Shattered
If Your Kid's On Drugs
Great White Death
Many Deadly Predators Inhabit The Sea. Only One Hunts Man.
Dave Day in Memoriam
The Monks, Black Monk Time
The winds came first … the neighbors tree falling came next, and when the haunted harmonica sounds of the wind blowing through my office door, (sounding like a Ennio Morricone soundtrack), started imitating an Armenian duduk, (the most beautiful sounding instrument on the face of the Earth), I knew I was going to find something sadder than usual in my morning New York Times.
Dave Havlicek, aka Dave Day, guitarist and banjo player for one of the most original, legendary and enigmatic bands ever to grace a stage, The Monks, died last Thursday, January 10th. Day, who was born and lived in Renton just outside Seattle, Washington, suffered a stroke or a heart attack on the previous Sunday morning which left him on life support for a short time before he passed.
Many years ago, way too many to actually acknowledge, I used to work at the original Onyx Café when it was next door to the Vista Theater in East Hollywood. One evening a customer gave me a home made cassette tape of a band I had only vaguely ever heard of named The Monks, the record Black Monk Time.
I put on the tape. What I remember most are two distinctive reactions: mine of total amazement and awe, how the hell did I miss this band (I’m a record geek for chrissakes!), and 
the reaction of another customer saying almost the same thing. But his “what the hell is this?” was followed by something like “do you have to play this crap now!”
The Monks were five American GIs stationed in Germany who billed themselves as the “Anti-Beatles”. They played it heavy, weren’t afraid of feedback or dissonance and Dave Day added to the mayhem and the whole crunching rhythmic sound by playing the hell out of the electric banjo. They shaved their heads into monks' tonsures, dressed in black monasterial robes, sometimes wearing nooses as neckties, mocked and rocked harder than any of their sixties counterparts while basically inventing what would become kraut rock, industrial, and punk music. Am I overstating their importance in rock music history? No! Their nihilistic deconstruction of Rock and Roll, owing in part to the Dada Movement of the ‘20s, predated Punk’s similar efforts by a good ten years or more. The Monks were easily 30 years ahead of mainstream rock’s time.
Cinéma Direct vs. Cinéma Vérité
The Quest for Cinematic Truth
Today marks the one billionth time the term "cinéma vérité" was applied incorrectly. This time it was in reference to a commercial for blue jeans or cell phones or something. I know what you're saying: "They're just words, man" or "why do we have to categorize anything?"
Jay Ward's "Cap'n Crunch and Friends" $13.98 at Amoeba
Yeah, I see your point, Mr. Manson. Why don't I prepare for you a fro-yo topped with Cap'n Crunch which is my term for rat poison? They're just words, after all. Oh, and the yogurt isn't really yogurt.
My point is, what is most often referred to as cinéma vérité is not only philosophically diametrically opposed to actual cinéma vérité but (more damningly) it conflates irreconcilable understandings of the nature of reality, God, the universe and everything else!
Cinéma Direct -or- what pretty much everyone erroneously refers to as Cinéma Vérité
Cinéma Direct is documentary genre that began in Québec in 1958. The Quiet Revolution, a cultural assertion of the French-speaking majority under the rule of the Anglo-minority encouraged the development of a distinct Québécois identity.
The most unfortunate by-product of la Revolution Tranquille
As part of this cultural expression, filmmakers sought to re-instill truthfulness in the documentary genre, which, by the 1950s was usually studio-based propaganda rife with dramatizations and mickey mousing. In 1922's "Nanook of the North" for example, Nanook (actually an Inuit named Allakariallak living in Inukjuak, Quebec) was built an oversized igloo to share with his wife (who wasn't really his wife) to allow a camera crew and sufficient lighting inside. He was filmed hunting with a harpoon. In the scene, Allakariallak looks in the direction of the camera laughing and smiling memorably. He only knew how to hunt with guns. You can almost hear Robert Flaherty taking him aside and asking, "Could you act more Eskimo?"
Historic Downtown Inukuak Robert Flaherty with some kids (not his)
Jay Ward's "Cap'n Crunch and Friends" $13.98 at Amoeba
Yeah, I see your point, Mr. Manson. Why don't I prepare for you a fro-yo topped with Cap'n Crunch which is my term for rat poison? They're just words, after all. Oh, and the yogurt isn't really yogurt.
My point is, what is most often referred to as cinéma vérité is not only philosophically diametrically opposed to actual cinéma vérité but (more damningly) it conflates irreconcilable understandings of the nature of reality, God, the universe and everything else!
Cinéma Direct -or- what pretty much everyone erroneously refers to as Cinéma Vérité
Cinéma Direct is documentary genre that began in Québec in 1958. The Quiet Revolution, a cultural assertion of the French-speaking majority under the rule of the Anglo-minority encouraged the development of a distinct Québécois identity.
The most unfortunate by-product of la Revolution Tranquille
As part of this cultural expression, filmmakers sought to re-instill truthfulness in the documentary genre, which, by the 1950s was usually studio-based propaganda rife with dramatizations and mickey mousing. In 1922's "Nanook of the North" for example, Nanook (actually an Inuit named Allakariallak living in Inukjuak, Quebec) was built an oversized igloo to share with his wife (who wasn't really his wife) to allow a camera crew and sufficient lighting inside. He was filmed hunting with a harpoon. In the scene, Allakariallak looks in the direction of the camera laughing and smiling memorably. He only knew how to hunt with guns. You can almost hear Robert Flaherty taking him aside and asking, "Could you act more Eskimo?"
Historic Downtown Inukuak Robert Flaherty with some kids (not his)