Checking a bit the archives at Voodoo Wagon I've noted the lack of a style of music essential for what one calls "my identity" today: krautrock.
This BBC documentary may be (imho) a perfect way to explain why I'm talking on "identity". the prudent thesis of the feature describes the point: krautrock was in fact the real
de-nazification of Germany.
I grew up in a country, where "schlager" built a bridge between the "old days" and the "present" then. the music industry hardly tried to keep (sorry, for using a bad word, but that was what it was called then) the "negro" out of our "race" (no one would admit that then). Beat or rock'n'roll, even jazz were called "negro-music" when my father yelled through the house in the 60's.
When the (German) industry offered stuff by Elvis Presley or The Beatles then ... they had to sing it in German! Elvis? Like this...
The song starts with him not having a "wooden heart" - and then he sings a song, German soldiers sang when they left town (to go to war) "must i now, must i now quit the town". So 20 years after the war the older ones, once at the siege of Stalingrad could have a foot stomping heart for this guy who normally was more known for "negro music".
Krautrock offered us younger folks a way out of this. Luckily the late 60's and the early 70's, after almost a quarter of a century conservative leadership under Willy Brandt the media went a bit "experimental".
On Saturdays we suddenly had the a tv feature named "beat-club", where the bands played live in the studio (there are records of the Grateful Dead, Captain Beefheart, King Crimson, Jimmy Hendrix and a lot of Ike & Tina Turner) - you could see all those long haired folks, their funny clothes and styles and a choice had to been made. One of them or one of those grey men around us. We choose British and American rock instead of 'schlager'.
Even, to be quite frank, blues & rock'n'roll with their clear structures in essence seem to work a bit like schlager did: repetitive.
clearly recognizable. successful if kept simple. not really "experimental".
Imagine my surprise at the age of 16 in front of the tv watching a blockbuster cime-series (we called that "strassen feger", street cleaner, no one was out on the street, everybody was at home watching this - if you missed it you could not be part of the talks the next day at the office) and this one jumped straight in the face of the damned whole tv-watching community. Yihaw!
Followed in the next "season" of that series of Durbridge thrillers by this...
The band is named "Can" and that happened to be 1972-'73 the soundtrack of a blockbuster simply everybody was watching. I fell in love. If I had to name "the big three", it would be in this order. Moondog, the Can and then the Grateful Dead (don't tell my deadhead-friends!)
So let me try to fill the gap in the archives with one of my very favourite shows, an early Rockpalast, 1970 - two years before they hit German society via the Durbridge blockbusters.
I was curious while watching that dancing guy. What's been smoked on the monitors at a certain point of the show? The audience. This Japanese "singer" yelling and shouting - As far as I know the band "found" him on the streets some days before the show.
This! Is! Not! Rock'n'Roll!
Even now it seems to me this music comes from a better future. It's not about structure. it's about a flow. The drummer (Jaki Liebezeit, there's a funny story on him: when he starts playing in a room with a metronome it will synchronize with him after some time) is incredible, Holger Czukay, the man on the bass, his perfect counterpart.
I was at their last show, not as a band, but every member with his own. three of them, Jaki Liebezeit, Holger Czukay and Michael Karoli are dead, but their music will be "modern" even in decades and influenced a lot of musicians the like of Johnny Lydon, Sonic Youth and Stereolab to name a few.
If you're a bit curious on more, I suggest the perfect "Movies" by Holger Czukay.
Imagine a mad professor living in a room with aged analogue amplifiers and a world radio, inventing "sampling" in cutting tapes with recordings of Lebanese singers, field recordings and sound of every kind to one flowing movie.
Eno &Byrne took the next step with "My Secret Life in the Bush of Ghosts" in that direction, but Czukay has a flow like no one else. It's more kind of a mosaic putting together can-tracks with world music and whatever came to his genius mind. There's a beautiful box set
"Cinema" collecting his essentials as ie. his coworks with the Edge & Jah Wobble...
...and (my fav aside "Movies") David Sylvian
If you like to go to the heart of what was "Can", listen to "Tago Mago" and get caught by their freewheeling flow.
This! Is! Not! Rock'n'Roll, this comes straight from a better future where everything is about making music in a big jam.
Hope you enjoyed the ride.
