Re: Moment of genius for the day

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Nice Farfisa.

Yes! I'm sure I've seen all those Monks vids on YouTube before but always great to see 'em again.

Interesting that The Monks in Germany, The Velvet Underground in New York and the original Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd were all on the wavelength, working with roughly the same berserk aesthetic, but apparently completely oblivious of each other.

What if they had all discovered each other? Punk might have happened a lot sooner...

The Velvets and the Beatles get all the credit for inspiring Krautrock, but watching that video it's pretty easy to see what Can were aiming for with "Oh Yeah" and Faust with "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl."

The Monks are one of the most underappreciated benefits of the US occupation of Germany after WW2.

One of the occupation's other great contributions to music was that radio operator Johnny Cash listened to endless hours of Morse code and garbled Eastern Bloc radio transmissions, both of which greatly influenced the chunk-a-chunk rhythms of his Sun singles, most notably "I Walk the Line." Listen to the rhythm guitar line on that and you can definitely hear the influence of a man spacing out listening to hour after hour of morse code.

At least that's what Rodney Crowell claimed. (I think he's the one I heard talking about it.)

I din't know if they could have hastened Punk.

The Velvet Underground were missing a (the?) key component of Punk- the anger.

I remember picking up The Monks' LP when it was reissued sometime during the late 80's, early 90's and thinking that this was what I thought the VU was supposed to sound like before I actually heard them. No disappointment, just joy. I lost the album years ago and have always meant to replace it.

disclosure:
here @ the trouser nothing is sacred.