Another great band from Germany that should get an induction. Although, they only made one album, but the Monks’s unusual blend of high-pitched vocals, feedback, and a six-string banjo identified them as a pioneering force in avant-garde music. Along with Los Saicos, the Monks could be one of the first true punk bands and possibly also the first Krautrock band - they were the missing links of alternative music.

Jack White, the Beastie Boys, Colin Greenwood from Radiohead are big fans of those guys.

Posted by The Dude on Tuesday, 10/30/2018 @ 17:47pm

I adore The Monks.

But what makes them so wonderful is what makes them a bit of a poor fit for the HOF. They were basically an obscure word of mouth phenomenon by record collectors for a quarter century. They really were only able to find a bigger audience thanks to the rerelease of Black Monk Time in America during the Alternative music revolution, and by the rise of internet culture which makes it so much easier to share old videos of them on German TV or to easily let new fans stream their music instead of seeking out copies of the rare original LPs or listening to shitty multi-generational tape copies of the music.

They existed in a perfect vacuum, out of the media spotlight as a club band in Germany, influenced by the culture of avant garde artists and nihilist philosophers in the art scene in Germany. They were musically influenced by the garage band culture of their native America (they were all American GIs that had been stationed in Germany), but determined to make their own sound and create their own unique image - thus the shaved head monk gimmick, and the use of a Rhythm banjo as a key component of their garage rock type of music.

They would have been the perfect catalyst for Punk rock if anybody had ever actually heard them. But they made no commercial impact, and often received poor audience reactions to their weird music. Their album was a total sales failure. They broke up in obscurity. But people eventually found their way to their music over time and recognized the unique and special genius and originality of it.

They made no commercial or cultural impact at their time, and later punk bands that love them and have covered them, were already punk bands before they ever managed to discover the music of The Monks - so they had no real influence on them. They are simply a perfect time capsule of something wonderful, strange, and unique that happened for a brief period of time out of the spotlight of the world.

I can see citing them as the first "krautrock" band given that they were driven by many of the same societal forces and artistic temperaments that would feed the direction of bands like Kraftwerk and Can; but those bands have never cited The Monks as influences on their music or direction, indeed none of the early records from any of those bands sound remotely like the directions that The Monks took. But, like The Monks, they were all trying to do something new and different.

Discovering The Monks music is like suddenly finding a previously undiscovered indigenous tribe that has no relation or frame of reference to the wider world around them.

So to box them up in the HOF as if they fit in neatly into some sort of historical timeline of musical influence and legacy would be a heavy rewrite of actual history.

Posted by Shrek on Tuesday, 10/30/2018 @ 19:09pm

The Monks.
Will never receive a nomination.
Obscure.

Posted by Mark on Wednesday, 10/31/2018 @ 09:17am