The Monks

Not unlike Los Saicos, The Monks derived out of a free-form existence during the mid-sixties. 5 American GIs stationed in Germany pretty much just doing their own weird-ass shit during a weird-ass time in a weird-ass place. As for me, I have no concept of the 60s. I pretty much only think of hippies and one of my mom's favorite movie, American Graffiti. Regardless, The Monks and Los Saicos both had a certain provocative sensibility that didn't fit. The Monks were less aggressive but just as unpolished and alternative. They approached chuck-berry's underbelly with a sort of repeditive tribal unmelody and innovative yet primitive feedback experimentation. Also conceptually they manufactured an identity relevant to an anti-Beatle: dressed in all black, sported shaved 'monk' hair, and wore rope around their necks. I can't help but think... were they just some weird eggheads or ingenious avant-garde intelligenstias??? Whatever, I dunno. The Monks are incredibly influential as the pre-emptive garage rock to protopunk to krautrock band that they are. And they will forever hold their place in my heart and on Wiki's pre-punk group list.

"It probably took us a year to get the sound right. We experimented all the time. A lot of the experiments were total failures and some of the songs we worked on were terrible. But the ones we kept felt like they had something special to them. And they became more defined over time." Lead-vocalist, Gary Burger

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