Black Monk Time

Black Monk Time is the only studio album by German-based American garage rock band The Monks, released in March 1966 through Polydor Records. The album's subversive style and blunt lyrical content were radical for its time, and today it is considered an important landmark in the development of punk rock.

Background

The album was produced by Jimmy Bowien and recorded in November 1965 in Cologne, West Germany. "Complication" b/w "Oh, How to Do Now" was released as a single to promote the album. Like the album, it failed to garner commercial success. The single was re-issued in 2009 by Play Loud! Productions.

Black Monk Time was not officially released in the United States until 1994, as Polydor Records deemed the music too experimental for an American audience and too blunt in its condemnation of the Vietnam War at the time.

Music

The album has been described as "[eleven] songs of brash grooves and unearthly garage rock that show no signs of hobby or pastime."

Critical reception

The album was initially met with a muted critical and commercial reception, but has since become widely critically acclaimed and is now viewed as an important proto-punk album. In a retrospective review for About.com, Anthony Carew called it "possibly the first punk record" and "one of the 'missing links' of alternative music history", also citing it as an influence on the German krautrock movement. Andrew Perry wrote in The Daily Telegraph in 2009: "Listening to it now, finally, in full, remastered glory, it's hard to imagine how this primitive and often nightmarish music could have been allowed to be made at that particular time and place. [...] It may not be to every taste but, lurching according to its own sublimely clueless logic, it has a purity and heedlessness which can never be repeated." According to Len Comaratta of Uncut, "there's really nothing that can dull the impact of hearing the Monks' music for the first time."

Accolades

• It was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
• It was included in the Sunday HeraldTemplate:'s "The 103 Best Albums Ever, Honest" list in 2001.
• It was included in UK magazine The WordTemplate:'s "Hidden Treasure: Great Underrated Albums of Our Time" list in 2005.
• It was placed number 56 on Spin magazine's list of "Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s".
• It was ranked the 127th greatest album of the 1960s by Pitchfork in 2017.

Legacy and impact

Black Monk Time was later described by Julian Cope as a "lost classic" in his 1995 book Krautrocksampler.Template:Sfn Cope writes:

NO-ONE ever came up with a whole album of such dementia. The Monks' Black Monk Time is a gem born of isolation and the horrible deep-down knowledge that no-one is really listening to what you're saying. And the Monks took full artistic advantage of their lucky/unlucky position as American rockers in a country that was desperate for the real thing. They wrote songs that would have been horribly mutilated by arrangers and producers had they been back in America. But there was no need for them to clean up their act, as the Beatles and others had had to do on returning home, for there were no artistic constraints in a country that liked the sound of beat music but had no idea about its lyric content.Template:Sfn

In 2006 Play Loud! Productions released a Monks tribute album, Silver Monk Time, featuring 29 international bands (including the original Monks), in conjunction with the film Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback.

English post-punk band The Fall covered four of the album's songs: "I Hate You" and "Oh, How to Do Now" (as "Black Monk Theme Part I" and "Black Monk Theme Part II") on their 1990 album Extricate, "Shut Up" on their 1994 album Middle Class Revolt, and "Higgle-Dy Piggle-Dy" on Silver Monk Time.

"I Hate You" was featured in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski.

"Monk Time" was featured in a 2000 Powerade advertisement.

Beastie Boys, Jack White of The White Stripes, and Colin Greenwood of Radiohead have praised the album.

"Boys Are Boys and Girls Are Choice" was featured in a commercial for the Apple iPhone in 2017.

"We Do Wie Du" is featured in the 2017 film Logan Lucky.

Personnel

• Gary Burger – vocals, electric lead guitar
• Larry Clark – vocals, Philicorda organ, piano (bonus tracks only)
• Roger Johnston – vocals, drums
• Eddie Shaw – vocals, bass guitar, trumpet (bonus tracks only)
• Dave Day – vocals, banjo guitar, electric rhythm guitar (bonus tracks only)

Release history

Region	Date	Title	Label	Format	Catalog
Germany	May 1966	Black Monk Time	International Polydor Production	Stereo LP	249 900
Germany	1979	Black Monk Time	Polydor	Stereo LP	2417 129
Germany	January 19, 1994	Black Monk Time	Repertoire Records	CD	REP 4438-WP
USA	February 11, 1997	Black Monk Time[a]	Infinite Zero	CD	9 43112-2
USA	October 12, 2004	Monk Time	Retribution Records	CD	105523
Germany	March 13, 2009	Black Monk Time[a]	Polydor	LP/CD	1785 208 [LP], 177 1723 [CD]
USA	April 14, 2009	Black Monk Time[a]	Light in the Attic Records	LP/CD	LITA 042
USA	2011	Black Time	International Polydor Production	LP	249900

Template:Refbegin ^a This release includes extensive liner notes, including interviews and photographs Template:Refend

References

Bibliography

External links

• Black Monk Time (Adobe Flash) at Radio3Net (streamed copy where licensed)
• Template:Discogs master