Sometime last year, Barbara Hanf contacted me from Australia, suggesting the monks would have fun playing in Benidorm, Spain at an event known as "The Wild Weekend."

"Benidorm, Spain?" I said. "Never heard of it." To me the name sounded like the brand name of some kind of soap or medicine. Doing some research, I discovered that Benidorm was formerly a tiny fishing village, sitting on a rocky point on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, south of Barcelona. In the 1960’s it was transformed into a small city with the third largest number of hotel rooms in Europe; a vacation destination point for Europeans from the northern countries, all built in a matter of a few years.

For awhile the monks were ambivalent about the idea, but then "Babz" offered an intriguing suggestion. "People will come from all over Europe and they will be dressed as monks and nuns." That was it. We said yes. We agreed to do a one hour show at one A.M., Sunday night, November 21, 2004 (actually Monday morning). Not known at the moment, but there in Benidorm, I would soon meet "Eddie the Monk" and a bunch of beautiful dancing nuns.

It took 25 hours for Sherrie and me to fly from Reno to Alicante, just outside Benidorm. It was midnight on the sixteenth, when Josh Collins, the event’s promoter, picked us up at the Alicante airport. Benidorm is where he proposed to Barbara four nights later -- onstage in front of an audience of crazy people dressed as priests, nuns, monks and devils. Okay I’m getting ahead of myself.

When Sherrie and I arrived at the Hotel Helios at midnight, we were greeted by a bunch of British women, laughing and giggling in the lobby. "Gawd, I am so drunk!" one of them said with a thick Cockney accent. And then we ran into Gary and his wife Cindy, in the lobby. After hugs and a bit of talk we went to our rooms and fell into bed, exhausted, only to be awakened at 5:00 am when the sky south of us lit up with a display of bright colored fireworks. The booming explosions rattled the hotel windows for a half hour. It didn’t take long to discover that people in Benidorm party twenty-four hours a day.

It also didn’t take long to discover that our hotel walls were very thin. The voices coming through from the other side were familiar. Dave Day was talking to his wife, Irene. "You won’t believe it, Honey. I spotted Gary and Eddie talking in the lobby. Quick, I ducked around a corner so they wouldn’t see me. I didn’t know how to get past them, so I went through a side door to the hotel patio and climbed over a fence. It was at least 8 feet high. I almost killed myself. Isn’t that something? A monk hiding from the other monks cuz he doesn’t want to talk to ‘em."

Sherrie and I giggled. Yes, Dave. I know the feeling. I did almost the same thing when I checked into the hotel in Las Vegas, two months earlier, in September, when we played at the Gold Coast Hotel. There, on my way to the room, from the check-in desk, I had spotted Dave and Gary talking at the bar. hiding my face and quickly walking past them, not more than three feet away, scooting by, behind a crowd of people. Why? Because after 1001 nights on stage with these guys. we know we’re going to be in the same room with each other, every day as long as we’re there, without relief -- working on our sound, remembering our parts, arguing about points of view, which any monk can easily do. It's like a challenge we want to put off, as long as possible. And now, the sad part being that Roger had unexpectedly died only eight days before.

For the next three days we were scheduled to rehearse. It required our traveling forty-five minutes north to a small village known as Oliva. And then back, of course. driven by our Spaniard friend, Julian, who we met when he came to pick us up. We rocketed down the freeway in a large van traveling over 90 miles an hour. The scenery looked like Nevada to me. I could easily imagine myself being somewhere north of Las Vegas. Beside our driver, Julian, there were six of us in the van: Gary Burger, Dave Day, Larry Clark, Mike Fornatale (our musical director, who knows our parts better than we do) Adam Fesenmaier (new monk drummer, borrowed from the Conquerors) and me. For most of the forty-five minutes drive, there was very little conversation because the rate of speed suppressed any desire to talk. We also knew we would be yelling at each other as soon as rehearsal started.

Since I tend to take photos of the backs of the other passengers’ heads when we pass construction cranes (I take photos of construction cranes wherever I go -- you oughtta see ‘em), there would be occasional grumbles, especially when I would want to discuss the orange tree groves that flew by and "What kind of plant is that?" The passengers rub their eyes, look out the window and try not to get involved with the idiot in the back seat.

In Oliva we found ourselves in a recording studio, owned by Pepe, who is also a rock and roll addict. The first day of rehearsal was awful. Oh my God! Contrary to first impressions, monk music ain’t easy to play. It’s the odd number of repetitions; the sudden key changes and endings: and then the loud feedback. It hurts.

The second day was a bit better. By the third day (each day about three hours of rehearsal time), things were starting to come together. On breaks, Larry would relax by playing Green Onions on the organ, which had easy, familiar 12 bar changes. Mike Fornatale would sit in a corner of the room, quietly playing some AC/DC song on his guitar, just to feel somewhat sane. In these moments I would go to a small window and watch the kids across the street, at a school playing soccer.

The Wild Weekend Rock Fest is a weekend of partying. My son, Reu, arrived from the USA on Friday. He had never seen the monks. The first thing in Spain he noticed was the women. His reaction was, "Oh my God! I want to move here."

There are go-go dancers in cages and wild party people in the audience doing their thing. Each night had a theme. Friday night, the nineteenth of November, was the first night. It was also the night when everyone dressed as nerds, or 1950s high-schoolers: Girls in pigtails and boys with stethoscopes. Huh? Stethoscopes? This was the night I met "Eddie the Monk."

As I was standing by one of the bars, drinking a beer, a monk fan from Belgium came up and introduced himself. "Hi. I’m Eddie the monk," he said. He then told me how his dad had listened to our music, which, of course, reminded me how old I really am. He continued, "My dad called himself Eddie the Monk."

I just stared at him.

"Yeah, the bass sound is mean. It’s the kind of sound that makes you wanna drink and fight. My dad was a wild man. He was inspired by the bass sound."

I didn’t say anything. I just stared.

"Sometimes he’d be in jail and when he got home, he would then sit and listen to Black Monk Time. And he always talked about Eddie the monk. I was little and it scared me."

"My gawd!" I finally said. "It would scare me too."

"And then when my Dad got sick, he called me to his bedside and said, "When I die, you’re gonna take my place. You’re gonna be Eddie the Monk. And . . . he died and now that’s what people call me. They call me Eddie the Monk."

Have you ever had a moment where you have to think about things -- things that don’t have a name, or a subject title? What is our connection to each other? What causes these connections? Who am I? Who is he? Anyway, Eddie the Monk and I toasted each other, shook hands and before we wandered off into the audience he said, "When I get home, I’m gonna tell my mom I met Eddie the Monk. She’s gonna be so proud of me."

I don’t know if it was serious or if it was a put on. Perhaps someone slipped me a shot of absinthe and I didn’t know it. I don’t know if I heard right. Maybe I need counseling. It’s a bit awkward to say that I met Eddie the Monk. Maybe I don’t know what it meant.

Sherrie and I returned to the hotel at about one or two A.M. We woke up when Reu came into the room, much later, at about 5:00. I heard him muttering before he went to sleep. "Oh, my gawd! Oh, my gawd!" I don’t know what that meant but Sherrie said she knew.

There are feral cats everywhere in Benidorm, and there are many old British tourists there as well. The streets are lined with nightclubs that cater to Brits. At one club we all spent an evening watching a famous drummer from the 1940s, from London, who had to be ninety years old, playing all kinds of drums for an enthusiastic audience. The monks were lined up at the bar, on the right side of the stage, drinking and watching. Mike is a walking source of information about musicians and music. He knew who the drummer was. So did Adam. Of course Adam is a drummer himself, so he would naturally have to know. It’s required knowledge.

Behind the bar young Spanish men with long hair, rippling muscles and tight shirts served adult beverages. Our bartender was named Robert, pronounced "Ro-bear." He was cute, I guess, because Sherrie did a lot of staring. Once I heard her say, "Oh, my gawd," and Gary’s wife, Cindy, standing next to her said, "I know what you mean."

During our three days of practice, we had a number of interviews with press people. We also ate a lot of tapas and partied. We had one day, Saturday, free before we played on Sunday. Most of it was spent sightseeing, walking along the beach -- me looking for construction cranes, Sherrie marveling over the palm trees on the shore. On the beach, one could easily imagine it was Florida. It was November and people were in the water or sunning themselves on the sand.

Saturday, we were treated to a two-hour documentary film ("Transatlantic Feedback") about the monks, at the Benidorm Community Center Theater. Dietmar Post and Lucia Palacios of Play Loud Productions, from Berlin, were giving an unfinished preview. It felt very strange to see myself on the screen, acting like I knew what I was talking about. There was footage of the monks in Germany in the 1960s, along with footage of the Berlin Wall and all those old memories. I saw people on screen talking about us, and what we had done. There was our old friend, photographer/artist Charles Wilp, who died a couple of months later. It was very strange to see Roger, our monk drummer, appearing as a janitor in a church, cleaning the keys of the church organ and talking about his life, telling the camera that his greatest accomplishment was not being a monk, but leaving Texas and not turning into one of those cowboys who just goes around all day saying, "Yippee." He died about a year after that interview.

On Sunday we made our appearance on stage at midnight. Here is an excerpt from my journal:

Sherrie went to the site (the event is staged in a very large circus type tent behind the Mediterranean Casino) at about 8:00 pm. Reu went with her to help. The merchandise table had to be set up and displays arranged so people could buy records, books, posters, stickers, buttons, tee shirts and hats. The merchandise table is at the front entrance, just inside as the people pass through to the main auditorium area. It helps pay the expenses.

I stayed at the hotel to rest and avoid the cigarette smoke before the concert. I remained in the room, trying to sleep, watching TV. At about 10:30 pm, I began to get dressed for the stage. First, I put a purple-cross earring in my ear. Then I put on the black shirt, Egyptian cotton, the retro black tux I bought in L.A. and the black monk buckle shoes, shined to a high gloss. The only colors I wear are the purple earring and red socks which I feel are proper for a man of my age. After that I put on the monk rope, tying it very carefully to make sure that everything would look just right. In a sense there is a feeling of ceremony, as if getting ready for high mass or battle.

It was determined that we would leave the hotel for the concert, in the van, at about 11:30 pm. For some reason Larry insisted that we should leave at 11:00, calling my room at about three minutes after eleven to inquire why I wasn’t in the lobby.

We left the hotel fifteen minutes after the hour. Each of us were carrying our instruments, except for Adam and Larry, also wearing capes. It is monk time. That’s what it feels like. We don’t do this often but when we do, the effort is intense. It’s all about high energy on stage. How do old guys do that? Don’t ask me.

I remember it as if it were happening now. For some strange reason (maybe it was planned) we have the keys to the van, Larry drives. Mike is already there since he had left early. His wife Wendy rides with us and we make small talk and joke as we ride out of town to the casino.

Arriving at the casino about midnight, we drive around to the back of the tent where there is an entrance into the backstage area and the dressing rooms. It is dark and two people dressed as nuns wave us through to the back door. We get out and greet our welcoming party: one young man in a nun costume, with the wide white collar and the white shawl over the head -- long black skirt -- and a pretty woman nun. It is funny. We all stop to pose for photos.

Then we enter the back of the tent coming to a room behind the stage, on which a young British band is performing. The singer is doing a lot of jumping and running around as the group plays a 1960s sounding tune. The drummer grabs one of the tom-toms and runs out the back stage down to the ballroom floor where he jumps up on the bar to bash away at the drum held in one hand while the bartenders try to shout him down off the bar. The crowd seems fairly subdued.

Of course this party is in its third day and people are beginning to show signs of dissipation. It all starts at four in the afternoon at the Sunset Club in Benidorm -- a pre-party, so to speak. The first band goes on stage behind the Mediterranean Casino, at 8:00 pm where all the groups (including us tonight) take turns on stage until about five in the morning. At this point the party goers, those still standing, return to the Sunset Club in Benidorm and party from 5:00 am to 8:00 am. That’s why it’s called the Wild Weekend. It’s nonstop partying and Benidorm is just the place. As I understand it, there are many places in Spain that party all night. Yeah, this is the only place in the world where genuine absinthe is not illegal, the stuff that made Van Gogh cut off his ear. You say it was a woman who caused that? No! I say it was absinthe. Okay, maybe it was the lead in his paint. I don’t know!

Having entered the back of the building, we are led into the dressing room behind the stage. There is an aluminum structure built inside this tent edifice that contains a restroom and a room with showers and mirrors to put on make-up. A constant stream of sexy young women go through the room, running into the very back room to change their costumes. The go-go dancers for the night are dressed as scantily clad nuns, black bikinis and tiny halters with nun’s habits, all black and white, definitely doing the monk thing. Larry is quite charmed by it and corners two of them, asking me to take a photo. The girls are quite lovely.

One of them approaches me, wearing a tight nun’s habit around her head and fish-net stockings and black bikini. "Remember me?" she says.

"Yes. I didn’t recognize you at first," I reply.

She says, "In Vegas I was dressed as a cave girl. Dressing as a nun is a lot more fun." She gives me a kiss on the cheek.

Compared to the past, things are much different for us monks. Back then we would have had a number of beers, flirted with the women and tried to strike up a liaison or two. Tonight we are proper gentlemen, trying to be thoroughly professional, each a component of the act that will soon be on stage, all of us doing our own parts. There are a number of photos taken with the girls and some wild guys who come in dressed in brown monk robes with large wooden crosses on their chest.

When we walk out to see what is happening on stage, we see a strip tease taking place with a young woman disrobing from her nun’s habit down to pasties and a G-string. Reu, my son, is there with the digital camcorder, taking footage. I have him pose with one of the lovely young nuns while I snap a photo. He is more than pleased to do it.

After the strip tease we go onstage. We have a last minute huddle in the dressing room to collect our thoughts and remember what needs to be done. We are in a circle, wearing our capes. People with cameras are taking photos. By now the cameras are no longer noticed.

I say, "Okay, Adam. You sounded good in rehearsal yesterday. You were hitting the drums hard like you owned ‘em. Tonight, you’re driving the bus. Take charge of the beat and drive it."

Adam nods.

Gary says, "And Eddie, remember to wait for the transition in "That’s My Girl." We still have a habit of trying to change key too early."

"Okay," I say. "Larry, remember to use your monk organ piece between some of the songs."

Standing to the side, our musical director, Mike, watches with the look of someone saying, "Yeah, let’s see who forgets what first."

We can hear the audience out front stage making restless noises. A soundtrack of Gregorian monk chants is being played, warming up the audience. I can feel the energy of the audience, their expectations building. There are people from the U.S., Germany, Japan, Australia, France and other countries. We are part of a cult -- a monk cult, the center of the cult’s focus and the church music with heavy cathedral organ blares loud on the sound system, as if getting ready to introduce boxers who will come out to enter the ring at any moment. And of course it is all being filmed and photographed by those who have backstage privileges and insist that they are seeing history made. Yes, maybe one could say that. Spain is the only country where the monks made the top ten records list -- for "Cuckoo." That is something.

Then we hear the Master of Ceremonies, Josh Collins, dressed as a castle lord, declaring to the audience that it is that time. Someone says, "The show is sold out. There are a lot of people out there."

The curtains are closed. We take our positions on stage, strap on our instruments. Larry has a bit of a problem with the organ, but then it gets fixed. My bass amp sounds fine. It’s loud. The Marshall speakers sound somewhat trashed, as they should for my "Eddie, the monk," bass sound. With random guitar notes and tapping of drums to see if everything is working right; with the sound of the heavy monks music of the church on the sound system, people begin to shout and you can sense that it’s going to happen any moment now.

The curtain begins to open as Larry intones the monk hymnal on his organ. When it is fully open, Gary shouts, "It’s monk time!" Adam counts four and we hit it loud while the audience is cheering and shouting. People, crowding against the barriers, at the edge of the stage, are looking up. There is excitement: People shaking their heads in time to the music; people waving their hands. There is a sea of faces stretching out into the darkness of the room. I cannot see the end. Someone tosses a cup full of beer, which lands at my feet. What the hell is that supposed to mean? I glare.

At this point, it’s what I call old school. We spent hundreds of nights and thousands of hours playing on stage, pounding our instruments, knowing by rote experience what to do, an experience that most younger bands today do not get. No one plays seven nights a week anymore; six to eight hours on stage a day. The old instincts kick in. It’s hop time and Gary and I hop to the music.

The crowd screams and cheers with each new song. They know them all. And we concentrate to keep the show moving. There can be no dead time or moments of silence between songs. It’s monk time and Gary intones his rap. "We don’t like the army. Who cares what army! James Bond, who is he!" the crowd roars. "George Bush! Who is he?" and the crowd roars again.

There are many people in front of the stage. Flashbulbs are popping. People are holding up video cameras. I have mixed feelings about this. When we were younger, we would have loved this adoring attention. For a fleeting moment I wonder how many in the crowd are only there to see us before we die. I know I shouldn’t think that, but then we are one of the (maybe the) last surviving bands who played Hamburg, working the same club as the Beatles -- the "nice boys" (us: the "bad guys.") Two out of four of the Beatles are dead. Hendrix is dead. Roger is dead, and Gary takes a moment to remind the audience of that as he dedicates our performance to Roger. Yes, it is different now.

We go through the songs one after another, and I distinctly feel the force and glare of hot overhead lights, blinding in their intensity, going on and off; exploding bursts of light that hinder my ability to see beyond the edge of the stage.

At one point I close my eyes and tilt my head up. It’s like soaking in the rays of sunlight, keeping my eyes closed for a long time, feeling, if one can say that, the intense reds on the other side of the eyelids. The strobes flash sharp needle rays across the stage. I can see it even though my eyes are shut. It is a quiet moment of stage reverie even as the sound of the speakers are so loud that the more timid hold their hands over their ears, to withstand the force of the sound waves.

Each song starts quickly, begun at the end of the last note of the fore-played song. Yes, there is musical foreplay. On "That’s My Girl," Gary and Dave raise their instruments high. They rub the guitar and banjo against each other and their amplifiers yowl in high intensity feedback. The crowd is ecstatic. Cameras are trying to cover everything. During Monk Chant, Gary lays his guitar on the stage floor and everyone kneels to pluck the strings as it feeds back. Still standing I bend down, run my hand across the strings, and then stand back with my hands on my hips as if we are monkeys who just discovered fire. Yeah, that’s how feedback was discovered.

I try not to react to anything that is going on in the audience. But of course there are moments, between sharp flashes of light, when I see something that makes me laugh. I spot Sherrie in the front row, screaming and blowing kisses. It is hard not to react. I have to smile at her, even laugh.

Then something odd happens. Three minimalist clad nuns came on stage and stand between us, dancing as we play. At the end of the song they leave the stage, only to reappear on the next song. It is hard to catch signals from Mike and Larry with the girls between us. Sudden changes in monk arrangements require signals. At one point a monk purist in the audience begins to make catcall sounds. It is a dangerous moment, but then the sound coming off stage is powerful enough to override the visual distraction. Later when asked about it, the dancers said they just couldn’t resist.

We play the last song and leave the stage. There is loud enthusiastic cheering, and we return for an encore. The song is "I Hate You," after which there is more applause and cheering, and then the master of ceremonies, Josh, comes on stage and asks us to do "Oh How To Do Now" again. We do it, surprised that the crowd is absolutely happy about it and then to our surprise the whole stage is filled with people dressed as monks and nuns – all the go-go dancers, a small woman dressed in a simple brown, real nuns habit, priests with golden crosses and it becomes a Las Vegas type finale, like "We Are The World," Only we ain’t the world. We’re all the monks. As a critic said in the monks documentary film, the day before, "The monks break down the barrier between the audience and the stage." Yes, that’s it. There is no barrier between them and us. We’re all part of the show. But wait a minute! In saying that, I gotta be careful. It’s really stupid to believe the nice things people say about you.

Leaving the stage, I felt relief. It was done. It’s now behind us. A crowd of people was back stage applauding as we made out way to the back dressing room. In the dressing room, a group photo was taken with many of the people who had been on stage with us. The dancers ran from monk to monk, kissing us on the cheeks. Lucia (Dietmar Post’s wife) was standing at the door, saying, "Oh my god! Oh my god!" The camera crews were giving us thumbs up signals. Sherrie came into the room and we hugged and kissed while people took more photos. Everyone was sweating. The excitement was high and it would take some time for us to cool down.

We partied for the rest of the night, stayed the next day and toured the old part of Benidorm: narrow streets, old buildings and a very cozy harbor where fishing boats once rested on the beach. The next day, everyone left. Sherrie, Reu, and I rented a car and drove to Barcelona, where I spent a week taking photos of construction cranes.

You oughtta see the crane hovering over the cathedral, La Sagrada Familia. Oh my gawd!