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The Cold War and Feedback: A History of the Monks
New documentary offers lesson in underated, influential rock of the 1960s
The Monks
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With their heads shaved to reflect their band’s moniker, and a decidedly punk attitude (nearly a decade before the term was thrown around in the music business), the Monks were a garage-rock band in the 1960s that consisted entirely of American soldiers stationed in Germany.
Known as “the anti-Beatles,” their songs consisted of a melody-deprived sound with lyrics ranging from anti-war protests to laments on love. Thanks to repetitive beats and paranoid vocals, they were The Ramones of Germany, and before Jimi Hendrix or the Velvet Underground got in on the act, they were fusing electric banjos with feedback.
The Monks’ history has been mostly ignored until now. Dietmar Post and Lucia Palacios’s Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback features interviews with people like musician Jon Spencer and other die-hard Monks’ fans who, before this documentary, had appearantly been given a lesson in underated and influential music of the ’60s. For those of you who missed that lesson, school is now in session.