The Monks, And A Sampling Of Other One-Album Wonders

by Marc Hirsh

Unless you're a weird-rock aficionado, it's likely that you've only heard of the Monks (if at all) if you shelled out the big bucks for Rhino Records' Nuggets boxed set from 1998. There, in the midst of all manner of garage bands trying their damnedest to ape the Rolling Stones and Yardbirds, was "Complication," a sonically aggressive, sloganeering, borderline fascistic stomp that sounded like nothing else on the collection's four discs.

It'd be hard to find four discs of anything that sounded like what the Monks were throwing down in 1966. The Monks -- five American servicemen stationed in Germany who helped pioneer the concept band by performing in robes and points-for-commitment tonsures -- couldn't pull it off themselves, folding after a single album.

But Black Monk Time (newly reissued) made the most of the Monks' one shot at glory. The beats anticipated the Stooges in their focused primitivism; Gary Burger's raspy tenor would have sounded amiable if he weren't so unsettlingly weird; the songs were built around bitter satire, cross-linguistic puns and, most disturbing of all, sex; and Dave Day's electric banjo was... wait, what?

Anyway, it was brilliant and fleeting. So what better way to toast the Monks' renewed availability than by celebrating the one-album wonder? Below, we honor those performers who were limited to a lone full-length release and took the opportunity to burn brightly before burning out. Or breaking up. Or vanishing. Or dying.

Note 1: This is not about releasing one good album during the course of the band's lifespan. It's about releasing one album, period. Accompanying the rerelease of Black Monk Time is a collection of unreleased Monks demos. Doesn't count. Nor do compilations of singles, B-sides, live performances or what have you. If it was put together after the fact to capitalize on an act's popularity or importance or continuing contractual obligation, it doesn't count. In terms of going into the studio for the purpose of recording and releasing a record, it starts and ends with one.

Note 2: This is not intended to be any kind of definitive list. It suffers from being limited by my own biases and tastes. So there's no claim that these are the best one-album wonders, only that one-album wonders exist, and these are some of them. I invite you to list your own favorites in the comments.

With that said, let's hear some music, after the jump...

Blind Faith, Blind Faith (1969) and Derek And The Dominos, Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs (1970). I could fill out this list with nothing but the discarded bones of failed supergroups without breaking a sweat. Heck, the recent self-titled album by Tinted Windows -- Taylor Hanson, James Iha, Adam Schlesinger, Bun E. Carlos -- is looking like a good prospect for the future, if they'd only fail to record a followup. (Note to Tinted Windows: please, please record a followup.)

These two albums get the nod for both including Eric Clapton, who seems to have a knack for supergroups. (Cream was also one, in its way.) Also, it doesn't hurt that Layla is a stone-cold classic of unrequited, fever-dream passion and Blind Faith includes both the majestic "Presence Of The Lord" and the quietly nerve-wracking gorgeousness of "Can't Find My Way Home."

The Sex Pistols, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols (1977). The Sex Pistols were pretty much designed (and managed) with their ultimate implosion in mind. Honestly, what's most surprising is that they managed to pull out a complete album at all before their expiration date. Original bassist Glen Matlock may have had something to do with that, thanks in part to his being enough of a music nerd to get booted from the band before he made them too good.

Countless repackagings followed, but Never Mind was the only album to come from the Pistols as a working band. If you don't know that it was the equivalent of a massive tectonic shift that reshaped rock and roll (as well as sizable chunks of pop music) from 1977 on, then for Pete's sake, go find a copy and listen to it right away.

The Swingers, Counting The Beat (1982). A veteran of the hyper-visual, prog-rocky, pre-Neil Finn incarnation of Split Enz, Phil Judd took to his newfound freedom with apparent glee, falling in with the New Zealand punk scene and driving entirely in the opposite direction: sharp, hooky, bouncy and tense. Boy howdy, were the Swingers tense. Here's the single version of "One Good Reason." To get a sense of the version on the album, imagine taking a socket wrench to this song and cranking it about eight clicks tighter.

The rest of Counting The Beat follows suit and adds a goofball humor that does nothing to dissipate the band's anxiousness. Even the track that most dates the album -- the Khomeini-targeted "Ayatollah" (whose lyrics, skittish modern Westerners will be relieved to learn, focus exclusively on dictatorship, not religion) -- comes complete with a nervous chug and an indelible, anthemic chorus that makes the most of the vowel-filled title.

The La's, The La's (1990). The first time I heard pop masterpiece "There She Goes," unidentified, on the radio, I immediately knew (having just read an article rhapsodizing over the band) who it had to be. I ran out to buy The La's, put it on and was in love by the second damn note of opening track "Son Of A Gun." In terms of their position on the quality/short-term popularity/long-term popularity axes, the La's were pretty much the Big Star of the 1990s.

That comparison comes complete with a cranky, self-destructive frontman. Lee Mavers famously loathed the record's production (that first article that tipped me off to this band was entitled "An Album Only They Could Hate") and played the misunderstood-genius card convincingly enough to break up the band not long after touring the U.S. and then vanish into rumor-laced seclusion. There have been sporadic shows over the past ten years or show as well as a handful of pre-debut demo collections, but nothing yet to properly follow up their one perfect album.

"Feelin'" (Unfortunately, we can't embed this one.)

Milla, The Divine Comedy (1994). The key to being properly shocked by this record is to know that the singer's last name is Jovovich and that her claims to fame at the time were a modeling career and Return To The Blue Lagoon. Two or three years earlier, she was telling any music magazine that would listen that she had music in her that she just wanted to share with the world. In response, the world rolled its eyes.

Then Jovovich released the folky, Kate Bush-influenced The Divine Comedy and confused everyone who heard it by being "unexpectedly interesting" and "[n]ot just good for an eighteen-year-old model, but good for anyone."

The whole thing came off like a defiant challenge to anybody who refused to take her seriously, and Jovovich, having made her point rather successfully, returned, rejuvenated, to her acting career and sidelined music as little more than a hobby. Despite some copies of 1998's unauthorized The Peopletree Sessions sneaking out into the wild, there's been no official followup, but Jovovich continues to offer scads of free songs on her website.

Propellerheads, Decksanddrumsandrockandroll (1998). Along with the Prodigy's chart-topping 1997 album The Fat Of The Land, Propellerheads were supposed to help signal a shift in popular taste towards electronica. That, I probably needn't mention, didn't happen. The Shirley Basseyfied "History Repeating" tried its darnedest, but it was quickly eclipsed as the techno tune lodged most firmly in the mass consciousness by Fatboy Slim's "The Rockafeller Skank," which... failed to signal a shift in popular taste towards electronica. Seriously, folks, it just wasn't going to happen.

Maybe that was as good a reason as any why Propellerheads just sort of ground to a halt after Decksandrumsandrockandroll. But with pounders like "Bang On!" and "Take California," a propulsive hip-hop cut in "You Want It Back" and a spy fetish that culminated in a foreboding version of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," it was a heck of a party while it lasted.

So, taking into account that anybody whose sole album was released in, say, the last ten years could just be dragging their feet, who'd I miss?