Monks - The Transatlantic Feedback

The Monks were five American GIs stationed in Germany during the Cold War who called themselves the anti-Beatles; they relied heavily on feedback, nihilism, and electric banjo. They wore strange haircuts, dressed in black, mocked the military, and rocked harder than any of their contemporaries in the mid-1960s, while at the same time managing to essentially invent industrial, punk, and techno music. This cross-genre documentary not only illustrates this pop music phenomenon in its political, social, and cultural-historical contexts, but also reveals the Monks project as the first connection between art and pop music—months before Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground.