"Don't you know that my hate is everlasting, baby?" The story of the Monks is the story of rock & roll...in an alternate reality, perhaps. Take a bunch of bored US servicemen stationed in Germany about to be discharged, put them in a band, and have them decide to freak out the establishment by dressing in black capes, shaving their heads into monk's tonsures and wearing nooses as neckties. Perhaps not so shocking in these days after punk rock, but this was 1965. Oh, and don't forget the electric banjo. What began as a fairly standard surf/beat combo called the Torquays mutated into this band, churning out some of the most nihilistic music you've ever heard, even by German standards.

i heard this song for the first time in spain at the purple weekend. the dj (mike stax) is as rather famous guy in the mod/garage/60's-scene. so i didn't have the guts to mail him about it for a year or so. but eventually i did and he gave me the details and told me that it was his girlfriend ho spun it. the song is a weird version of black sabbath's paranoid. i love this stuff. can be found on some german comps various artists as well as c&b comps. i saw the original cornet single on ebay a couple of months ago for a mere $180.

It's manic. Snapped wires. Screaming at the boxcars as they go by. Kid listened to too many Joy Division records in high school and not only did he pick up an attraction to crazy, but he learned how to freak out to that crazy in melody as well. And freak out he does. But he'll tell you why he's freaking out, he'll make you feel it too. And turns out, he has good reason to freak out. Dude's in deep with a bad chick who's, well, she's pretty bad. He waits until the chorus before shrieking for help, "She can't read!" There are those intimate little details that make you realize he's caught in this relationship, he's in love, he loves crazy, he's not getting out any time soon. "It's in the way she pulls it." and the amazing line, "Her stories are boring and stuff /she's always calling my bluff." Sears my frickin' heart.