Review

One of rock & roll's rare weirdo classics. One for the ages.
Even in a psychotropic era that celebrated the wildest and weirdest, the Monks were downright outré-to-lunch. Dressed in monastic robes, sporting shaved tonsures in an age of growing hair, brandishing feedback and twisted lyrics and barked vocals and chanted insults ("I Hate You," "Shut Up"), along with a method-to-their-madness that sometimes makes their finished tunes seem like cut-ups, they were a cult group in the awaiting.

That their debut (and only) album, Black Monk Time, was never released outside of 1960s Germany only adds to their cachet, as does their history, which was as bizarro as their music. Five American soldiers stationed in Deutschland — lead vocal and guitarist Gary Burger, organist Larry Clark, rhythm guitar/banjoist Dave Day, bassist Eddie Shaw and drummer Roger Johnston — started as the Torquays in 1964, following in the wake of the British boomlet; but after discharge from the military, they underwent a post-traumatic conversion, emerging as the Monks and creating a confrontational, dissonance filled music that hunkers down on its backbeat and burns like napalm ("We don't like the army," snarls Gary in "Monk Time," "Why do you kill all those kids over in Vietnam?...My brother died in Vietnam!").

Yet they have a sense of humor amidst the outrageousness, a la the Fugs or the Mothers of Invention, and with their flying-off-the-handle streaming consciousness and classique organ whine, the tightness of the rhythm section (augmented by the chop of Day's banjo — see "Oh How To Do Now") helps focus and propel. One wonders what might have happened if they hadn't been so cloistered in Germany and been able to find an audience in America, though belatedly they have, reuniting (all original members) for a Cavestomp in New York in 1999 to great and wondrous acclaim. That the album lives up to its underground reputation (original vinyl copies are coveted collector's items) is remarkable, and this reissue adds several bonus tracks, including their more poppy second single, "I Can't Get Over You" / "Cuckoo," the latter neatly clocking this off-the-Berlin Wall combo.