They were the ultimate lost band. In a world filled with a million and one garage bands coming out of the independent record labels and local studios of small-town America, here was a band that did it differently. They joined the army, they served in Germany, they played the beer halls in Frankfurt, they recorded for Polydor in Berlin, they played Beat Club (Germany`s TOTP), they sold next to zero copies of their one and only album, and then they disappeared.
And that’s how it would have stayed if people didn’t start to dig in the crates and listen to those little vinyl gems from 1966. First it was the early post-nuggets diggers, then the post-punkers, then c-86’ers. Each new generation found a world of under-discovered tales of angst and teenage repression. Each record they found was a mixture of howling, fuzzy guitars and fumbling, teenage sexual repression that pre-dated punk by an eon. And the deeper they dug the more they wanted it wilder, rawer, nastier.
That’s when they discovered The Monks. The Monks weren’t teenage dreamers. They were a lot more psycho. They partied with the best of them. They played the seediest clubs at the Reeperbahn, playing their own songs to the prostitutes, their clients and the also-ran Liverpudlian beat groups that were following in the footsteps of you-know-who. Maybe it was those self same bands that bought The Monks album, attracted by the gnarling vocals that screamed danger and the threat of violence. The music was raw and primitive. Put on the album and you get a full frontal mono-assault. Gary Burger screaming about how his brother died in Vietnam, Larry Clarke’s organ making a piercing whine that won’t get out of year and the combined sound of bass, drum and banjo (yes, banjo!) of Johnston, Shaw and Day making the rhythmic equivalent of a knife being rammed into your skull. Each song as self-reverential as anything by The Hives or Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Each song a blueprint for The Fall and The Horrors. Billy Childish took notes and made a career from it. Maybe he found a copy of the album when he played the Star Club himself. Maybe he took it home and spread the vibes to anyone who would listen. Maybe. And maybe bootlegs of the album crossed the ocean and reached as far as Detroit and Seattle. So, if The White Stripes got into an argument with The Von Bondies, Jack could pull out his battered cassette version of “We Do Wie Do” and yell “WE ARE WAY MORE HARDER THAN YOU!”
And then a fight would start.
Maybe.
It’s hard to separate the history of this album with the music itself. The only thing I can say is that I first heard this album a long time before I knew of the history. I was in Virgin Records back in the nineties, there was a sticker on a cd with a quote from Jon Spencer saying I should buy this album. He was right. I never regretted it. If you liked any band with a guitar and an attitude in the last twenty years then this album is worth a listen. On the other hand, you should only listen to the companion album `The Early Years` when you’ve fallen in love with `Black Monk Time`. Early versions of album tracks combined with a couple other rarities is okay but is really more for hardcore fans. That’s okay, because once you hear BMT you will become a hardcore fan but it isn’t a good starting point.
Dean Coster (View Original Article)
