Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback: Obscure Band Has Local Connection

Some musical footnotes remain just that for good reason. Rough contemporaries of the recently reunited Sonics, the Monks were a German-managed American band of ex-GIs during the mid-'60s with a similar fuzzed-out, torn-speaker-cone sound. They were Bauhaus primitives, molded by a pair of German ad men in a relationship that suggests Brian Epstein and the Beatles (only with less talent on both sides of the equation). For attention, yes, they performed in robes and had tonsures shaved on their scalps. (Das ist gänzlich verrukt!) Decades later, their 1966 Black Monk Time was reissued as part of the "Krautrock" revival, which I hope was meant as kitsch. (Local label Light in the Attic will release more Monks next year.) The five surviving group members shown in the film include Dave Day of Renton (now deceased); all genially reflect here on their 15 minutes of fame while preparing for a reunion show—where else?—in Germany. None of the Monks seem to have entertained Beatlesque fantasies of world domination; surprisingly raw German TV concert footage instead makes them seem like forgotten grandfathers of punk. This documentary preaches to the pews in a deservedly small church, but those pews are apparently still full of devout worshippers.