Banjo is a Percussion, Too

November 14, 2005... The Monks, a sample of whose music I posted on Saturday, was a mid-sixties band comprised of five former American GIs living in Germany. Distinguishing themselves from other rock ‘n’ roll groups of the time by sporting monks' haircuts, the band also stood out because of their use of amplified banjo in the place of rhythm guitar. What's more, in an era when the sugary sounds of “Love, Love Me Do” still echoed in the ears of most young people, the Monks were writing and playing songs with titles like “Shut Up” and “I Hate You.”

The band's only full length release, Black Monk Time, from 1965, is highly recommended. It appears to have been re-released on CD many times by many different labels.

Sitting in a café yesterday, drinking weak coffee and reading “the newspaper that shall remain nameless until it boosts its free online content again,” it suddenly dawned on me that The Fall stole the mechanical beat for their 1979 single, “Fiery Jack,” from the cartoonish, wind-up-toy Monks’ song "Boys are Boys and Girls are Choice."

I came home and sorted through my mp3s, but do not have a digital version of “Fiery Jack.” Dang. And no one else out there in the blogosphere appears to have posted it, either. That's a pretty big oversight on everybody's part, I'd say.

Anyway, what I did find was an official, declared cover of a Monks song by the Fall. The file arrived in my life labeled as "Black Monk Theme," which is the name of a Monks song, but it actually sounds more like the aforementioned “I Hate You” with Mark E. Smith incomprehensible throughout.

The Fall - Black Monk Theme (in theory)

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