Monks - The Transatlantic Feedback (2007)
The monks were 5 American GIs in cold war Germany who billed themselves as the anti-Beatles; they were heavy on feedback, nihilism and electrical banjo. They had strange haircuts, dressed in black, mocked the military and rocked harder than any of their mid-sixties counterparts while managing to basically invent industrial, kraut rock, heavy metal, punk and techno music.
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Awesome Movie
Absolutely Fantastic
It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.
The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.
I saw this film at the Chicago film fest knowing absolutely nothing about this story or the band. This was a great film from start to finish, fascinating. The story chronicles the current lives of the members of an avant garde musical group in Germany in the mid 1960's. A group of American G.I.'s who met each other while playing around on instruments in the equivalent of the Army mess hall, and got good enough as a band to play local gigs as a band called the Torquays around Germany. A team of German producers discovered them and turned them into The Monks, and branded them with corporate identity insisnting wherever they go they are monks dressed and acting like monks. The music was ten to twenty years ahead of it's time. A combination of techno, punk, metal and rock and roll, they have a sound unlike anyone else at the time. After a few years of touring Germany they came home to the U.S penniless, and found out thirty years later they were a cult band. Very worth while, well done documentary, highly recommended to all.