CAN (BAND)

'Can' was a musical group formed in West Germany in 1968. One of the most important "krautrock" groups, Can had a style grounded in the art rock of bands such as The Velvet Underground, with strong experimental and world music influences.
Described by keyboard player Irmin Schmidt as an "anarchist community"http://www.czukay.de/can/publications/2.html and constructing their music largely through free improvisation and editing, which bassist Holger Czukay has referred to as "instant compositions",http://www.krautrock.com/articles/int_czukay.html they had only occasional commercial success, with singles such as "Spoon" and "I Want More" reaching national singles charts. However, through albums such as ''Tago Mago'' (1971) and ''Ege Bamyasi'' (1972), Can exerted a considerable influence on avant-garde, experimental, underground, ambient, New Wave and electronic music.http://www.spoonrecords.com/anthol1.html

Contents

History

Early years: 1968–1970

Classic years: 1971–1973

Later years: 1974–1979

After the split and reunion: 1980 onwards

Music

Influence

Improvisation, recording and live shows

Band members

Core

Other members

Additional collaborators

Discography

Studio albums

Compilations of studio material not found elsewhere

Notes

References

External links

History

Early years: 1968–1970

Can formed in Cologne in 1968 comprising bass guitarist Holger Czukay, keyboard player Irmin Schmidt, guitarist Michael Karoli, and drummer Jaki Liebezeit, along with original member David Johnson, an American composer, flutist, and electronic musician who left in 1969 after the band had begun taking a more rock-oriented direction. They used the names ''Inner Space'' and ''The Can'' before finally settling on ''Can''. Liebezeit subsequently suggested the backronym "communism, anarchism, nihilism" for the band's name.http://www.playlouder.com/feature/+revival2004can
In the autumn of 1968, they enlisted the creative, highly rhythmic, but unstable and often confrontational American vocalist Malcolm Mooney, with whom they recorded the material for an album, ''Prepared to Meet Thy Pnoom''. This first album was rejected by their record companyhttp://www.furious.com/perfect/hysterie2.html, and was not released until 1981, under the name ''Delay 1968''. The band decided to record another album of original material from scratch, which later became ''Monster Movie'', released in 1969. Mooney's bizarre and (often apparently psychotic) ranting stood in contrast to the stark minimalism of the music, which was influenced particularly by garage rock, funk and psychedelic rock. Repetition was stressed on bass and drums, particularly on the epic "Yoo Doo Right" which had been edited down from a six-hour improvisation to take up a mere single side of vinyl.
Mooney returned to America soon afterwards on the advice of a psychiatrist after being told that getting away from the chaotic music of Can would be better for his mental health.http://www.mutelibtech.com/mute/can/canbiog.htm He was replaced by the less overtly challenging Kenji "Damo" Suzuki, a young Japanese traveller found busking outside a cafe by Czukay and Liebezeit. Though he only knew a handful of guitar chords and improvised the majority of his lyrics (as opposed to committing them to paper), Suzuki was asked to perform with the band that same night. The band's first record with Suzuki was ''Soundtracks'', released in 1970, which also contained two tracks recorded with Mooney.

Classic years: 1971–1973

The next few years saw Can release their most acclaimed works, which arguably did as much to define the krautrock genre as those of any other group. While their earlier recordings tended to be loosely based on traditional song structures, on their mid-career albums the band reverted to an extremely fluid improvisational style. The double album ''Tago Mago'' (1971) is often seen as a groundbreaking, influential and deeply unconventional record, based on intensely rhythmic jazz-inspired drumming, improvised guitar and keyboard soloing (frequently intertwining each other), tape edits as composition, and Suzuki's idiosyncratic vocalisms.
''Tago Mago'' was followed by ''Ege Bamyasi'' (1972), a more accessible but still avant-garde record which featured the catchy "Vitamin C" and the Top 40 German hit "Spoon." Next was ''Future Days'' (1973), an unassuming but quietly complex record which represents an early example of ambient music and is perhaps the band's most critically successful record. Also included on this album was the refreshingly unexpected pop song "Moonshake". Suzuki left soon after the recording of the latter album to marry his German wife and become a Jehovah's Witness, and the vocals were taken over by Karoli and Schmidthttp://www.mutelibtech.com/mute/can/canbiog.htm, although after the departure of Suzuki, fewer of their tracks featured vocals, as Can found themselves experimenting with the ambient music they began making with ''Future Days''.

Later years: 1974–1979

''Soon Over Babaluma'' from 1974 continued in the ambient style of ''Future Days'', though regaining some of the abrasive edge of ''Tago Mago'' and ''Ege Bamyasi''. In 1975 Can signed to Virgin Records in the UK and EMI/Harvest in Germany. The albums ''Landed'' (1975) and ''Flow Motion'' (1976) saw Can moving towards a somewhat more conventional style as their recording technology improved. Accordingly, the disco single "I Want More" from ''Flow Motion'' became their only hit record outside of Germany. In 1977 Can were joined by former Traffic bassist Rosko Gee and percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, both of whom provided vocals to Can's music, appearing on the albums ''Saw Delight'' (1977), ''Out of Reach'' (1978) and ''Can'' (1979). During this period Holger Czukay was pushed to the fringes of the group's activity; in fact he just made sounds using shortwave radios, morse code keys, tape recorders and other sundry objects. He left Can in late 1977 and did not appear on the albums ''Out Of Reach'' or ''Can'', although he did do some production work on the latter album. Can disbanded shortly afterwards, but reunions have taken place on several occasions since.

After the split and reunion: 1980 onwards

Since the split, all the former members have been involved in musical projects, often as session musicians for other artists. In 1986 they briefly reformed, with Mooney but without Suzuki, to record ''Rite Time'' (released in 1989). There was a further reunion in 1991 to record a track for the Wim Wenders film ''Until the End of the World'', and Can have since been the subject of numerous compilations, live albums and samples.
In 1999 the four core members of Can, Karoli, Liebezeit, Schmidt and Czukay, performed live at the same show, although playing separately with their current solo projects (Sofortkontakt, Club Off Chaos, Kumo and U-She respectively). Michael Karoli died on 17 November, 2001 after a long battle with cancer. In 2004, the band began an ongoing series of Super Audio CD remasters of its back catalog, which were finished in 2006.
Holger Czukay has recorded several ambient albums and collaborated with David Sylvian among others, Jaki Liebezeit has played in a drum ensemble called Drums of Chaos and in 2005 with the Artist Datenverarbeiter the online-album Givt.http://www.datenverarbeiter.com Michael Karoli recorded a reggae album with Polly Eltes before his passing, and Irmin Schmidt has begun working with the acclaimed drummer Martin Atkins, producing a remix for the industrial band The Damage Manual, and a cover of ''Banging the Door'' for a Public Image Ltd tribute album, both released on Atkins' label, Invisible Records. Karoli formed Sofortkontakt! for the Can reunion shows in 1999 with Mark Spybey, who had previously been associated with Dead Voices on Air, Zoviet-France, Reformed Faction and Download. The band also featured Alexander Schoenert, Felix Guttierez of Jelly Planet and Mandjao Fati. Karoli also performed on numerous occasions with Damo Suzuki's Network. Damo Suzuki returned to music in 1983, and since then he has been playing live improvisational shows around the world with local musicians and members of touring bands at various points, sometimes issuing live albums. Malcolm Mooney recorded an album as singer for the band Tenth Planet in 1998. Rosko Gee has been the bassist in the live band on Harald Schmidt's TV show in Germany since 1995. Rebop Kwaku Baah died in 1983 following a brain haemorrhage.

Music

The diversity of the music of Can owes a lot to its equally eclectic influences. Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt were both pupils of Karlheinz Stockhausen. This meant that the early Can inherited a strong grounding in his musical theory, with the latter being trained as a classical pianist. Michael Karoli, in turn, was a pupil of Holger Czukay, and brought the influence of gypsy music through his esoteric studies. Drummer Jaki Liebezeit had strong jazz leanings. Another important early influence was ethnomusicology: the band's sound was originally intended to be based more on the sound of ethnic music, so when the band decided to pick up the garage rock sound, original member David Johnson left the band. This world music trend was later more clearly exemplified on albums such as ''Ege Bamyasi'' (the name meaning "Aegean okra" in Turkish), ''Future Days'' and ''Saw Delight'', and by incorporating new band members with different nationalities. A series of tracks on Can albums, known as "Ethnological Forgery Series", abbreviated to "E.F.S", demonstrated the band's ability to successfully recreate ethnic-sounding music.
The band's early influences in rock included The Beatles and The Velvet Undergroundhttp://www.krautrock.com/articles/int_czukay.html as well as Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and Frank Zappa.http://www.brella.org/sandpebbles/Can.htm The band have admitted that the beginning of Can's "Father Cannot Yell" was inspired by the end of the Velvet Underground's "European Son". Malcolm Mooney's voice has been compared to that of James Brown (an acknowledged hero of the band members) and their early style, rooted in psychedelic music, drew comparisons with Pink Floyd. Along with their peers in the krautrock scene, they were under the influence of the wider progressive rock movement taking place in England and elsewhere during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Czukay's extensive editing has occasionally been compared^[1] to the late-'60s music of trumpeter Miles Davis (such as ''In a Silent Way'' and ''Bitches Brew''): Can and Davis both would record long groove-intensive improvisations, then edit the best bits together for their albums. However, the degree of influence is uncertain, and the similarities are more likely a sort of parallel evolution. Czukay and Teo Macero (Davis's producer and editor) both had roots in the ''musique concrète'' of the 1940s and '50s.
Damo Suzuki was a very different sort of singer from Mooney: his multilingual (he claimed to sing in "the language of the Stone Age"), often inscrutable vocal style added the missing ingredient to a set of playful pop songs. With Suzuki, the band made their most well known albums, and the rhythm section's work on ''Tago Mago'' has been especially praised: one critic writes that much of the album is based on "long improvisations built around hypnotic rhythm patterns";http://www.trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=can another writes that "Halleluhwah" finds them "pounding out a monster trance/funk beat".http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:4x65mpb39f6o~T1] The band's post–Damo Suzuki period is often criticised for not being groundbreaking and genre-defining like the earlier albums: although critics had praised Can's sound in the early 1970s as being ahead of its time, the band just used a two track recorder until the release of ''Landed'' in 1975. However, they do try out styles they hadn't done before: ''Landed'' sees them influenced by glam rock, ''Flow Motion'' by reggae, ''Saw Delight'' and ''Out of Reach'' by world music again, and the guitar of Carlos Santana.

Influence

Major artists working in the post-punk genre such as The Fall, Public Image Ltd., Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division and other acts like David Bowie, Talking Heads, The Stone Roses and Primal Scream have cited Can as an influence. Brian Eno made a short film in tribute to Can, while John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers appeared at the Echo Awards ceremony, at which Can were awarded the most prestigious music award in Germany,http://www.intuitivemusic.com/can-biography to pay tribute to guitarist Michael Karoli.
John Lydon , formerly of the Sex Pistols, formed Public Image Limited patterned after Can's early 1970s five-member lineup. Lydon wanted to join Can in 1979 as the group decided to disband. During their ''Kid A'' tour, Radiohead performed a cover of the song "Thief" from ''Delay 1968'' ^[2], and have claimed Can as an influence. Mark E. Smith of The Fall pays tribute to Damo Suzuki with the track "I Am Damo Suzuki" on the 1985 album ''This Nation's Saving Grace''. The Jesus and Mary Chain used to cover live "Mushroom" in the mid-1980s. The Flaming Lips wrote their song "Take Meta Mars" off their ''In a Priest Driven Ambulance'' album after hearing "Mushroom" just once. The songs bear great resemblance.
At least four notable bands have named themselves in tribute to Can; The Mooney Suzuki for Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki; the indie rock band Spoon after the hit "Spoon"; the electronic band Egebamyasi, formed by Scottish musician Mr Egg in 1984, after Can's album ''Ege Bamyasi''; Hunters & Collectors after a song on the Landed album. The Scottish writer Alan Warner, born in Oban in 1964, has written two novels in tribute to two different Can members (''Morvern Callar'' to Holger Czukay and ''The Man Who Walks'' to Michael Karoli respectively). The ''Sacrilege'' remix album features remixes of Can tracks by artists who were influenced by Can, including Sonic Youth and U.N.K.L.E..http://www.lollipop.com/issue38/38-2-05.html Their ethnomusicological tendencies pre-date the craze for world music in the 1980s. While not nearly as influential on electronic music as Kraftwerk, they were important early pioneers of ambient music, along with Tangerine Dream and the aforementioned band. Many groups working in the post-rock genre can look to Can as an influence as part of the larger krautrock scene, as can New Prog bands such as The Mars Volta. Kanye West has sampled "Sing Swan Song" on his song "Drunk & Hot Girls" from his 2007 album "Graduation".

Improvisation, recording and live shows

Much of Can's music was based on free improvisation and then edited into a palatable format for the studio albums. For example, when preparing a soundtrack, only Irmin Schmidt would view the film and then give the rest of the band a general description of the scenes they would be scoring. This assisted in the improvised soundtrack being successful both inside and outside the film's context.http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/intervs/czukay.html Also, the epic track "Cutaway" from ''Unlimited Edition'' demonstrates how tape editing and extensive jamming could be used to create a sound collage that doesn't gel perfectly, and that the flashes of genius in the improvisation needed to be cut from long, unconsolidated recordings.
Can's live shows often melded spontaneous improvisation of this kind with songs appearing on their albums. The track "Colchester Finale", appearing on the ''Can Live'' album, incorporates portions of "Halleluhwah" into a composition lasting over half an hour. Early concerts found Mooney and Suzuki often able to shock audiences with their unusual vocal styles, as different as they were from one another; Suzuki's debut performance with Can in 1970 nearly frightened an audience to the point of rioting due to his odd style of vocalizing. David Niven, of Pink Panther fame, was amongst the crowd who remained to hear what Can and Damo would do next. There is a legend that during live shows, the band could focus their energy on playing to the extent that it could make certain members of the audience vomit. After the departure of Suzuki, the music grew in intensity without a vocal center. The band maintained their ability to collectively improvise with or without central themes for hours at a time (their longest performance was in Berlin and lasted over six hours), resulting in a large archive of performances.
Can made attempts to find a new vocalist after the departure of Damo Suzuki, although no one quite fit the position. In 1975, folk singer Tim Hardin took the lead vocal spot with Can for one song, performing his own "The Lady Came From Baltimore". Malaysian Thaiga Raj Raja Ratnam played three dates with the band in March 1976, only one of which was recorded. Another such vocalist, Englishman Michael Cousins, toured with Can in April 1976. Audience members disapproved of his presence and literally spat at him while on stage. There are only three recordings of Cousins performing with the band, all from April 1976.

Band members

Core

★ Holger Czukay - bass guitar, sound engineer, electronics (1968-1977, 1986-1991)

★ Michael Karoli - guitar, vocals, violin (1968-1979, 1986-1991)

★ Jaki Liebezeit - drums, percussion (1968-1979, 1986-1991)

★ Irmin Schmidt - keyboards, vocals (1968-1979, 1986-1991)

Other members

★ Malcolm Mooney - vocals (1968-1969, 1986-1991)

★ Damo Suzuki - vocals (1970-1973)

★ Rosko Gee - bass, vocals (1977-1979)

★ Rebop Kwaku Baah - percussion, vocals (1977-1979)

Additional collaborators

★ David C. Johnson - reeds, winds, electronics and tape manipulation (1968–69)

★ Manni Löhe - vocals, percussion and flute (1968)

★ Duncan Fallowell - lyrics (1974)

★ Peter Gilmour - lyrics (later 1970s)

★ René Tinner - recording engineer (later 1970s)

★ Olaf Kübler of Amon Düül - tenor saxophone (1975)

★ Tim Hardin - vocals (1975)

★ Thaiga Raj Raja Ratnam - vocals (March 1976)

★ Michael Cousins - vocals (April 1976)

Discography

Main articles: Can discography

Studio albums

★ ''Monster Movie'' (1969)

★ ''Soundtracks'' (1970)

★ ''Tago Mago'' (1971)

★ ''Ege Bamyasi'' (1972)

★ ''Future Days'' (1973)

★ ''Soon Over Babaluma'' (1974)

★ ''Landed'' (1975)

★ ''Flow Motion'' (1976)

★ ''Saw Delight'' (1977)

★ ''Out of Reach'' (1978)

★ ''Can'' (1979)

★ ''Rite Time'' (1989)

Compilations of studio material not found elsewhere

★ ''Limited Edition'' (1974) and later expanded release Unlimited Edition'' (1976)

★ ''Delay 1968'' early works compliled and released (1981)

Notes

1. [1] Reynolds, Simon, "The History of Krautrock"] URL accessed February 15, 2007
2. Radiohead At Ease

References

★ ''Rock: The Rough Guide'' (second edition), Penguin, 1999.

★ Martin C. Strong's ''Great Rock Discography'' (fifth edition), MOJO Books, 2000.

External links

★ Spoon Records.com – The official Can website

★ Can discography (short) – With credits and sleeve details

★ Can discography (extensive) – Albums, collections, compilations, collaborations, live and solo recordings

★ BBC Radio 1 – John Peel sessions

★

★ Yoo Doo Right - A performance in memory of Michael Karoli (1948-2001)

★ Then I Saw Mushroom Head: The Story of Can – A book excerpt about Can

★ Was Ist Das? – A general site about Krautrock

★ http://www.datenverarbeiter.com Datenverarbeiter vs. Jaki Liebezeit Online-Album Givt