Charles Wilp Archive
The Charles Wilp Archive is a new play loud! series dedicated to reissuing the music and audio work of German artist Charles Wilp. Charles Paul Wilp (Witten 1932 – Düsseldorf 2005) was a German advertising designer, artist, photographer and filmmaker. Wilp developed some of the most important campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s, among his clients he had Pirelli, Volkswagen and Afri-Cola. THE MONKS, CHARLES WILP & AFRI-COLA In 1996 filmmakers Lucía Palacios and Dietmar Post, who were based in New York at that time, contacted with Charles Wilp to ask him about his collaboration with The Monks. Wilp confirmed that he wanted the band to record the music for his Afri-Cola ad campaign in 1967. In 1996 he couldn’t find anything in his archive that proofed the band having been at his studio. After four years of waiting, in 2000 Wilp called the filmmakers enthusiastically: he had found thirty six black-and-white photographs taken during the 1967 session. Originally, Charles Wilp hired German-based American avant-garde band The Monks to record a jingle. He thought their experimental sound and blasphemous image would be a perfect fit for the controversial advertising campaign. Unfortunately, his plan didn’t work out. “The musicologists and the CEO couldn’t agree with me and the whole thing failed,” Charles Wilp explained in the 2008 documentary “Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback” (pl-04 DVD/VOD). In 2006 the filmmakers released “Silver Monk Time – A Tribute to The Monks”. Gary Burger (Monks singer and guitar player) and Dave Day (Monks banjo player) updated the old Charles Wilp Afri-Cola tune by adding voices (shouting, screaming, whispering), wild guitar feedback and an astonishing electrified banjo. The Wire mentioned “Silver Monk Time” among the best compilation records of the year 2007.
