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Can was launched on an unsuspecting audience in autumn 1968, to a totally polarised critical reception. Their ability to arouse such strong confused feelings, for and against, was in itself a statement of their dynamism, confused because they were an enigma, could not be fitted to the current scheme of things, nothing was known of them as individuals. They are still the most unsettling of the German rock groups. Cologne is not Germany’s wildest city. This is why Can live there. Their studio, once a castle, now occupies an old cinema a few miles out of the city. Visitors are few – but never turned away, and in this easy practical atmosphere the band work. Can do not record numbers so much as discover songs or patterns in the process of recording. The timbre of their music, on record at least, has softened with their later albums from which this is compiled, and their music became more accessible. The key to Can’s music is not where it comes from or what the ingredients are, but how it works, how it moves and that’s to be discovered by listening.
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They have been compared to the Velvet Underground and there is some sense in that, although it could be misleading. If the Velvets play in a junkyard, the Can are somewhere more sinister still. Given that all rock of this organic nature has similarities, the Can are unmistakably Germanic. The kind of structured, planned pieces which many English groups go in for are rejected by them as "bourgeois" an attempt to beat the Romantic composers at their own game. Whatever truth there is in this, it means that this band are very single-minded and as far as possible create their music spontaneously. Having the luxury of their own studio, most of the material is worked out there on the floor. They just go in, start playing and let it take over. In fact it couldn't happen any other way because the music's textures are too subtle to be contrived beforehand. Originally they spent so much time in the workshop exploring their particular universe that they were sometimes thought of as a studio group. This is not so. The physical urgency of the music, its edgy excitement, is in no sense an insular affair and they have spent the last year doing many concerts in order to develop their confidence as public performers. They are a big group in the German underground where a few years ago, before its Liberty release, people were paying £6 or more fore private pressings of "Monster Movie"
The only outfit in England with anything in common with them is Hawkwind but again that is inapposite, Hawkwind's sound is cleaner and more straightforward, even if it operates on similar principles. Like any important band, the Can sound like no other.
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On lead vocals, Damo Suzuki doesn't so much sing as breathe words heavily into the microphone in a particularly doom-laden fashion. He is Japanese and 21, the others are German and older. Irmin Schmidtz is the organist and articulate spokesman. Unbelievably, he used to conduct symphony orchestras and his English inclines to phrases like "parameters of consciousness" With him there is none of Keith Emerson's front parlour arpeggios, or Richard Wright's Vaughan Williams chord changes, or Bring Auger's Sandy McPherson touch.
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| Damo Suzuki |
Irmin studied under Stockhausen and Berio, and it shows. As for his playing, well, I don't know how he does it but it sounds like anything but an organ. Often it is almost indistinguishable from the guitar, but more disembodied, or the engine of flying saucer (if you know how that sounds). Then there is Holger Czukay. His Bass catches you like a clam (he is ex-Stockhausen, too) and recently he built a ferocious machine to generate maximum concussion. Michael Karoli plays guitar in a weird spidery chip-chop sort of way, quite unlike anyone else. And Jaki Liebezeit, the drummer, holds the axis while at the same time exploring endless possibilities within a given rhythmic pattern. Yet separating out the ingredients in this way can convey very little because the Can's music is intensely interwoven. Its surface is deceptively regular and beneath is an elaborate matrix of constantly shifting emphasis and cross-feeding, bulging in hypnotic spasms, its effect is ectoplasmic and powerfully sexual.
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Album Review
An excellent introduction to Can, though many of their pieces I personally like more are, obviously missing. Monster Movie was my first, then I bought this album. Interesting that some of their lesser-approved tracks from 'Soon Over Babaluma' are here, but they are lovely nonetheless.
A compilation of the more accessible side of Can at their prime. This collection would have been perfect with the inclusion of the classic tracks "Halleluwah" and "Mushroom".
The title of this 1976 Sunset Records / Universal Artists compilation of Can tracks works on at least three levels – first, it suggests an accessible introduction to the music of this influential but often ignored or difficult-to-pigeonhole Cologne unit, formed as it is from their mid-period legacy; secondly, it’s an amusing pun on the band’s name (mercifully, in spite of being quite good-humoured chaps, this was the only time they – or their labels – saw fit to make lighthearted fun of their name); finally, when combined with designer Paul Henry and photographer Trevor Rogers’s sleeve image of an open Campbells condensed soup can, there’s an inextricable link to Warhol’s semi-ironic brand of pop-art. So there you have it – best of, joke or artistic statement; take your pick.
Opener was compiled by journalist and major Can fan Duncan Fallowell and Tim Read and features eleven classic cuts ranging from the impossible funk of ‘Moonshake’ to the screwy clank of ‘Spoon’. Fallowell offers gushing sleevenotes which I’ve provided below (he co-wrote ‘Dizzy Dizzy’, included here, and so represents a somewhat biased viewpoint) and the rear has that typically Seventies approach of turning the sleeve over to pictures of the band – ranging from Michael Karoli and Holger Czukay looking like extras from Easy Rider to Irmin Schmidt and Jaki Liebezeit looking like hippy professors; Damo Suzuki just looks suave – plus brief details of their respective roles. Among the facts quoted: Karoli was a pupil of Czukay and saw The Who play in Torquay; Schmidt studied under Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio; Suzuki busked round Europe playing one chord on a guitar while improvising on top. Czukay is described functionally as the bassist and engineer, while Liebezeit’s multi-cyclical drumming is heralded as the defining factor in Can’s music. You can imagine how oddly compelling that sleeve might have been to someone flicking idly through the racks of LPs in an HMV in 1976.
So it was for me, albeit twenty years later, when I alighted upon this record in Time Records in Colchester. I bought this either just before or just after Sacrilege, and it served as my proper introduction to the music of Can. I’d been aware of them since I first read through the Mute Documentary Evidence brochure that inspired this site and my love of the label, but Opener offered the first real opportunity to get my head into their music; I fell in love with it instantly, and I used to play thus a lot, often late at night on a Sunday ahead of the following day’s lectures and classes.
I hadn’t listened to this probably since I left university in 1998 until I played it yesterday whilst selecting LPs to listen to with my youngest daughter (six). She described Opener as ‘weird but good’ and grooved along to ‘Moonshake’ like it had been recorded today.
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This post consists of MP3's (320kps) ripped from vinyl (sourced from the web many moons ago) and includes limited artwork and label scans. As mentioned in the review above, this compilation could have been improved with the inclusion of some essential Can classics such as "Halleluwah" and "Mushroom". Been a vinyl release this would have been a big ask based on length limitations (although the single releases of these tracks would have sufficed), but for a CD media I have chosen to include some rare live renditions of these tracks as bonus tracks. Now, all you need is the can opener!
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Track Listing
01. Dizzy Dizzy
02. Moonshake
03. Sing Swan Song
04. Come Sta, La Luna
05. Spoon
06. I’m So Green
07. Vitamin C
08. Future Days
09. Mushroom (bonus live 1972)
10. Halleluwah (bonus live 1972)
Can were:
Holger Czukay - bass
Michael Karoli - Guitar
Jaki Liebezeit - Drums
Kenji 'Damo' Suzuki - Vocals
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Can Opener Link (130Mb)
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