The Monks-Black
Monk Time (Infinite Zero)
It's short sighted for punk historians to set the
genres birth in 1977 with the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Ramones. The road for those
bands had been paved for over a decade with far sighted garage bands like The Stooges, The
Seeds and The 13th Floor Elevators.
Now, the world can listen to the long out of print
first album by another band that blazed the trail, the Monks. A group of former U.S. GI's
who played the Hamburg scene soon after the Beatles, the Monks dressed in concert in monastial robes with and shaved bald spots.
Tired of the boring Brit Pop bands surrounding
them, Black Monk Time is like almost nothing available at the time. Even in the
summer of love, The Monks were blazing trails with revolutionary protopunk tunes like
"I Hate You," with the classic couplet "I hate
you, but you can call
me."
It's a fascinating piece of rock history. (4/97)
Jay S. Jacobs
