Join me in a slow clap for olden time literality—according to a new report from Atlas Obscura, in 1846, an entire century before rock and roll was even a twinkle in Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s eye—The Original Monstre Rock Band made headlines in England for their musicianship crafted with actual rocks “hewn from a volcanic mountain called Skiddaw.” You can’t make this stuff up, folks, because it’s actual history.
The Atlas Obscura piece reveals that The Original Monstre Rock Band was helmed by a guy named Joseph Richardson, a stonemason from Keswick, England, who invented a “rock harmonicon”—think of it as a giant xylophone made of metamorphic stone called hornfels. He started the process in 1827 and spent 13 years crafting the instrument, which, in its final form, was “composed of 61 stones, 12 feet long, with a five-octave range.”