Remember The Monks? The 1960s proto-punk, pre-Velvet Underground ’60s rockers formed by American G.I.s stationed in Germany? The band’s fairly bland beat-band songs were eventually replaced by fierce, minimalist tracks that anticipated the blunt, harsh commentary of the punk era by a few years (essentialy, they were an Anti-Beatles) Oh yeah, and they shaved the top of their heads as some weird Friar Tuck gimmick too.
Well, apparently a documentary was made about their strange and short-lived history called, “Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback.”
Of course no one told us about it (this is what happens when you pay slightly less attention to rock docs), but maybe it’s for the best. The NYTimes calls it an “ambitious but unfocused documentary by the filmmakers Dietmar Post and Lucía Palacios, bids to immortalize this short-lived if influential group.”
The doc is apparently in theaters now and presumably in limited release. PS, we had a Monks track on our If I Were Jim Jarmusch soundtrack that we made in 2006. Here’s the trailer and a song (and the old trailer too for more context if you like: it features Jon Spencer of the Blues Explosion (a devotee to be sure) and Genesis P-Orridge of Psychic TV.
