Monks – Black Monk Time (1966)

Cuckoo, cuckoo

Who’s got the cuckoo?

So far, this year’s “28 Posts in 28 Days” has been a bit of a yawner.  

It’s hardly surprising that I included records like Pet Sounds and Led Zeppelin I and Tommy and Let It Bleed in my list of ten great “Golden Decade” albums.  No one with a lick of musical taste would question those choices.  But they’re a bit predictable.

So I decided to shake things up with the last of my picks.

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Admit it, you’ve never heard of the Monks and their one and only album, Black Monk Time.  And you would have almost certainly gone the rest of your life without becoming acquainted with the amazing songs on that record were it not for my wildly successful little blog.

The Black Monk Time album cover

But it’s your lucky day!  Bow down before the one you serve – you are not going to get what deserve!  Because 2 or 3 lines is a merciful blogger.  You who have been walking in darkness are about to have that darkness turned into light.

And while I’m at it, I’m also going to make the rough places smooth . . . no charge!

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The five Monks were American soldiers who met in 1964 when they were all stationed in Germany.

The band’s look – they tonsured their hair, and dressed up in robes and rope belts like medieval monks – was weird enough.  But the songs on Black Monk Time are a thousand times weirder than the group’s appearance.  

The Monks getting tonsured

The Monks started out playing covers of American rock-and-roll hits for other GIs at bars near the army base where they were stationed.  

In 1965, they showed up at the door of Polydor Records with an LP’s worth of original songs.  It’s amazing to me that a major label agreed to release an album of such radical music, but that’s exactly what happened.

The band toured West Germany to promote the Black Monk Time, but it did not sell well.  

After a two-week mini-tour of Sweden in early 1967, the Monks learned that Polydor had decided not to release their album in the United States.  Apparently, the antiwar sentiments expressed in some of the songs on Black Monk Time were considered too controversial for American tastes.

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Before you poo-pooh the record company’s decision, you might want to listen to the album’s first track, “Monk Time,” which kicks off with a demented-sounding spoken rant by Monks frontman Gary Burger:  

All right, my name’s Gary!  Let’s go, it’s beat time, it’s hop time, it’s monk time!  

You know we don’t like the army.  What army?  Who cares what army?  Why do you kill all those kids over there in Vietnam?  My brother died in Vietnam!  

James Bond, who was he?  Stop it!  Stop it!  I don't like it!  It’s too loud for my ears!  Pussy Galore’s comin’ down and we like it!  We don’t like the atomic bomb!  Stop it!  Stop it!  I don't like it!  Stop it!

Polydor released records by Jimi Hendrix and Cream that year, but the Monks were a little too much for them to handle.

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“Monk Time” is so bizarre that you might assume it’s not representative of Black Monk Time as a whole.

Take my word for it.  The other tracks on the album – which include “Boys Are Boys and Girls Are Choice,” “Higgle-Dy-Piggle-Dy,” “I Hate You,” “We Do Wie Du,” “Drunken Maria,” and (last but certainly not least) “Cuckoo” – are just as odd.

But in addition to being odd, the music on Black Monk Time is oddly compelling – and (dare I say) delightful.  

Give the entire album a listen.  I’ll bet that by the time you get to the end of it, you’ll think it’s delightful, too. 

Click here to listen to Black Monk Time, which finally released in the U.S. in 1997 – 30 years after it was recorded.

Click here to watch The Transatlantic Feedback, a 2006 documentary about the Monks, on Amazon.