Information AboutThe Monks |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT THE MONKS | |
| german musical groups | |
| musical groups established in 1965 | |
| rock music groups | |
| 1960s music groups | |
| pre-punk groups | |
| beat groups | |
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The Monks are a Rock N Roll band, primarily active in Germany in the mid to late Sixties . They reunited in 1999 and have continued to play concerts, although no new studio recordings have been made. The Monks stood out from the music of the time, and have developed a Cult Following amongst many musicians and music fans. One band to have acknowledged The Monks is The Fall who covered ''Shut Up'' on their 1994 album ''Middle Class Revolt'', and both ''I Hate You'' and ''Oh, How To Do Now'' on their 1990 album ''Extricate''. PERSONNEL
THE FORMATION OF THE MONKS All the members were American songs and played music inspired by the British Invasion bands. But the band experimented together musically - Gary Burger said: "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." And upon their discharge from the army the band had an extremely distinctive musical style, and took up a distinctive name and image to go with it. THE MONKS STAGE GARB At the beginning of 1965 , Dave Day and Roger Johnston, on a whim, got their heads shaved into Monk s' Tonsure s. The rest of the band followed their lead, and to complete the image, the band took to wearing a uniform - all black, sometimes in Cassock s, with Noose s worn as Necktie s. Eddie Shaw later claimed in his band autobiography ''Black Monk Time'' that the nooses were symbolic of the metaphorical nooses that all humanity wear. His explanation of the symbolism is unclear and confusing, but regardless, dressed as black monks, The Monks undoubtedly made a shocking visual impression. They received confused audience reactions at concerts: One attendee attempted to strangle Gary Burger at a show in Hamburg, presumably for perceived Blasphemy . THE GROUP'S SOUND The band abandoned many accepted musical norms of sixties rock n roll:
Because of these features, they are often referenced as forerunner of the later punk movement. DISCOGRAPHY
Singles
BOOKS Shaw, Eddie & Klemke, Anita ( 1994 ). ''Black Monk Time''. Carson Street Publishing Inc., ISBN 096333712. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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