The Monks Coda
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the CODA, to the Monks series. My name is Marcus Parks. Hi, I'm Carolina Hidalgo. And you're listening to No Dogs in Space. So we just finished our two-part series on the Monks. Thank you so much, everybody, for your kind words about it.

We're so excited to bring this band to people who have never heard it before. And we're actually very happy that we met the expectations of the Monk Superfans out there. Absolutely. Thank you for your late night texts, all of you guys. We really appreciate that. Very much so. But what this episode is going to be, and this is something that we hope we can do with a lot of our series, is to have a bit of a CODA episode where we can talk about

the stories that we sort of discovered along the way that didn't really fit into the actual series, stories that we had to cut for time, and of course, what happened after. Yeah, and maybe a little behind the scenes and stuff like that. We really put a lot of work in this. This is not a filler episode. No. I want everyone to know this. We have 10 pages of notes in front of us. So you're going to learn some shit.

I wrote another script. We weren't supposed to, and then I just had to. We were going to just chat. But no, now this is a real episode. So I want everyone to open up their ears, okay, for Viet fucking Nam.

Because that's what we're going to get into. Absolutely. Because that's the thing is that, you know, the monks were a bit of a protest band. Well, not necessarily a protest band, but they wrote protest music, Vietnam protest music. And they wrote it near the beginning of the war, 1965, 1966. You know, that's back when people thought, OK, the war is immoral, but America itself had not been rent asunder.

The monks were also GIs, yes, but they were inactive GIs. And their protest music, you know, like monk time, it's almost happy. It's gleeful. It's quizzical. Whose army? What army? I don't know. I don't know what army.

The band we're going to talk about today, though, the Covered Wagon Musicians, they came in 1972, five years later. This was after shit got really bad. This is after the Tet Offensive, when many Americans realized the war was unwinnable.

This is after the My Lai Massacre, when American soldiers slaughtered hundreds of innocent villagers in a matter of hours for no fucking reason. This is after Kent State, after RFK, after MLK, and all of the other horrible things that happened in both Vietnam and America between 1967 and 1972. And that's when they were like, that's it. That's it. I've done it. We're just going to start a loose collective of musicians. That'll fix things. And it well did it. Kind of. We'll find out.

In other words, these guys, the covered wagon musicians, they were a lot fucking angrier than the monks. And they were filled with much more despair. They were not mock-showing like the monks. No, they were the real deal, right? They were like living it, not just singing it, but living it. They were living it. And it's, you know, it's folk music. It's still a bunch of guys with guitars singing songs about how the war is immoral. But the difference is that these dudes were a part of...

of the GI movement. The covered wagon musicians were active GIs. And we have to also remember they are the first festival people. The boomers brought us festivals. They did. Thank you. Thank you, boomers. Thank you at the very least for festivals. And minivans and the crystal thing that's supposed to be deodorant. Thank you. But the thing is the GI movement, this was the resistance movement against the Vietnam War within the U.S. military that involved active duty soldiers.

And when you hear these guys sing, when you hear the covered wagon musicians sing, you can hear every emotion experienced by a soldier who did not want to die for no reason at all. Well, we marched many miles, a million or more. But we never marched with smiles, never smiled before.

Marching for the Air Force when we marched before. But now we're joining on course to say no to your war.

How incredible is that? That is really cool. It doesn't sound anything like a Gap commercial.

But no, honestly, it's really cool. I like that. It's an army of people singing about this. Well, technically, they're Air Force guys. Okay, that's... Now, the G.I. movement could involve soldiers from the Army or the Marines. It can involve sailors from the Navy or service members from the Air Force. That's right, technically. But at its most violent, the G.I. movement could involve murder.

It could involve active duty soldiers in Vietnam murdering their superior officers rather than going out on another mission to another ville to kill more Vietnam civilians for no fucking reason and in the process probably lose lives and limbs. That's what you were telling me earlier about like this guy, like an NCO would be like, come on guys, we got to go to the bush and kill like 12 kids. And they're like, you know what? Why don't we take a walk? Yeah.

Yeah, these guys know that there's no reason to go out and do this, and they know they're just going to go out and get killed. And in past wars, say like World War II, a soldier might be willing to do that if he believed in the cause, as a lot of World War II soldiers did. There were a lot of soldiers who went on missions in World War II who knew they weren't going to come back from them. But in Vietnam, especially in the late 60s and early 70s, the ground forces were mostly made up of officers

unwilling draftees. Remember, the draft was still very strong at this time. The draft was at its height in the late 60s. And Nixon started bringing it down a little bit when he came into office. But in the late 60s, it was bad. These guys did not want to be there. They did not believe in anything. They didn't even know why they were there half the time. They couldn't explain it to you. The only mission these guys had was getting themselves and their friends back home alive.

Therefore, if you had to throw a hand grenade into a sergeant's tent to do so...

You would do it. That's just how it was. I remember I was talking about the Stooges series and where Iggy Pop had to go and say he was gay like a hundred times to get out of the service. But I do believe he might have also been like, let's all vote who's going to go and kill that sergeant. Iggy. Yes, he would get the shortest straw. Or actually it would be Jim. Let's go. Let's have. Yeah, sure, guys. I'll throw in the fucking grenade. Who gives a shit?

But on the more peaceful side of the GI movement were places called GI coffee houses that existed just outside of military bases on American soil. Here, civilians in the anti-war movement could meet up with active duty soldiers to cooperate in protests or to get those active duty soldiers out of the armed forces by helping them achieve conscientious objector status.

The covered wagon musicians were a part of just such a group born from a GI coffee house located just outside of Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. That's good, a safe haven. Absolutely. These were absolutely safe havens for these people. Mountain Home itself was an obscure desert town with a population under 7,000. And without the nearby Air Force Base located 10 miles away, Mountain Home would have next to nothing economically. They depended on the base completely.

Therefore, Mountain Home, the town, was quite protective of Mountain Home, the Air Force base. So much so that in November of 1971, a bunch of dudes who drank at the nearby bar burned down the covered wagon GI coffee house that was the base of the local GI resistance. Okay, isn't that still messing up their town? Oh wait, we forgot about that.

part, right? Yeah, we forgot about that. We're going to shit on our own coffee house in our own town. Yeah, shit on our own doorstep. Yeah, they would hang out at the bar down the street and it was assumed or at least suspected that the owner of the bar formed the mob that went and

set fire to the coffee house and none of the people were arrested. The cops were like, yeah, what are you going to do? Now, the Covered Wagon Coffee House had been built in an old theater. They even had this beautiful mural of Guernica painted on the walls. Oh, yes. Oh, you're right. That's when they, that's Picasso, right? Picasso, yeah. And they had been named after an Air Force security code that was used when a member came upon suspected sabotage. You'd say, Covered Wagon, Covered Wagon.

And that was the signal for others to come help. It was very symbolic. The liner notes to the Covered Wagon Musicians LP put out in 1972 by Folkways Recordings, they were admittedly biased. You read those liner notes. I did. I'm sorry, I'm a capitalist pig because I wasn't part of it. No, they actually call you pigs. So it's a

A little alienating, which is not the right thing to do, but hey, you know what? They're angry. They're very, very angry. And here's why. Because allegedly the local newspapers would publish letters encouraging violence against the covered wagon. The doors and windows to the coffeehouse prior to its burning down were smashed in on 20 different occasions.

There's even suchastic terrorism going on within the community. A local minister prayed during the Sunday service for God to destroy the covered wagon coffee house. A member of the city council approved the attacks. He said the attackers were just, quote unquote, doing their thing. It's incredible.

But it's important to know that these GIs that were a part of the covered wagon coffee house and their anti-war civilian supporters, these were not good time hippies just looking to get laid and get high. These were serious people, almost overly so. On one New Year's Eve, they huddled in front of the

post office around a small charcoal fire, purposefully making themselves miserable to remind themselves that people were still dying in Southeast Asia while everyone else in America were still having a good time. Hey, that was part of the thing. That was the whole setting yourself on fire. People were...

so angry that they were willing to do this. Yeah. They were willing to do this for a point, for us to talk about it like 50 years later. I mean, in other words, these guys were the real deal. But consequently, these serious people created serious music.

And in 1972, the dudes in the covered wagon who could play and sing recorded and released We Say No to Your War, which was the first LP comprised of songs written and performed by active duty men and women, songs that were based on their actual experiences. And this is at the point when there were a lot of

of bad experiences in Vietnam. But when it came to songs about the protest movement itself, a song was written about nine covered wagon members who were arrested for disturbing the peace. They were protesting a speech given at the Boise Chamber of Commerce by General William Westmoreland, who was then former commander of the entire Vietnam War.

Westmoreland was one of the villains of the Vietnam War. This is like Sauron walking into your backyard. And even though he was taken off the job of commanding the so-called police action in the late 60s, it was under his command that atrocities such as the My Lai Massacre took place. As they say...

As above, so below, as they say. I've heard that so many times in those documentaries that you make us watch before we go to bed. The I thought my boys were going to come home documentary with the old lady. Well, those are World War II documentaries. I thought my boys were going to come home for supper. We didn't know when our boys was going to come home. That's seriously the tagline to every documentary.

That poor lady is so busy. But in honor of these nine protesters who were arrested, the covered wagon musicians wrote this song called The Roadway Nine. They were real big on numbers back in the Vietnam War. What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now! Peace! Peace! Now! What do we want? Peace, not sorrow. When do we want?

Now, not tomorrow. What do we want? Peace, not sorrow. When do we want a tomorrow? This is biggest, voice is best. The place to die, the place to rest. 300 million.

A banquet hall, convention center, but not for all. So what do we want? Peace, not sorrow. When do we want it? Now, not tomorrow. What do we want? Peace, not sorrow. When do we want it?

But when it comes to songwriting credits, the two songs that we've played have a surprising author when it comes to the lyrics. And we'll get to that guy just in a second. But first, let's talk about the guy who orchestrated those songs, the guy who composed them. The music itself was mostly composed and played by an active duty airman first class named Jimmy Schaefer, who had attended his first covered wagon meeting while tripping on acid. Yes.

We were just talking about last night. We've got to do that again sometime. I mean, we've just been doing mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms since moving to California, but now it's time to step. Let's kick it up a notch. Do you want to start a covered wagon revival?

But the thing is about Jimmy Schaefer is that he actually soon became the biggest advocates for sobriety in the covered wagon. He said that if they wanted to get anything done, they had to be fucking sober. Does that? Oh, wait. I'm sorry. Yeah, you in the back. Does that mean acid? That means especially acid. Damn it. They'd learned the lessons. This is 1972. They'd already, the summer of love had come and gone and ain't shit been done.

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Auto Trainer. Now, soon after joining Covered Wagon, Schaefer applied for conscientious objector status while still an active officer, and he got approved. It was very rare at this time for this to happen. He received an honorable discharge and moved to the town of Mountain Home, where he further counseled other active duty servicemen on how they could leave what they felt was an unjust war just the same way that Schaefer did. Eventually, Covered Wagon obtained conscientious objector status for 30

300 men. What? That's incredible. Wow.

But when it came to who organized the covered wagon in the first place and the man who actually wrote the lyrics to We Say No to Your War and The Roadway Nine, we've got a highly controversial and extraordinarily surprising figure who's actually come up on Last Podcast on the Left quite a bit. Oh, you don't say. I'm very excited for this. His name was Mark Lane. And I'll bet anyone who studied either the assassination of JFK or the tragedy at Jonestown knows

Your ears just perked up just a little bit. I think I read one of his books once. You did. And it's crazy. Remember? I went crazy. I had to lay down and I couldn't help you with the JFK series afterwards. That's when I quit helping you on the last podcast. Mark Lane ruined it for me. I remember. Mark Lane briefly represented Lee Harvey Oswald's mother during the Warren Commission. And he thereafter wrote Rush to Judgment.

This was the book that kicked off the Kennedy conspiracy cottage industry. Arguably, it's the book that kicked off and created modern conspiracy culture.

But after spending a few years ensconced in JFK hubbub, Lane moved on to the anti-war movement. And after giving a speech in Boise, Idaho, active armed forces members from Mountain Home Air Force Base came to watch. And according to Lane's biography, they approached him afterward and asked him to help set up one of those GI coffee shops in the town outside their base. Put simply, Mark Lane.

author of Rush to Judgment, was the person who brought the GI resistance to Mountain Home, Idaho. Boomers. Man. Boomers. As such, as the movement in Mountain Home gained steam, they started attracting other anti-war figures, including musicians and actors. At one point, Donald Sutherland showed up.

He was a big anti-war guy. The voice of the orange juice commercial. Wow. I prefer to think of him as Herbert Hurlbutt. Dirty Dozen? No, the man who ran the Springfield Historical Society and the Jebediah Springfield. The Simpsons. Got it. You had arthritis? No.

At one point, like Lane said that he drove to the local swimming hole because he heard a bunch of GIs were hanging out there. And he found Donald Sutherland in a bathing suit standing on a raft reciting Shakespeare to the GIs. But as far as musicians... Thank you for your service. Anyway.

But as far as musicians went, Mountain Home also attracted the man who wrote perhaps the most famous anti-war song of the late 60s, certainly one of the best. That man was Country Joe McDonald. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I love this. I'm sorry. Keep going. He wrote the I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die rag, and his band, Country Joe and the Fish, famously performed it at Woodstock. Woo!

Well, come on, all of you big strong men. Uncle Sam, did you help again? Got himself in a terrible jam way down yonder in Vietnam. Put down your books and pick up a gun. And it's one, two, three. What are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn. The next stop is Vietnam. And it's five, six, seven. Open up the pearly gates. Well, I wonder why we're all going down.

Now come on, Wall Street, don't be stupid. Oh, that song gives me chills. It's so good. That was the song that makes the protest movement cool. Yeah. You know, a little edgy. But back to Mark Lane. He was... The farthest thing from cool and edgy. I don't know. I'd say Mark Lane is kind of the definition of edgy. He was heavily involved in the Jonestown Massacre. Oh, right. That little...

thing that happened over the weekend right next to the Star Wars holiday special. Two American disasters. What a tragedy. I mean, it's arguable that without Mark Lane, the Jonestown Massacre wouldn't have happened.

You know what I mean when it's like when you're put on this earth to make the world a better place and then you end up being Mark Lane. Yeah. And for that full story, go over and listen to the Jonestown series we did on last podcast on the left. It's fantastic. Well, that's the thing. You also helped an incredible amount. Like that was like Carolina's like that was one of your greatest research achievements was helping us out on that. Oh, thank you. But yeah, go listen to that series. It's one of the things I'm most proud of that I've ever done in my entire fucking life. But.

It's a crazy boomer microcosm that while Mark Lane was partly responsible for the murder of nearly a thousand people due to his own greed and bankrupt morals. Details. He also wrote those beautiful, touching songs that you heard earlier. But when it comes to the songs Mark Lane didn't write.

Perhaps the covered wagon musician's most disturbing song was a sort of poem written by combat veterans who took turns writing stanzas about the most fucked up shit they saw in Vietnam. Napalm sticks to kids. Yes. Remains one of the most harrowing tunes to come out of the Vietnam War. A tune is it's not a tune. It's a dirge. It's important.

We shoot the sick, the young, the lame. We do our best to kill and maim. Because the kills all count the same. Napalm sticks to kids. Flying low across the trees, pilots doing what they please. Dropping frags on refugees. Napalm sticks to kids.

Flying low and looking mean, see that family by the stream. Drop some nape and hear them scream. Napalm sticks to kids. Sounds very Lou Reed. Very myself. Very platinum blonde Lou Reed. Yeah, I mean, the reason why is because, you know, Lou Reed, of course, wrote a lot of his stuff from the perspective of an English major, from the perspective of a writer, and that was the best they could do

to go along with that poem because that's what it was. It was a round-robin poem and every single one of those things that you heard was something that one of the writers saw in Vietnam. It's something that actually happened. So if you go through, like, you can read it. I've seen it on Wikipedia. It is horrifying, but it's important. And if you want to know an even more horrifying little detail to that, that became, that song, that poem became eventually an I don't know what I've been told cadence at

Air Force training facilities. Like, I don't know what I've been told. You know those ones that I'm talking about. What makes the grass grow? Blood, blood. I've seen hot shots. Yes. Yeah, it became one of those and eventually the Air Force stepped in and had to say, like, you guys can't do that anymore.

Now, that song was written in 1972, but the war dragged on until 1975. Jesus! Yes. And the war's legacy remains nothing more than the folly and horror that was so poignantly put on display by the covered wagon musicians. Thank you. Thank you. Go buy that. A little judgy, a little alienating, but thank you.

The liner notes were. Just don't read the liner notes. The songs themselves are incredible. Like, you know, there's one song about being a helicopter pilot. It just goes on and on. And it's worth listening to. It's all on YouTube. It's very, besides Napalm Sticks to Kids, this is one of those under-the-radar albums. And I'd recommend listening to it beginning to end. There's really only a couple of cringy moments.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's it. That's the Covered Wagon Musicians. I hope you enjoyed them. Fantastic. Well, now do you want to know what happened to the monks? Yeah, of course I want to know what happened to the monks. Okay, so this- Well, I know what happened to the monks, but I know the audience wants to know what happened to the monks. Absolutely. And I think maybe there's a detail or two, at least I left out, because that's another thing, audience members, so you guys know. I don't know what you call them, listeners? Listeners. Yes, listeners. How have you been in podcasting this long? You don't know what that's-

I don't know, actually. I don't know. What are you called? What do you prefer to be called? So a lot of times we don't know what the other, we know each other's segments, but we don't know what the other person's going to say. And you particularly never know what I'm going to say. I don't. Which is a fun part. Okay. So my part, this is Carolina's segment, which is where did the monks leave off from 1967 to present day? Yeah. So buckle up.

Are you ready? Okay, so remember, from last week, the monks ended in 1967 when Roger left Germany for Texas and sent Gary a postcard saying, wish you were her. No, actually, he said, I'm gone. I'm out. I'm sorry. Get someone else to replace me. You said, wish you were her. Yes. That's a Simpsons reference. Oh, okay.

Gotcha. Okay, okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, listeners. If you're millennials, then you got that reference.

Marge got, she got a postcard from Homer and it's a really pretty sexy bikini girl and it says, wish you were her. I got these pretzels, you gotta bother, just won't quit. Five dollars, get out of here. So the monks, right? They ended in 1967. Roger, yes, he did leave Germany and he did send a postcard saying like,

I'm done. I'm sorry. Out of here. But the thing is, there was no time to get a replacement. So Eddie, Gary, Dave, and Larry, they all got the news the day before they were to meet at the airport to go to Asia. Remember, they were going to go on an Asian tour. They were going to hit Hong Kong, maybe Singapore, Saigon, which is the hard part. Vietnam, in the middle

Right before the Tet Offensive, remember? Five months before the Tet Offensive. I mean, at this point, people did not yet know how bad Vietnam really was and how bad it was about to get. That's why the monks, they got their work permits, their flights, their itinerary all set up. Everything was taken care of. But when Roger bowed out, getting a replacement last minute just wasn't going to work.

So all five monks knew it was over, right? And some of them, maybe all of them, were kind of relieved. They were. Yes, and their wives as well. And I also have a bit of a theory about that because like Roger Johnston, as much as I love his drumming, as much as central as it is to the monk sound, it ain't hard.

I mean, it's... I could learn an entire Monks album in an afternoon. How dare you? But they had the work permits. They couldn't switch someone. The work permits. They can't switch someone last minute. Now I get what you mean. And also, they were going to get protection from the U.S. Army. They were just going to go and perform.

Just some guys in Saigon. Exactly. So the Monk's bassist, Eddie Shaw, he stayed in Germany and lived in Frankfurt with his wife where he worked at a wine bar. That was his life. He's like, I'm just going to be an old German man. I'm going to collect stamps and I'm going to take a swig out of every fancy bottle of wine every time someone orders it. That is a true story. Hey, not a bad life. But six months later, Eddie's mother-in-law was like,

why don't you just go back to America, you know, where you came from? Why don't you take my daughter and just go? Because maybe things will be better for you there. So she lent him the money to buy tickets to get on a steamer to New Orleans, to America. And they actually brought Larry with them because he was like, yes, let's all go back home to America. So they all went on their journey. They landed in New Orleans and there Eddie and his wife bid Larry a good farewell bon voyage because they went to Carson City where Eddie grew up.

Larry went back home to Chicago to live with his parents. He got a computer programming job and completely walked away from music for a very long time. Yeah.

So other than seeing Eddie once in the 70s, Larry kind of disappeared until Gary found him in like 1997, 1998, which is important. And I'll tell you why in a little bit. Okay. But Gary Berger, remember, he was the monk's front man from episode two. Remember that guy? He was a cute monk, as you said. Yes. I call him the cute monk. He was also the activist monk. He was the most...

protesty of all the monks. He was in Sweden when he got the postcard from Roger, so he stayed there an extra four months with his Swedish wife, because why not? It made sense. But eventually they both moved to America and settled in Minnesota by the next year.

They all go back to these small to mid-sized towns. But that's where Gary is from, right? Remember? So the next year, 1969, that was when Gary called up Eddie and said, hey, why don't you move here to Minnesota and go to school here? We can all get a college degree because we have the GI Bill, which means they will pay their college. That's one great thing about being in the Army, right? Yeah.

So Eddie Shaw and his wife, remember Angelica from the book? She came from, she escaped East Germany, went to West Germany, got married to Eddie Shaw, and now is suddenly moving upstairs in a rented apartment above Gary and his wife in Minnesota. And she's fucking mad.

They didn't like it. She was miserable before they even got off of the steamer ship. Okay. No one was happy. She's complaining about what the money looks like. She's like, in God we trust. Why are you having God we trust on the fucking coins? Cut this out, Ryan.

You don't know what she's been through. But you have a point. Anyway, so Eddie and Gary, they went to college for broadcasting, which makes perfect sense. Now, going back to the drummer, Roger, that we were talking about. Remember, he was already in America. He sent a postcard and everything. So he was in America in 1967 in Texas with his German wife, Etta. And that didn't work out either because she did not like...

Okay, she strongly disliked living in rural Texas. Did he go back to Weatherford, like where he was from? I imagine so. Yeah. Weatherford's a larger town now because the Dallas Metroplex is encroached on it. But back then, I couldn't imagine. I mean, growing up, basically the kind of town I grew up in. She ain't going to like it.

This is what happens when you mention anything about Texas to a Texan. It's like, what town? What exit? It's like, God damn it. Let me get through the story. One of the favorite. I mean, yeah, we're all fucking descended from British people. You talk to a British person, they're going to jaw your awe about fucking geography all day long. British geography, they love it. Texans love geography. So, Roger. Yeah.

And since they didn't have a good run in Texas, they moved to San Francisco where Roger had some family there. I think he had a brother. But it didn't get much better. So Roger and his wife broke up. I think he left her in San Francisco. She must be there now. Who knows? Or dead. Okay. So Roger, he moved up north to Minnesota to get closer to Gary and Eddie, actually. Roger even said, you're the only family I've ever really had. Yeah. To which Gary and Eddie is like, that is crazy.

Quite a burden. We're going to hold on to that because you are our brother. You are a monk, right? And for a while, the three of them, Gary, Eddie, and Roger, would play together on the weekends in a small bar in Loretto outside of Minneapolis. Their biggest followers? The local bikers. That's incredible. Isn't that great?

Well, I mean, that's the thing that we not necessarily glossed over, but didn't get into a whole lot in the series. Like when you read Eddie Shaw's book, he really talks about like the brotherhood of being a monk. Like he talks about being a monk is almost like a sacred thing. And these guys really did. Look, they really did like each other. They really did. They formed an incredible connection. All right.

I think it was, yeah, it's kind of like the whole thing. You don't have to be friends, but you have to be brothers. Yeah. I think they had that a lot. Yeah. They had a lot of respect for each other. And Roger's history, it's very, okay, it's very on brand with Roger, right? We talked about in episode one, he's a drifter.

He's kind of a swarthy. He was a good looking one. He would always pull the most girls, but he's a drifter guy. And he never stopped being a drifter. Once a drifter, always a drifter. And while living in Minneapolis, Roger was working as a janitor in a church. And then I think he moved to a synagogue, which he said he liked better. But then one day, Roger disappeared for a few weeks and then just came back saying he was arrested by the DEA on a trumped up drug charge. So since he was former military, they made him do some undercover surveillance in order to avoid jail in some synopsis.

Suicide Squad thing. They gave him a canoe, a sleeping bag, binoculars, and a tent. I swear to God, this is like one of those hour-long shows that they put on MeTV. He's like, I ended up in the Boundary Waters area near the Canadian border for about three weeks, and I'm back now. Can we play? And Gary and Larry are just sitting there going, huh. Wow.

Weird. Weird story. And then Roger's tooth fell out on the dining room table. I swear to God, this is all true. And then he just kind of got up and left the tooth there. And Eddie was like, that was too much even for my son. Yeah.

Roger eventually moved back to Texas and wasn't seen for years until 1997, which is important, which we'll get to in a little bit. So in the meantime, when we're talking about mid-1970s, Eddie was the leader of a seven-piece jazz rock group called Copperhead. And they even recorded stuff for Capitol Records who named them Minnesota Rockers.

Just Minnesota? Yeah, instead of the T, like Soda. S-O-D-A. Oh, Minnesota. Capitol Records thought that was a good idea. That's fucking stupid. I like Copperhead better, yes. Apparently it went okay, but just like the monks, it just didn't go anywhere. Yep.

And I think this might have been around the time that Gary Berger, he moved from Minneapolis to further up north to his hometown of Bemidji, Minnesota. Bemidji. I thought I practiced it. I even looked it up and everything. It's part of the Algonquin language family. It means a lake with crossing waters. I'm trying my best. Okay. It's from the Ojibwe language. Okay.

I understand. Your brain works in romance languages, so you see an eye as Bemidji. Bemidji. Did I do it? No. Bemidji. I'm trying to make up for reading a Wikipedia article by not really completely pronouncing the name right. Anyway, so... I'm sure the people of Bemidji appreciate it. And then Gary Berger later became the mayor of Turtle River. Oh, that's great. Which is up north from that town that we talked about in Minnesota. Small town politics. Yes.

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And now for Dave Day's story. This is a hell of a tale. Dave, the Monk's banjo player. So after the band broke up in 1967, Dave stayed in Germany for another eight years. He married his girlfriend Dora and together they ran a GI bar in Schweinfurt, a small town, a German town around, it was about 100 miles from Frankfurt, 160 kilometers. Schweinfurt, I think that means pig sausage. Yeah.

Well, that's where he had his GI bar. And you know what? Dave ran a tight ship at that bar. He did great. That is until his wife, Dora, and her mother kicked Dave out of their home. He was left with nothing, his passport, money, anything. That was all with Dora. And for some reason, this is very unclear, Dave could not get anything back. He said he waited outside their home for days until giving up.

so Dave would sleep in the park or the train station. Finally, some GIs who took pity on him gave him a tent. He was able to use that to live in the woods outside of Schweinfurt.

Dave would usually take his guitar and busk for change, or sometimes he would just ask for beer or bread or just anything. He'd go days without eating sometimes. And he was always getting robbed, picked on by others, of course. He soon learned that he was the subject of a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when an American GI stays in Germany. That's pretty sad. And that is until Dave's brother eventually got in touch with him and sent him money to buy a plane ticket home to rent in Washington, where Dave is from.

Dave, who only spoke German at that time, he forgot English. He forgot English completely. He had to relearn English when he got back. Actually, when he got back to the airport where his brother was receiving him, Dave cried and kissed his brother's feet when he landed. And then eventually he took a job at a car rental company and spent the next few years just surviving and just getting back on his feet.

Which he did. He wrote new original songs and as soon as he made enough money, he paid a studio to record a few songs and release an EP. And then also later in the 90s, he also released an EP with Gary Berger and Eddie helping him out. Doing some background vocals and stuff. And of course he did an Elvis cover, G.I. Blues, always the Elvis fan. Always wanting to entertain. Always wanting to make people happy.

Yeah. And Dave Day, look, he is, I mean, that is a, it's a harrowing story. There are parts of his life that he refuses to talk about. He'll just say, it was bad. Yeah.

And that's all you need to know. I mean, at one point he was using the old, this is like one of those crazy, like you can't write this shit moments where he actually used the old banner that- From the Torquays. From the Torquays, the old banner that they use from the Torquays as a shelter. You know, you put that in a movie, you'd say it's a bit on the nose. But it happened. But it fucking happened. It happened.

But the thing is about Dave Day is that he's always, like I said, the movie Transatlantic Feedback, the documentary about the monks, they frame it to make Dave out to be a very sad person, a very sad man. But I think that's very reductive. Yes, I agree. It does not show the full character of Dave Day, who was a very kind man.

Absolutely. From what it seems like. And he liked his Jack and Coke. And, you know, with his wife Irene just sitting there, he just wanted to make people happy. He was the kind of monk who would go dressed as a monk to the record shop and wait for someone to see his record and be like, and he'd just appear out of nowhere. Hey, that's me. That's a little weird. That's a bit much. But he, but

let him. Let him. He wants to make people happy. I totally relate to this so badly. He's my favorite monk. Yeah, he's great. I'm a Larry Clark guy. You're a Dave Day gal. So the guys, the monks, they moved on in the best way they could. At first, they would talk about the monks and how they were a popular band at one time in Germany, but a lot of their family and friends just weren't into it. Like, it was either, oh,

That's nice, honey. Or this is sick and weird. Or yeah, just turn that crap off. Never play that again. They all said that, especially Eddie and Gary. They said they had a really hard time fitting in with their old friends from the neighborhood because everybody had changed. Everything had changed. America was very different from when they left in 1961. They're like, now there's girls smoking. You know, like, what is this? This is crazy. They had a real life culture shock, like coming back to America.

So many of the monks spent years not bothering to tell anyone about their whole past. Some people like decades later were like, what? You were in a band? Yeah. It's crazy, which is why I think it was a bit of a surprise to even the monks themselves when they heard that people were starting to talk about them or maybe they never stopped.

It first started with obscure album collectors kind of being like, what is this? And then a girl band, Das Furlines, told that story in People magazine that you talked about in an intro in episode one. Yeah, Das Furlines are incredible. It was headed by a woman. Her name was Wendy. I can't remember her last name, but she was also in a band called Pulsalama that sang the song The Devil Lives in My Husband's

We have the tape.

and then unfortunately died from breast cancer in 1997. It's just this incredible chronicle of a place in time in New York City. But yeah, Das Verleins, they did. That was actually, I heard that before I heard The Monks. I heard their cover of We Do, We Do. Oh man, we should play it. We Do, We Do.

That was kick-ass. Wow. Wow. Holy shit. Wow. Yeah, and I'm sorry to say, like, this episode, this show, that's the only place you're going to hear that fucking song because that shit is impossible to find. Did we play it? We should have played it in its entirety then. Well, we cut it off 10 seconds before it ended. Okay, that's good enough.

But really, I found it on an obscure music blog many, many years, like in 2010 or something like that. Maybe even earlier than that. It's an incredible, incredible version. And the Dosphor Alliance had four albums. Impossible. No, they're not on Discogs. They're not on YouTube. They're nowhere. There was a re-release done of The Devil Lives in My Husband's Body, like,

a year or two ago, maybe two years ago. But if anybody, if anybody has access to this Das Furlein stuff, email us at nodogsinspace at gmail.com because the only two songs I've ever heard is their cover of We Do, We Do and a song called Honk and Holler that's also fucking incredible. All right. Onward with the monks. Onward with the monks. Right. So remember, the monks didn't even bother to tell anybody about the thing that they did for a few years in Germany, which sounds very...

suspect, but it's actually good, okay? It's good. And so people started talking, and eventually, these two music journalists slash musicians, Keith Patterson and Mike Statz from the wonderful music fanzine called Ugly Things, they knocked on Eddie and Gary's door and asked for in-depth interviews, which they got, actually. And it's a great interview piece. You can find it online. That was in 1992. So just Google Ugly Things, the

The Monks. You'll find it. It's an incredible interview. Yes, absolutely. And then in 1994, Eddie's book, Black Monk Time, was published. And movie producers were really, actually, really interested in the story, which is part of the reason why he published that book. A pair of documentary filmmakers started following him around and filming them. Like, so many things were happening to them. Yeah. And then, then, thanks to Rick Rubin and Henry Rollins, finally.

Finally, 1997, Infinite Zero Records released Black Monk Time for the first time in America. God damn. They finally made it in America. God, yes! 20 years later, it finally gets released in America. And then, 30 years later, actually. Yeah! No, yeah!

I'm not good at math. So yeah, yeah, 30. And then the offers really started pouring in. They got offers for gigs all over the world. First starting in upstate New York at Cave Stop, a weekend festival of music groups and artists from back in the day. It is a big get.

All five monks killed it that night. They also actually, they got a new monk, Mike Fornatale, who stepped in to sing for Gary when he blew his voice in rehearsals. He stepped in for most or maybe all the reunion shows since then, because remember, they're much older. This is 30 years later. Yeah, and Gary Berger, his voice, he already blew it out back in 1967.

Yes. It's a tough thing to do when you're like 30 years older, but they killed it. They did great. The New York Times gave them a great review. Yeah. Right? Even Roger. Roger. You know, Roger from Texas, the one who says like, of course Texas had to kill Kennedy. The most cynic of them all. Who stole my cuckoo? I want to know who, who. He said like,

I didn't think that the monks music was of tomorrow until now. And now they proved me wrong. 30 years was an awful long time to wait though, but I think it was worth it. Hell, I know it was worth it. Yeah. That's Roger Johnson, man. Then the monks

continued to play live reunion gigs all over Vegas, London, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Spain. Actually, it was in Spain where their lineup changed. They couldn't play with one of the monks because unfortunately and sadly, in November of 2004, Roger Johnston, the drummer, died of lung cancer. Yeah. He had been a lifelong smoker. It's pretty predictable that the drifter dies first. They...

This is sad. They did dedicate their show. Yes, you're right, though. His teeth were falling out of his head of their own accord. He did have a castle made out of his cigarette cartons. Like, that's a real thing. Please read. I'll tell you at the end. But the books are fantastic. So the monks, they dedicated their show to him that night. Spain was also the last night that Larry Clark, the organist, would play with the monks as well because Larry claimed that Gary called him an asshole. Yeah.

in an email. And Gary said, no, this is all in the same email thread. He said, no, I called you an anal retentive asshole. That's very different. I don't know if it's, you know, why really Larry wanted to quit. Maybe he was just tired, but he never played with the monks again. Yeah, I mean, he's the one in the documentary. He is the one who speaks the least.

His interviews are the shortest and he elaborates the least out of everyone. So I got a feeling that The Monks was something that Larry Clark kind of wanted to put behind him.

Yeah, you actually probably are right. So he stayed in Chicago, and actually he got married recently for the first time. Congratulations, Larry. Congratulations, Larry Clark. In 2006, the Monks played in Zurich, Switzerland with Mark E. Smith from The Fall, and also with The Raincoats were on the bill, which is awesome. I love The Raincoats. Incredible bill.

And what I heard, it was an all right show. Most of what I read was that Mark E. Smith could drink enough to kill a small horse. I've heard that about Mark E. Smith. Well, it happened again. Also dead. Rest in peace. After years of reunion shows, the monks, they played their last one in Frankfurt, Germany, which is kind of fitting, in 2007. And then the following year, January 10th,

2008, Dave Day died from a heart attack. Rest in peace, Dave. Yes, he left behind a wife and a son. Dave was memorialized in that year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing that they do in the memoriam, which I think was a very sweet gesture. I didn't know that. That's very nice of them. Absolutely. And unfortunately, another monk passed away. Gary Berger died on March 14, 2014, in his town of Bemidji, Minnesota. You did it! Rest in peace.

Gary had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, but he just never told the monks he was sick. It came as a surprise to many people.

And I didn't want to end it this way, so I decided to also include some nice things that artists have said about the monks that I found in the liner notes in the Light in the Attic vinyl release. And I can also end it with something nice, too. Absolutely. So Chris Novoselic, of course, famously from Nirvana, he called the monks monastic madness. Yeah. The monks can offer serious opinions, but there's really a lot more fun and romance. Right.

Which is absolutely correct. There is. And Marky Smith from the fall, of course, he said, Wow. That is high praise. Huge company. And of course, one of our favorites from Colorado, Jello Biafra. Vote for me. Vote for Jello. He said,

He said, upon listening to the monks, he said, my jaw dropped. I took notes. The electric banjo is such a powerful sonic meat cleaver. Why haven't more bands tried this? I like the monks more than I ever had. Eddie's book should be made into a movie. That's what Jell-O said. And it should be. Yes. It'd be an incredible movie. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And I love this story. I'm really glad we got to do The Monks. It was originally going to be an extra play just to like kind of just be a little fun thing to do. And then when we read the book Black Monk Time by Eddie Shaw, and then it's like, OK, we got to do a whole three part series. So definitely check out Black Monk Time and Black Monk Time 2, which is the sequel, which is basically their reunion shows. You can check that out or you could just.

Check out also, if you don't want to get into the books so much, you can also check out their Monks website, their official website. Just Google that. They have so much history there and so many photos. It's really, really fun to check out. History's real loose on that one, though. Yeah, it can be. It can be. Absolutely. But if you do order the books...

Eddie Shaw will autograph it for you. And that is the nice thing to end on, is that Eddie Shaw's still selling books, and if you order a book from him, he will actually draw... He'll email you and be like, who am I going to make it to? Yeah, he draws a little doodle. So please go buy Black Monk Time. It's such a fucking... It's an underrated classic.

and the music autobiography genre. Go fucking buy it. Please go support Eddie Shaw. And you can get, because we had to leave out so much cool shit when it comes to our series. But you can find it all there. And as far as people using banjos in a strange way, the band Lightning Bolt, who's one of my favorite noise rock groups ever, they're...

actually uses banjo strings on his guitar. That's cool. I love that. I think it's two banjo strings and two bass strings, and then that's how he goes... And so on and so forth. Sounds very Yahoo serious. I love it. I love it. Actually, it is.

I want to give an extra thank you to Patrick Fisher. Thank you so much, Research Assistant Patrick Fisher. And thank God he was German. Yes. Because he did translate a lot of articles for me. I want to thank Rob Oakey for editing a fantastic job, part one. Kelsey Netzer for helping us out. And Ryan Connor for recording us. Yes.

Thank you so much for editing the show. Yeah, and for editing part two and three. Absolutely. And I want to thank you, too. Oh, and I want to thank you, Carolina. Shut up. Shut up. Thanks so much for listening, y'all. We'll be back here as soon as we can be with our next series. Do we want to tell them what it's going to be? Absolutely. What is it again? It's going to be Gemotsus...

Right. German experimental music of the 60s and 70s, a.k.a. We don't say the K word. We do. Krautrock. I'm just going to say Krautrock. It's going to be Krautrock. We're going to be covering a whole bevy of Krautrock bands. We're going to be covering about six, right? We're going to do that, but we're going to...

Put them in smaller episodes so that way it'll be easier to digest. And then we're going to end beautifully with Brian Eno, David Bowie, and we'll sprinkle some Iggy Pop in there, of course. We're ending with the Berlin period and we're starting with Eamon Dool 2. If you want to have a little bit of preview, go out, get real fucking baked and listen to Eamon Dool 2's album,

Phallus Day. Or Yeti. Or Yeti. I know Yeti is the classic. Yeti is the one everyone always says to listen to. But here in the Parks Hidalgo household, we're Phallus Day people. We love God's penis. That's how we should end it. We should end it on that. We will. Thanks for listening, y'all. See you soon. Goodbye.

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