The Monks - Bad Habits

Best known for "Nice Legs, Shame About the Face," The Monks were a short-lived band who seemed to come out of nowhere from the UK along with a host of other imports and disappeared almost as quickly after they released Suspended Animation in 1981.

The band was part of the early wave of British New Wave with punk leanings that seemed to catch on with Canadians in the very early '80s. Bad Habits, although released in 1979, didn't hit the shore here until the first quarter of 1980, and while "Drugs in My Pocket" cracked the top 20 on the Canadian charts, it's not the song most of us associate with the band. I suppose it depended on where you were at the time. Growing up in a small town where radio was somewhat problematic, we tended to rely more on word of mouth and Music Express.

The band would draw the ire of the record-buying public in the UK because John Ford and Richard Hudson were not real punk rockers, as they were once members of The Strawbs - the antithesis of punk - and Rick Wakewan was once a member of the band ... ick. Which was a shame. As this was a lot of fun, but apparently it was too much to allow a couple of old establishment wankers to pull a fast one on the record-buying public, and Johnny Rotten (Sex Pistols) said The Monks were rubbish and a poor imitation of his band.

The songs are all decent, and while listening now they don't have the same gut punch and impact this seemed to have when I was a kid, it was still a lot of fun getting to hear this again. I'm still drawn to "Nice Legs, Shame About the Face," as it's the most fun, and a close second is the band's trippy surf instrumental "Skylab (The From The Monks)" ... okay, it's not a true instrumental, as every so often someone yells out "Skylab."

It would seem that in North America, particularly here in Canada, the band was taken at face value and the band enjoyed a degree of commercial success they were never afforded in their home country. Bad Habits would end up going double platinum (depending on the timing, this was between 200 and 300 thousand units), and their follow-up album, which was only released in Canada, would go gold. Then, as quickly as they burst onto the scene, they would disappear, leaving behind two records and a legacy.