Let's discuss Can.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I rarely ever buy the remastered versions of albums I already have, but given just how much better they sound over the originals, I've slowly been picking up the Can remasters since Mute first started reissuing them in 2004. Today, I picked up the reissue of Tago Mago, inspiring my revisiting the record for the first time in a few years.

 

Tago Mago is, for the most part, a fantastic album, but the combined near half-hour running time of the "Aumgn" and "Peking O" nearly sinks the entire affair. A shame, considering the incredible stretch of music—"Paperhouse" to "Mushroom" to "Oh Yeah" to the krautfunk monster that is "Halleluhwah"—that precedes it is epic.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

I've neglected my exploration of this band. I tend to get sidetracked by..something. As it stands, I own only Soon Over Babaluma, and have heard Tago Mago. I enjoy the former once every six weeks or so, and barely remember the latter.

 

EDIT: Chain Reaction. That's a track I really like a lot. I should probably pick up Tago Mago, since long meandering clumps of interesting moments tend to appeal to me.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Soon Over Babaluma is wonderful. It's also the only post-Suzuki album of theirs I've checked out. Not that I'm missing much; aside from the as-yet-unheard-by-me Unlimited Edition, Can after SOB is, by all accounts, very dodgy.

[Henry Spencer 0]

I can't get into Soon Over Babaluma. Damo's vocals are so integral to my understanding and appreciation of the band that their absense is glaring. I only recently was able to warm up to Monster Movie, so maybe I need to sit on SOB a little longer.

 

But anyways, Future Days is their best album.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

That's strange, since Karoli and Schmidt's vocals are pretty Damo-like.

[Gary Floyd 0]

Ege Bamyasi is their best album overall I think. Liebezeit's drumming is pretty much flawless.

 

Unlimited Edition tends to be hit and miss. I ended up selling my copy about a year ago.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

"Aumgn" does little for me, but I love "Peking O." The tracks you rattled off are great, yeah. There was a week in like February '06 where I listened to Tago Mago almost exclusively. Fun. I think Tago Mago was my very first foray into non-Zappa music that was just plain weird.

 

My favorite Can songs are "Vitamin C" and "Mushroom." Future Days pretty good. Ege Bamyasi is a good intro to Can because it tends to be more bite-sized. Soon Over Babaluma is enjoyable, but I can't help but feel that something is missing. I rarely touch Monster Movie these days.

 

[Coffin Surfer 0]

Tago Mago is probably my favorite. When took as whole it is one of the most rewarding musical journies an album has ever took me on. I stand by that" Aumgn" is an incredible piece of music with one of the best drum solos I've ever heard, and "Peking O" is one of the best freakouts of all time with both tracks perfeclty setting up the haunting closer.

 

Ege Bamyasi is great fun and indeed a good place to start, easily some of their best and most memorable stand alone songs. Future Days is beautiful organic ambience with "Moonshake" being one of the great unsung pop numbers of the past several decades.

 

Anyone else heard 68 Delay, the bands intended debut? "19th Century Man" is fucking killer punk/funk before either genre came into its own.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

It took awhile for me to warm up to Monster Movie, but I eventually did. Malcolm Mooney's vocals defined "acquired taste."

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I'll eventually buy the remasters of Monster Movie and Future Days (my second favorite Can album) and get Unlimited Edition and Delay 1968 somewhere along the way. I'm sure I'll download the rest at some point, just to satisfy my curiousity.

[The Man in Blak 0]

If I'm in the right mood, I can enjoy almost any of their stuff, but I think you can safely limit the essentials to the Tago Mago - Ege Bamyasi - Future Days sequence of albums. That's not to say that Soon Over Babaluma or Monster Movie aren't good, just that the rest of their stuff doesn't necessarily stick with me like those three albums do.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

It's very odd to me that people hold Tago Mago in as high regard as they do. Differing tastes, I know, but the 1-2 gasbag of "Aumgn" and "Peking O" is such dreary musique concrete wankery. A little of each would've been fine—each has some neat moments—but 30 fucking minutes of it? Overkill.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

What's the opinion on Soundtracks? Given its origins, it's a little too erratic, but it contains "Mother Sky," which is the best of the Can epics, I think. I also love "She Brings the Rain."

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

I haven't listened to Tago Mago recently enough to dissect it, but musique concrete in general needs a certain degree of volume to make any sense, I think.

[The Man in Blak 0]

It's very odd to me that people hold Tago Mago in as high regard as they do. Differing tastes, I know, but the 1-2 gasbag of "Aumgn" and "Peking O" is such dreary musique concrete wankery. A little of each would've been fine—each has some neat moments—but 30 fucking minutes of it? Overkill.

 

It could very well be a difference in taste. To me, the "Aumgn"/"Peking O" double shot serves as a perfect change of pace after nearly eighteen minutes of "Halleluhwah." The two are distinct enough from each other that they don't really grate on as thirty straight minutes of nonsense for me: "Aumgn" functions as a musique concrete-ish exorcism of the preceding krautrock, while "Peking O" works along the lines of Beefheart or even something like Mr. Bungle, punctuating with screams and other non-sensical vocals. By the time we back to the semblance of a "normal" song about a minute or so into "Bring Me Coffee Or Tea", my mind kind of feels a little warped...and I suspect that's the intent.

 

And all of that completely ignores the fact that the first half of the album is absolutely fantastic, which I suspect has a lot to do with the impressions that people have of the album.

[The Man in Blak 0]

I haven't listened to Tago Mago recently enough to dissect it, but musique concrete in general needs a certain degree of volume to make any sense, I think.

 

Not to get too far off track here, but I would agree with this; since musique concrete places non-musical sounds into a musical context, it only makes sense that volume is one of the only remaining "normal" facets of regular music that the listener can connect with.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

I meant more in terms of negative space lending relevance to the strange bits, which leads to longer songs. Without the contrast, it's more noise than music.

[The Man in Blak 0]

Well, I think both ideas make sense. The main point that we're both circling around has to do with the ability to contrast; with no harmonic/rhythmic/melodic context, you're basically left with the frequency (the occurence, negative space vs. positive, inhabited space) and the amplitude (the actual "volume", soft/loud) of said weird bits as possible venues for creating difference, growth, etc.

 

 

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

The main point we're circling around is that Giuseppe Zangara is a gaywad.

[The Man in Blak 0]

Yeah, dude. o/\o

 

And "Mother Sky" is about the only redeemable thing from Soundtracks anyway, as far as I'm concerned.

[Henry Spencer 0]

You Doo Right and Bel Air are the best of the Can epics.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

The main point we're circling around is that Giuseppe Zangara is a gaywad.

WHOOOAAAAA I DISCOVERED REVERB AND AUDIO PANNING cling clang bong bing bong

 

EDIT: Seriously, though, I would be much more pleased with these two tracks if each were about half as long. I get what they were trying to accomplish, but the conceit on both are stretched to the snapping point.

[Coffin Surfer 0]

One should take into consideration that Tago Mago was a double album at the time of its production and was laid out to fit into this format. The second half was a compeltely different disc with "Augmn" making up one entire side so people can still enjoy the first disc and feel free to venture into the other wierder one at their own risk. I think they filled out the time fine but yes the most difficult track, "Augmn" is intentionally stretched out on one side so people can ignore it if they want to.

 

 

"WHOOOAAAAA I DISCOVERED REVERB AND AUDIO PANNING cling clang bong bing bong"

 

The songs are a bit more than that, there is a great deal of musical theory and structure employed. Doesn't mean you have to like them, but they are carefully arranged pieces of music with rising tension, themes, a climax, and a coda. They are just pretty fucking far removed from pop or rock music.

 

 

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I was just being an asshole, dude.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I lurve Tago Mago, Future Days next in line, and Ege Bamyasi coming in third. I haven't given the others the consideration yet, though I did download some apparently rare live stuff of theirs a while back.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Ranking the Can I'm familiar with:

 

Ege Bamyasi

Future Days

Soon Over Babaluma

Monster Movie

Soundtracks

Tago Mago

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Tago Mago

Ege Bamyasi

Future Days

Soon Over Babaluma

Monster Movie

 

Only related to Can in the most tenuous way: I'm thinking about buying The Complete On the Corner Sessions. I love On the Corner, but I have to ask myself if I need six to eight hours of it, and how much I'm willing to pay. I could totally listen to an extension of side 1 for like two hours, easy. The album actually just starts at a completely random point in the jam session. In medias res is rarely used in music.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Using leftover paypal cash from my recent ebay auctions, I just ordered Delay 1968 and Future Days from CD Universe. This rankles a bit, but no store in town has either one, so I'd have to order them no matter what.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

They came in the mail today! Sooner than I expected.

 

As usual, stellar remastering job on these. Future Days, based on one listen, may've benefitted the most from clean-up. So much so, I might, in time, bump up the album to the number one spot. Such a beautiful record and it's never sounded better.

 

Delay 1968, which I'm listening to now, is fun. The krautrock-sound wouldn't come into being until their proper debut, Monster Movie, so here you get a Can that sounds like the missing link between the Velvet Underground and the Stooges. Good stuff.

 

(An aside: the liner notes to Delay 1968 take a swipe at Radiohead—pairing them with Coldplay!—and since Czech will be curious, I'll quote the piece here:

 

I hear a ballad like the spine-tingling "Thief" and realise that life is too short to listen to Radiohead and Coldplay ever again—not that I'd be that bothered.

 

Interesting that he threw in a dig at Radiohead right after mentioning "Thief"—a song that Radiohead had been known to cover live—though he doesn't give a clear indication that he knew that. Regardless, putting them in company with Coldplay betrays his ignorance.)

[Copper Feel 0]

Giuseppe Zangara, which album's the best starting point for Can?