Black Cat Bone

Just have Ege Bamyasi. But I'm only 34, so there's plenty of time, right? "Vitamin C" is my favorite from that album.

I've gone on at length about Can, so I won't here. Brilliant, entertaining, artful and often-imitated-never-equalled. They're probably my favorite band, so I will be a "list-hog" here:

Malcolm Era:
Album: Monster Movie
Song: "Father Cannot Yell"

Damo Suzuki Era:
Album: Tago Mago
Songs: "Paperhouse", "Vitamin C", "Moonshake"

Middle period:
Album: Soon Over Babaluma
Songs: "Unfinished", "Dizzy Dizzy"

Late period:
Album: Can
Song: "All Gates Open"

album: Tago Mago

track: All Gates Open (great to see Feeb mentioning this, too - it's (perhaps surprisingly, that late in their game) a thing of wonder)

Awe-inspiring band. I can thank them for saving me from UK/US rock drudgery in my late teens.

Song : Oh Yeah
LP : Future Days

Album: Tago Mago

Track: You Doo Right.

Ege Bamyasi & Mother Sky for me.

I would advise not skipping Delay 1968 as it containes Little Star of Bethlehem, one of their finest moments.

But Monster Movie is probably the thing I would advise going toward next, what a fucking record.

You can't go wrong with any of it up through 1973, and after that they're still pretty good through 1975.
After that you're on your own.

I've only got three of their LPs- Future Days, Tago Mago and Egge Bamyasi, but I'd have to say that I find the latter the most satisfying as an LP. Tago Mago's best moments are monumental, particularly the towering unrelenting "Hallelujwa" and "Oh Yeah," but that second side, 'conceptually important' as it is, puts me off the record and accordingly I can never get to the end. Egge Bamyasi seems more focused in its reach, there isn't a duff track on it.

Perhaps it isn't as nakedly experimental as its predecessor(s), but there's something more satisfying in the way they unleash into the white-hot avantfunk of "Vitamin C" or even the cheekiness of the closer "Spoon" (perhaps the oddest theme for a cop show ever). The whole LP just seems to bursting through with life throughout.

Future Days is a very charming LP, I do like the first half a lot, though I find the final track seems to wonder a bit too much for my tastes (as nice as its groove is, admittedly), but it has a lot to recommend all the same.

Gommorrah

Limited edition

Album - Future Days
Song - You Doo Right

Ask me again tomrrow and you'll get two different answers.

'Yoo Doo Right'...fucking hell - has there been a more endlessly fascinating tribal rock workout than that released? It never fails!

I first heard it when I was 22, it shook me more than I thought music still could, and I've been searching for similarly brain-melting freak symphonies ever since. Not easy.

It took fucking balls to make that record - or rather, it took balls to release the thing in that form (an edit from how long? 24 hours?) and it took enormous dedication and vision to write and play the thing. What were they thinking?! If bands these days had a tenth of the creative temperament and bloody-mindedness....

I find the rest of Monster Movie a little too abrasive these days, but that track is still a real favourite. Enormous.

It's still hard choosing one song or one album. As I already stated, my opinion could change tomorrow. For awhile there, Monster Movie was my favorite album, then it was Ege Bamyasi and of course, Tago Mago was at the top for a long period. Nowadays, I'm favoring the more ambient Future Days. Can's a difficult group to get a handle on. Some of their stuff is instantly likable while some of their other songs take a long time to sink in.

Sir John Coan wrote:... it took enormous dedication and vision to write and play the thing. What were they thinking?! ...

I agree with your feelings on this song, but I question the idea that they "wrote" it or had a vision for it. It was apparently a long improvisation, with Malcom Mooney using a letter his girlfriend had written him as source material, which Holger Czukay then edited down (as was Can's standard way of operating during the Mooney and Suzuki years).

Since it unfolded during the improvisation, I feel "vision" is slightly the wrong word. The only vision it took was Czukay's, at the editing stage. But what they lose in terms of us crediting them with forseeing this great piece they gain in its being unselfconscious and primal, something you get more often in improvs than in written music.

I'm not trying to nitpick, but I thought, by your choice of words, that you might not have known the process that led to this track. I agree wholeheartedly that it's a incredible piece of music -- along with "Mother Sky", it's both their most immediate and most enduring track, one might almost call it accessible -- and that it took some courage to release it in that form. Other bands had done such things, but it's always risky doing a side-long piece. They must have known they had something very special on their hands.

I too have made it through much of my life without having heard them much. I remedied that by getting Tago Mago. So far so good.

Album - Tago Mago
Song - Mushroom is pretty great, but I'm sure I'll hear something soon to beat it. I love Halleluwah too, it's pretty mad.

album and song: Future Days
I could just play the damned thing on auto-repeat and eventually die with a smile on my face.

Sneelockula wrote:album and song: Future Days
I could just play the damned thing on auto-repeat and eventually die with a smile on my face.

Yeah, I've been listening to this stuff for 20 years now, and when all is said and done, this is what I come back to the most.

Snarfyguy wrote:

Sneelockula wrote:album and song: Future Days
I could just play the damned thing on auto-repeat and eventually die with a smile on my face.

Yeah, I've been listening to this stuff for 20 years now, and when all is said and done, this is what I come back to the most.

Or you're getting old and you can only handle the boring, ambient stuff anymore.

Snarfyguy wrote:

Sneelockula wrote:album and song: Future Days
I could just play the damned thing on auto-repeat and eventually die with a smile on my face.

Yeah, I've been listening to this stuff for 20 years now, and when all is said and done, this is what I come back to the most.

A tad ambient though for them, isn't it?

I prefer something a little more rockin' like the first half of Tago Mago or Ege Bamyasi.

Quaco wrote:

Snarfyguy wrote:

Sneelockula wrote:album and song: Future Days
I could just play the damned thing on auto-repeat and eventually die with a smile on my face.

Yeah, I've been listening to this stuff for 20 years now, and when all is said and done, this is what I come back to the most.

Or you're getting old and you can only handle the boring, ambient stuff anymore.

Well, I didn't say it was the only Can I listen to anymore.

But if the shoe fits....