. With their innovative and experimental rock music , the Monks clearly differed from other bands of their time. Today you are regarded by musicians and fans as pioneers of punk and influenced subsequent artists such as Henry Rollins , the Beastie Boys , Jello Biafra , the White Stripes and The Fall .

Band history

The members got to know each other as GIs stationed in the Coleman barracks in Gelnhausen near Frankfurt . In 1964 they founded a beat combo under the name "The 5 Torquays". a. Chuck Berry and Rufus Thomas interpreted. After their discharge from the army in 1965, the musicians stayed in Germany and, together with their friends, developed Karl-H. Remy, student at the Ulm School of Design, and Walther Niemann, student at the Folkwang School in Essen developed a very idiosyncratic style of music. Dave Day switched from rhythm guitar to banjo and they called themselves "The Monks" from then on. The "sixth and seventh Monks" Remy and Niemann were decisive for the image change associated with the new band name. As their manager, they laid down the basic rules for the appearance of the monks, both on and off stage: A monk had to wear short hair, a tonsure , black clothing and, instead of a tie, a rope and, among other things, a. To be "exciting" and "strong". So the Monks were pushed as "anti-Beatles".

In Hamburg the band got a contract with the Top Ten Club . They played beat music and their own pieces. Producer Jimmy Bowien helped the Monks get a record deal with Polydor and in November 1965 they began recording their debut album "Black Monk Time". The album was released in early 1966 and contained only self-composed pieces. Three singles accompanied the album. "Black Monk Time" was initially released neither in England nor in America . It was only later that reprints came on the market there. The first edition of the album now achieves high collector prices. A CD version of the album was only released in 1994.

To promote the album, they appeared in the Beat Club , among others , but were received with mixed feelings by the audience. Among other things, they showed very early sound experiments there. Three members of the band gathered around the guitar during a short nameless song, each plucking or tapping on different strings while the bass and drums kept the beat going. The sound of the Monks had a psychedelic touch and anticipated elements of punk, which only emerged a decade later . The pieces of the group are poor in melody, rhythmically heavy and repetitive, yet they do not leave the stanza-chorus pattern of conventional pop songs. If a chord change occurs in conventional songs in the fourth bar, the key of the Monks only changes in the eighth or thirteenth bar.

Her appearances, among others with The Creation and The Troggs , were mainly organized by her tour manager Wolfgang Gluszczewski. He also had the Monks play in large town halls, but often in halls and inns in smaller towns and villages. In northern Germany, for example in what was then the European beat metropolis of Hamburg, the Monks were more of a celebrated band, whereas in the Catholic south of Germany they often met with antipathy . In their song "Monk Time", the band expressed themselves critical of the Vietnam War in Dadaist lines , which sometimes caused displeasure in the audience, especially when performing in front of American soldiers. A vehement opponent of the Monks was Tony Sheridan , who denied the band any ability to play authentic rock 'n' roll . If it had been up to Charles Wilp alone , the soundtrack of his Afri-Cola commercials at the time would have been recorded by the Monks instead of by a philharmonic orchestra - in 2000, Coca-Cola finally used a few bars of the track “Monk Time” for one TV commercial.

It became clear that releasing their exalted music would not bring any profit to the Monks or their record company for the foreseeable future. In 1967 an Asia tour was completely booked. But before this could begin, the band broke up after commercial failure and, among other things. a. due to a planned appearance in Vietnam, partly at odds. The musicians then withdrew into private life.

Reunion

After Eddie Shaw's autobiography about his years with the Monks was published under the title Black Monk Time in 1994 , the band got together for the first time on November 8, 1999 for an appearance at the Cavestomp Festival in New York ; it was also her first ever appearance in the United States . A CD with the live recording of this concert was released in 2002 under the title Let's Start a Beat . On November 8, 2004, drummer Roger Johnston died just a few days before planned performances in Benidorm . For him, Adam Fesenmaier joined the band, which gave their first concert in Great Britain in 2006 in London's Dirty Water Club .

Gary Burger was mayor of his home township, Turtle River, Minnesota , from August 2006 . Guitarist Dave Day died on January 10, 2008 of a heart attack, followed by Walther Niemann in 2009.

2006 by the directors Dietmar Post and Lucía Palacios appeared for Play Loud! Productions documentary film monks - the transatlantic feedback, which was still produced during the lifetime of all “Monks” . A tribute sampler called Silver Monk Time was released to accompany its publication , in which Alec Empire and The Golden Lemons contributed, among others . In 2008 the two directors of the film received the Adolf Grimme Prize :

“ It's not just the small thing about this film, the absurd, that monks - the transatlantic feedback made it so big. Not just the subcultural capital, this cool knowledge of a footnote in pop history. Rather, it is the nonchalant talent of turning the individual narrative of five GIs stranded in Germany and their short excursion into the hinterland of the hit parades into a parable for the emancipatory energy of an era. "

- From the reasons given by the jury for the 2008 Adolf Grimme Prize

Discography

Studio album

Extended play

  • 2017: Hamburg Recordings 1967

Compilations

  • 1999: Five Upstart Americans
  • 2002: Let's Start a Beat - Live from Cavestomp
  • 2007: Monks Demo Tapes 1965 (early demo recordings)
  • 2009: The Early Years 1964-1965

Singles

  • 1964: There She Walks / Boys Are Boys
  • 1965: Complication / Oh, How to Do Now
  • 1966: I Can't Get Over You / Cuckoo
  • 1967: Love Can Tame the Wild / He Went Down to the Sea
  • 2009: Pretty Suzanne / Monk Time

Re-releases

literature

  • Shaw, Eddie & Klemke, Anita (1994). Black Monk Time . Carson Street Publishing Inc., ISBN 0-9633371-2-2 .

Movie

Radio

Band (The) Monks

In Austria there is a band (Die) Monks who performed the hand-washing song for the WCC in March 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic .

swell

  1. ^ Ulrich Kriest: Monks - The Transatlantic Feedback
  2. ↑ Powerade "Bus Ride" (video on adweek.com)
  3. ^ Turtle River Minnesota Community Guide
  4. ↑ Complete justification of the Grimme Institute ( Memento from May 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ It's Monk Time
  6. ^ "Hand washing song" for children orf.at, March 19, 2020, accessed March 23, 2020.

Web links