There were in fact two uses for the disc, what turned out to be a spoof of the then popular Gregorian chants performed by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo De Silos. My undergraduate station was putting together classic rock programming for the weekends in 1996 or so and, while rock is rock is rock, we wanted different program elements to separate it from the weekday modern rock shifts. Elements here mainly meant liners or sweepers, brief recorded pieces that evoked the station slogan, call letters, station identification, or some combination thereof, along with some humor. Modern rock liners gravitated toward a "generation x" audience, with sound clips from contemporary movies and television or other random audio with appropriate cultural references. As production director, I was asked to come up with something different for the classic rock shifts. Since the Benzedrine Monks chanted their way through Do Ya Think I'm Sexy and Queen's We Will Rock You, I made a liner announcing the classic rock shift that in turn faded into a snippet of the Monks' chorus; I then broke in to confess that that music sounded more like "classical rock." Maybe you had to have heard it for it to make any sense. Surprisingly the liners made from this CD worked for a year until, like any fad, getting on people's nerves.
Fast forward a year or so.... Since there was, however small, a limited fan base of the Benzedrine Monks (that is, outside the monastery), it was decided to play a few songs from disc in their entirety on April 1 – you know, as an April Fools prank on the listeners. I was the program director by that time, finishing up my final spring semester on campus, and gladly assisted the station manager and music director come up with some sort of playlist. In addition to the Monks, the station manager had downloaded audio files of the Bugs Bunny cartoons The Rabbit of Seville and What’s Opera, Doc? (featuring Elmer Fudd's immortal line declaring his intention to "Kill Da Wabbit" to the tune of the Ride of the Valkyries), saying that it fit the format as classical music – but with vocals.
The music director would be at the console that morning because I was graduating that spring. Meaning, I had to track down and purchase some required item from the bookstore located next to campus (I remember not the item in question – sorry). Inside, in addition to being the only customer, I realized the store was tuned into the student-run station and listening to Bugs and Elmer battle back and forth. This was one of those rare times I was on the opposite side of the speaker – as a listener, rather than a programmer. At the register, however, the employees had blank looks. One employee said to the other that he knew they played strange music but he didn't understand what was going on today. Without revealing my association, I casually mentioned I was listening to the station in the car and, "I think it's an April Fools show, only with classical music." They seemed pleased at being told, though still unenlightened. Maybe Warner Brother cartoons were before their time?
Anyway, on the classical shifts we tended to be a bit formal in giving the track information: in addition to the song's title, we would give the composer and usually the conductor and performing orchestral, as well any other seemingly interesting bits of tid. When it came time to tell listeners about the Monks, the music director, as straight-faced as possible, reported the track as performed by the monks and composed by the Queen's Lordship, Brian Harold May. Pretentious, weren't we?
Of all the tracks (the aforementioned Queen and Rod Stewart hits, plus Smells Like Teen Spirit, Loosing My Religion, and the Theme from the Monkees) the only one we didn't really fit into classical shift that day was the Monks' Vow of Silence.
But dead air would have been another great April Fool's gag.
Or, maybe not.
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The Monks' Vow of Silence
The Benzedrine Monks of Santa Domonica
From the album Chantmania
1994