NEW YORK — The legendary '60s proto-punk group headlining the

upcoming Cavestomp! garage-rock festival has never played the U.S., even

though all five bandmembers are Americans.

And that's not the oddest thing about the Monks.

They met while serving in the Army in Germany during the early 1960s and

are known for dressing like monks, shaving their heads and for angering

large portions of their audience with antagonistic, dissonant harangues.

But they're not the only re-formed '60s band playing Cavestomp! '99,

scheduled to run Friday through Sunday at the Westbeth Theatre Center, in

Greenwich Village. The lineup also will feature the Standells, known for

the hit single "Dirty Water," and the Chocolate Watch Band, whose song

"Are You Gonna Be There" (RealAudio

excerpt) was prominently featured on the exhaustive garage-rock

anthology Nuggets. Their modern counterparts on the bill include

the Demolition Doll Rods and the Gravedigger 5.

Jon Weiss, organizer of the festival and partner in Cavestomp! Records,

said he's only interested in bands still willing and able to revive the

unruly noise of '60s garage rock.

"This is a classic sound," said Weiss, who fronted the Vipers, a mid-'80s

garage-rock revival band re-forming for one night at Cavestomp! "It needs

to be treated like the blues. It doesn't need to be retooled, revamped.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

The Monks have the most unlikely history of all the bands booked for

Cavestomp! '99. The musicians — lead vocalist/guitarist Gary Burger,

electric six-string banjo player Dave Day, bassist Eddie Shaw, keyboardist

Larry Clark and drummer Roger Johnston — each left the Army but

stuck around in Germany and played in a more traditional rock 'n' roll

band before forming the Monks. They released an album, Black Monk Time,

available only in Germany, and toured relentlessly.

Today they're obscure but respected cult figures, partly because their

once-impossible-to-find album was re-released by the Infinite Zero label

in 1997. But, they say, they still have enemies.

Shaw, who lives in Carson City, Nev., said he met a man in town who was

in the Army, stationed in Germany during the mid-'60s. "He knew who the

Monks were," Shaw said during a break in rehearsals at Weiss' New York

studio. "He said, 'I absolutely hated the Monks. I hated you guys. I still

hate you.' We ended up being pretty good friends."

The bandmembers, all in their mid-50s, seem to be excited about playing

together again. Day shaved his hair for the occasion and Clark said the

group plans to wear monk robes onstage, just as they used to.

Most of the Monks were involved in music to varying degrees after the

group broke up, in 1967. Day and Johnston even played together for a time,

but until recently there were no attempts to reunite the group, despite

covers of their songs by such bands as the Fall and the Lunachicks, not

to mention the significant impact the band had on punk music.

Despite the recent effort to bring them back together, the Monks still

wonder whether anyone will like them. After all, they were reviled enough

during the '60s to be physically attacked onstage a number of times.

"People would come up and want to strangle us," Johnston said.

According to the drummer, that was partly because the bandmembers were

Americans playing to crowds that included bitter ex-Nazis, and partly

because few people understood the music and just wanted the group to play

contemporary rock 'n' roll covers.

The Monks are all but assured an enthusiastic audience at Cavestomp! to

go along with the recent release of Five Upstart Americans, a new

disc of raw Monks demos, on Omplatten Records.

"The idea of the Monks is completely relevant today," Weiss said. "It was

so cool, and there's no shelf life to cool. ... It's definitely Monk time.

This is what they deserve."

Cavestomp! '99 will feature the Monks, the Hate Bombs, the Gravedigger

5, the Third Bardo and the Demolition Doll Rods on Friday; the Chocolate

Watch Band, the Mooney Suzuki, the Loons, the Vipers and Dead Moon on

Saturday; and the Standells, the Monks, the Greenhornes, the Fleshtones

and the 5, 6, 7, 8's on Sunday.