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Can - What's it all about?

Have you tried the two recent live albums? Funky as hell and some of it reusing/reinterpreting grooves from Soon Over Babaluma, but stretching everything out the way Miles did in the early to mid-70s. They are now two of my favourite Can albums, certainly the best post-Liberty/UA by far.
What’s the sound quality like? My understanding is that they’re official releases of bootlegs that have been circulating for some time.
 
What’s the sound quality like? My understanding is that they’re official releases of bootlegs that have been circulating for some time.


Surprisingly good. Big, punchy and quite a bit of room acoustic. Sounds like a really well recorded gig recorded from the audience perspective, i.e. the PA, drum-mics, processing etc is all part of the aesthetic. Sounds great off vinyl through the Tannoys.
 
Have you tried the two recent live albums? Funky as hell and some of it reusing/reinterpreting grooves from Soon Over Babaluma, but stretching everything out the way Miles did in the early to mid-70s. They are now two of my favourite Can albums, certainly the best post-Liberty/UA by far.
Yes they’re great! I was only going to get the first but it was your Miles analogy that convinced me I needed both, and whatever else is coming.
 
The Souest concert (double header with Dinger-era Kraftwerk) is highly recommended but you can't top the Free Concert from Munich Sporthalle 72 (a photograph from that is on the back of "Ege Bamyesi")


A bit of "Spoon" that ends up becoming "Oh Yeah" :cool:

And Jaki is a machine. :cool: :cool:
 
Please could I ask nicely? All of the Can recordings I’ve heard sound out of tune. Certainly the singer is never in tune. I cannot break that barrier unfortunately. Maybe they reveal a defect in my audio system, or is it in my mind that the fault lies?
 
Was it Can who had the ultra low frequency gadget at their live gigs? Made people feel ill and all that? Or was it some other band?
 
Was it Can who had the ultra low frequency gadget at their live gigs? Made people feel ill and all that? Or was it some other band?
Good question, worthy of a new thread. My first thought was Hawkwind. Then some bands did use bass pedals such as Rush and genesis.
 
Good question, worthy of a new thread. My first thought was Hawkwind. Then some bands did use bass pedals such as Rush and genesis.

Ah, yeah, maybe Hawkwind. I thought it was a Kraut Rock outfit for some reason. (is it OK to say "Kraut Rock" ? )
 
Yes, Hawkwind for the ‘brown note’! They used various signal generators and obviously the VCS3, of which they had a couple.

I’ve never really worried about Can’s tuning, though neither vocalist was in any way conventional. Can were certainly highly skilled musicians, Liebeziet a very well regarded jazz drummer previously, and Schmidt and Czukay both students of Stockhausen. Schmidt was on route to be a classical conductor prior to Can, so I suspect they all understood how tuning worked!
 
Have you tried the two recent live albums? Funky as hell and some of it reusing/reinterpreting grooves from Soon Over Babaluma, but stretching everything out the way Miles did in the early to mid-70s. They are now two of my favourite Can albums, certainly the best post-Liberty/UA by far.

Yes, they are brilliant records.

I mostly don't much like Can, apart from Monster Movie, Tago Mago and about half of Ege Bamyasi, but the two recently released 1975 live recordings are fantastic.
 
Please could I ask nicely? All of the Can recordings I’ve heard sound out of tune. Certainly the singer is never in tune. I cannot break that barrier unfortunately. Maybe they reveal a defect in my audio system, or is it in my mind that the fault lies?

I’m not a musicologist and therefore lack the specialist lexicon to articulate the point. But it seems to me that Can (and Hawkwind and some of the other German bands) were not simply continuing the western rock music tradition that was largely based on blues, European folk and the European Baroque and Classical canon (eg, Penny Lane). They were much more akin to the ‘modal jazz’ of Kind Of Blue era, and ‘Bitches Brew’ era Miles Davis and the Modernism of Stockhausen. I can understand why it can jar in the ear of some listeners. But to me it is endlessly refreshing and inspiring, the complete opposite of the tradition that concluded with such pompous and overblown nonsense as ‘The Six Wives Of Henry VIII’ or ‘Concerto For Group And Orchestra.’
 
I’m not a musicologist and therefore lack the specialist lexicon to articulate the point. But it seems to me that Can (and Hawkwind and some of the other German bands) were not simply continuing the western rock music tradition that was largely based on blues, European folk and the European Baroque and Classical canon (eg, Penny Lane). They were much more akin to the ‘modal jazz’ of Kind Of Blue era, and ‘Bitches Brew’ era Miles Davis and the Modernism of Stockhausen. I can understand why it can jar in the ear of some listeners. But to me it is endlessly refreshing and inspiring, the complete opposite of the tradition that concluded with such pompous and overblown nonsense as ‘The Six Wives Of Henry VIII’ or ‘Concerto For Group And Orchestra.’

There is a strong rebellious cultural aspect to Krautrock. It needs to be framed that it was the music of the children who born just after the collapse of Nazi Germany and often into families with very dark histories. As such it is a music that burns the past and creates anew from scratch. The fact a lot of it sounds quite similar to the more experimental American electric jazz fusion of Davis, Hancock etc is fascinating, but I suspect largely coincidental. The whole thing is based on rejecting the past and that is why Tago Mago, Yeti, the first Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Faust, Cluster, Neu! etc sound like nothing that went before. Entirely different rules were used. Deliberately.
 
I think "Movies" and "Peak.." are excellent but the later albums don't have the same appeal. "Rome Remains Rome" is particularly duff.

If you don't have them, I would recommend the album he made with Jaki and Jah Wobble, "Full Circle"

...the "Snake Charmer" Mini LP with Jah Wobble and The Edge

and the single with Conny Plank as "Les Vampyrettes"
The The Edge?!
 
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With reference to the cultural aspect, the BBC doc Krautrock The Rebirth of Germany is well worth watching.

 
The thing with Can is that you really needed to see them live to get the witchy atmosphere they created. And even then it didn’t always work
 
The thing with Can is that you really needed to see them live to get the witchy atmosphere they created. And even then it didn’t always work

Not sure that is true. I’m certainly too young (59) to have seen them at the peak of their powers and I only really discovered them far later via people who had been influenced by them, as was the case with many bands (VU, MC5, Seeds, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Silver Apples etc). When I found my first Can album, a lovely UA copy of Ege Bamyasi, it would have been maybe five or six years after I’d bought Metal Box new on release. I was slow on the uptake with Can as I was just too young for Eric’s in Liverpool, it had shut by the time I could regularly go to gigs. I mention that as apparently the DJ regularly dropped the whole of Aumgn, and I suspect had I heard it back then I’d have hunted a copy down pretty fast! I think I bought my copy in about 1985 or 86 (a record fair for £15, at the time the most I’d ever spent on a record).
 
Not sure that is true. I’m certainly too young (59) to have seen them at the peak of their powers and I only really discovered them far later via people who had been influenced by them, as was the case with many bands (VU, MC5, Seeds, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Silver Apples etc). When I found my first Can album, a lovely UA copy of Ege Bamyasi, it would have been maybe five or six years after I’d bought Metal Box new on release. I was slow on the uptake with Can as I was just too young for Eric’s in Liverpool, it had shut by the time I could regularly go to gigs. I mention that as apparently the DJ regularly dropped the whole of Aumgn, and I suspect had I heard it back then I’d have hunted a copy down pretty fast! I think I bought my copy in about 1985 or 86 (a record fair for £15, at the time the most I’d ever spent on a record).
Not sure that is true. I’m certainly too young (59) to have seen them at the peak of their powers and I only really discovered them far later via people who had been influenced by them, as was the case with many bands (VU, MC5, Seeds, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Silver Apples etc). When I found my first Can album, a lovely UA copy of Ege Bamyasi, it would have been maybe five or six years after I’d bought Metal Box new on release. I was slow on the uptake with Can as I was just too young for Eric’s in Liverpool, it had shut by the time I could regularly go to gigs. I mention that as apparently the DJ regularly dropped the whole of Aumgn, and I suspect had I heard it back then I’d have hunted a copy down pretty fast! I think I bought my copy in about 1985 or 86 (a record fair for £15, at the time the most I’d ever spent on a record).
I’m not saying that the albums don’t create the magic. They certainly do. It’s just that in person there was a certain something that was…other. Can’t explain it it just was.
 


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