The Monks

jsh · **Posted:** Sun Jan 13, 2008 8:20 pm

What better reason than the death of a member to bring up The Monks:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/fork ... ious-songs

A seriously mythical band and record.

Promethium · **Posted:** Sun Jan 13, 2008 9:52 pm

Fucking Awesome record. I bought it when Infinite Zero rereleased it in the mid 90's.

Cotton · **Joined:** Mon Oct 25, 2004 6:12 pm **Posts:** 17155

that's totally a beast of an album. I had no idea they'd reformed.

Z · **Joined:** Sat Oct 23, 2004 1:38 pm **Posts:** 7979

i fucking love "cuckoo." i'd never heard anything else of theirs until recently either. seems like a really good band i'm glad was rediscovered.

Flying Rabbit · **Posted:** Thu Oct 30, 2008 4:03 pm

http://www.playloud.org/themonks.html

[img][354:500]http://www.playloud.org/images/monksfilm/09monksposterWEB.jpg[/img]

Quote:

The monks were 5 American GIâ€™s in cold war Germany who billed themselves as the anti-Beatles; they were heavy on feedback, nihilism and electrical banjo. They had strange haircuts, dressed in black, mocked the military and rocked harder than any of their mid-sixties counterparts while managing to basically invent industrial, punk and techno music.
The genre-overlapping documentary film not only illustrates the pop music phenomenon in its political, social and cultural historic contexts, but also reveals the monks project as the first marriage between art and popular music
and this months before Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground.
The five protagonists of the film came to cold war Germany in 1961 as soldiers and left the country in 1967 as avant-garde monks.
For more than thirty years they were not able to talk about their strange experience. In the film they recount for the first time their adventure.

sounds very cool.

PopTodd · **Posted:** Thu Oct 30, 2008 4:13 pm

The couple of clips that I heard here:
http://www.playloud.org/silvermonktime.html

Sound awesome.
Hard to believe that it was 1964 or whatever.
Damn.

EDIT:
Nevermind about the 60's thing. Those are cover versions.
Still sounds cool as hell.

Flying Rabbit · **Posted:** Thu Oct 30, 2008 4:16 pm

Yeah that website above the poster has some soundtrack info, trailer, etc. Ahead of their time for sure.

jsh · **Posted:** Thu Oct 30, 2008 4:54 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcAOgv4JWQY

Modem · **Posted:** Fri Oct 31, 2008 10:34 am

What about the other "Monks"?

catswilleatyou · **Posted:** Fri Oct 31, 2008 10:53 am

i never get tired of black monk time
this band was absolutely amazing... can't wait to see this

Flying Rabbit · **Posted:** Mon Mar 16, 2009 12:59 pm

Flying Rabbit Wrote:

http://www.playloud.org/themonks.html

[img][354:500]http://www.playloud.org/images/monksfilm/09monksposterWEB.jpg[/img]

Quote:

The monks were 5 American GIâ€™s in cold war Germany who billed themselves as the anti-Beatles; they were heavy on feedback, nihilism and electrical banjo. They had strange haircuts, dressed in black, mocked the military and rocked harder than any of their mid-sixties counterparts while managing to basically invent industrial, punk and techno music.
The genre-overlapping documentary film not only illustrates the pop music phenomenon in its political, social and cultural historic contexts, but also reveals the monks project as the first marriage between art and popular music
and this months before Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground.
The five protagonists of the film came to cold war Germany in 1961 as soldiers and left the country in 1967 as avant-garde monks.
For more than thirty years they were not able to talk about their strange experience. In the film they recount for the first time their adventure.

sounds very cool.

coming to dvd tomorrow, 3/17

berliner · **Joined:** Fri May 09, 2008 7:00 pm **Posts:** 1516

didn't someone post this awsome video where they played in this german show from the 60s, beat club a while ago?
they looked so bored... great band.

Flying Rabbit · **Posted:** Wed Jun 24, 2009 12:28 am

It finally hit Netflix, so I got a chance to sit down with it tonight. While I'm a great lover and admirer of the band, the doc probably could've been a hour. You would've thought the band existed 20 years with the way it carried on. The first 1/4 was great. Interesting to hear about their military career, and how they ended up becoming a band. From that moment on, it kinda bottomed out.

Still, you should check it out. It has some great footage of the band in the studio, and performing on German tv and in clubs.

oh, and if one more person on the dvd said that "Black Monk Time" was a sort of religion...

catswilleatyou · **Posted:** Wed Jun 24, 2009 1:03 am

thanks for the heads up on the netflix flying bunny. its played in town twice now and i've missed it. but lots of people talk it up.

one of these monks has a recording studio here in minnesota and i've got some buddies that are gonna go lay some tracks down there. im super curious as to what he's like, and if he's good at recording.

Flying Rabbit · **Posted:** Wed Jun 24, 2009 1:07 am

apparently as of the filming--2006--he was mayor of some town in Minnesota.

Promethium · **Posted:** Wed Jun 24, 2009 1:32 am

Despite posting once, I must add this:

We were discussing them tonight at a bar. I had an unbelievably square college roommate who was in no way a music aficionado, and he fucking loved this album when I played it for him.

The Monks

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