Tag Archives: Can

584. run run run

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“Australian outfit Hunters + Collectors took their name from a Can song, though you’d be hard pressed to make the connection as things evolved. But back at the beginning of things, their first album in particular, if you were looking for the big true primal sound of Down Under in all of its dust and grime and imponderable, uninhabitable vastness – well, it was all there. Or in my particular case, it was a local rawk club, 1986 or thereabouts, way the hell out in suburban Vancouver (Canada, that is), the kind of joint where cool bands never played, but for whatever reason, someone booked Hunters + Collectors. Just getting there was a journey in itself but trust that minds were blown, souls were lifted, particularly as Run Run Run roared through its epic second half. ‘For the ages,’ somebody muttered afterward. And if the whole nine minutes were that strong, well, it’s probable the eschaton would already have been immenatized.” (Philip Random)

587. mushroom

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“Can‘s Tago Mago is the greatest album in the history of humankind. At least it was (for me) for a good chunk of 1986-87. Sounds that were so far ahead of their time even then (a decade and a half after its release) that normal folks are still trying to figure it all out. Hint: it’s applied magick, four Germans cranking out the avant-grooves and textures, Japanese singer cruising cosmically in and out of it all as only 1971 could allow. The Axis powers of WW2 reunited (sort of, Can never containing any Italians), but this time taking the right drugs, only concerned with conquering all of the world’s freak scenes. Which is as it should be.” (Philip Random)

CAn-1971

672. future days

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“Are Can still the greatest band that most people have never heard? Probably. Which makes Future Days (song and album) always worth recommending, marking both the peak and the beginning of the end of their glory days. Not that they didn’t still have some great music in them post 1973, it would just never get back to such a strange and ethereal peak. Because singer, vocalist, lead madman Damo Suzuki was slowly fading away, not to return. Like a bittersweet dream of the future that actually came true, because there I was, a good ten or twelve years after the fact, hearing it for the first time myself, and it was perfect, it was exactly what the mid-80s felt like. Living in a future, ready or not.” (Philip Random)

728. Mother Upduff

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It’s 1969 with the Euro hippie underground in a state of serious flux and eruption in the wake of all the uprisings and insurrections of 1968. Nevertheless Can, four German weirdoes and their American singer, poet, frontman (who will soon go at least slightly mad) find a few moments to throw down a strange little ditty about the Upduff family and their troubled trip to Italy. WARNING: if your grandma dies while traveling in a region populated by well organized car theft rings, don’t wrap her up in a tarp and tie her to the top of the car.

789. ode to perfume

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“The whole of Holger Czukay‘s third solo album, On The Way to the Peak of Normal, is a weird and mysterious and wonderful gem, with Ode to Perfume (the full version which fills the entire second of side of vinyl) particularly notable because of that haunting melody at the beginning – actual chunks of somebody else’s song that I vaguely recognized but could never place (sampling before they called it sampling), until I finally did place it, but only because a friend’s mp3 shuffle randomly threw the two of them on pretty much one after another. It’s Suspicion made famous by Jimmy Stafford, a genius piece of paranoid pop if there ever was one.” (Philip Random)

(image source)

Canned Goods – Jaki Leibezeit r.i.p.

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jakiliebezeit-can

Last week’s Randophonic radio was completely concerned with the music of Can and Jaki Leibezeit (who died recently). So much so that it requires three Mixcloud streams to do it all justice. The first two are a re-run of an old Randophonic show called Canned Goods, with the third a recent mix of material that Herr Lebezeit contributed to outside of Can (1977-2013).

Podcast c/o Citr.FM.101.9