Can 1970

[spacefreak]

To me everything motorik came to a glorious peak in the song "Silberstreif" on Rother's album "Fernwarme" (1974)

I think it's a 1982 album, recorded in 1981...

[Scrotum Scissor]

Malcolm Mooney... I like it, but I totally understand where people can't get behind his singing (off key, etc). With the Mooney stuff, Monster Movie is okay, but I much prefer Delay '68 (*that* is incredible)

YOU'RE TRYIN' TO TELLUS THIS ISN'T IMRESSIVE?!?
OUTTA YR WITS?!
JUZZA LISTEN TO DA SECOND VERSE HERE!

[Beebfader]

Yeah, but even as a fan I admit that they improved greatly in the years that followed. Historic though it may be, I wouldn't use this film as any kind of introduction to Can.

Damo is still developing an approach here, and Karoli also has quite a long way to go ...

I would say that for many this would represent their `Tago Mago' era peak. Yes it's rough, but the energy and relentlessness are a joy to watch....not so much a concert as a happening :-) The post Damo stuff from 1973 onwards was all a little of a downhill slide, and live they became a `jam band' without their focal point. there's a lot nmore to what Damo does than meets the eye, and they were never the same without him :-(

[Steve F.]

I would definitely agree that for my tastes, anything post-Damo doesn't match what they did with him.

[Bucka001]

YOU'RE TRYIN' TO TELLUS THIS ISN'T IMRESSIVE?!?
OUTTA YR WITS?!
JUZZA LISTEN TO DA SECOND VERSE HERE!

Hey, I love Man Named Joe, and everything else off of Delay '68!! Even when MM is out of tune with his singing, it's brilliant on that one.

[Trane]

I would definitely agree that for my tastes, anything post-Damo doesn't match what they did with him.

Indeed, while Damo could be irritating/irksome at times, Can was never the same without him afterwards (or Mooney for that matter)

[Dave (in MA)]

[rcarlberg]

I think it's a 1982 album, recorded in 1981...

Oops, of course you're right. Sorry.

[hippypants]

Thanks for posting.

[Paulrus]

...posted a video

Interesting -- thanks for that. They come off more like Kraan than that 1970 video. I wonder -- was the name Kraan just a Germanic distortion of Can?

[Zeuhlmate]

I would say that Kraans bassplayer is something else!
The name Kraan was invented by Hellmut Hattler, just because 'it sounded good', no meaning at all.

[Rarebird]

In Dutch Kraan means - faucet, crane or crackerjack

[Trane]

In Dutch Kraan means - faucet, crane or crackerjack

That's what I always thought that's what it meant (crane), figuring that the word was the same in dutch as in German

[chalkpie]

Can of beans.

[Dave (in MA)]

In Dutch Kraan means - faucet, crane or crackerjack

♪Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize; that's what you get with Kraan ♫

[N_Singh]

12 minutes in that documentary, 1971 footage describing the music as "progressive"-it didn't become "Prog" proper unti the Can Feauting John Payne period.

[mellotron storm]

I would say that Kraans bassplayer is something else!
The name Kraan was invented by Hellmut Hattler, just because 'it sounded good', no meaning at all.

Hattler is an incredible bass player and yes I remember reading something about him making up that band name. There's a guy who lives in my area who is a contractor and his name is Mike Kraan, when I see his work truck with his name on it it always makes me smile.

[Zeuhlmate]

A Kraan clarification?

http://www.danbbs.dk/~m-bohn/kraan/not_kraan.html (some links needs updating)

[GuitarGeek]

Amazing innit? Apparently Geman TV is re-broadcasting a bunch of ancient things from their vaults. This past week was the Can show. The week before it was Kraftwerk.

Gotta love the audience. Most of them look as confused as the many friends for whom I have played Can over the years!

Are these the Beat Club shows or something different? Judging from the examples I've seen, it seems that Beat Club would videotape the bands performing whatever amount of material, then edit that down to usually under 10 minutes. The Grateful Dead actually played for over an hour (doing Playin' In The Band twice), King Crimson played for something like 40 minutes, I think Soft Machine also did a relatively long set, but in each instance, the material that was actually broadcast at the time was way shorter.

You gotta hand it to the menschen at WDR. Unlike virtually everyone else on the planet, they appear to have had the good sense to save all the cool stuff that they committed to videotape.

[GuitarGeek]

I would definitely agree that for my tastes, anything post-Damo doesn't match what they did with him.

I suppose a lot of people feel that way, but I rather like Saw Delight and Landed. Yeah, they're very different records from what came before, but I like the things they did on those two records. And yeah, Don't Say No is a re-write of Moonshake, but I still like it. I also like Rebop Kwaku Baah's percussion on Saw Delight, which I thought brought the band a sort of Afro-pop vibe to the music.

Flow Motion, on the other hand, I thought wasn't too good. I Want More I don't think is a very good song, and they compound the offense by including ...And More, which is just the band riffing over a tape loop of the "more and more and more..." refrain from the other song. And I don't remember anything else on that album being very good either. I never did get either of the last two albums, I think the only thing I ever heard from either is the Offenbach thing.

[jkelman]

Gentle Giant did a smart thing.... They made one last listening friendly album "Civilian" and made some cash and got out.

But did they actually make some cash? I cannot find any evidence anywhere that they made anything substantial from that album (or any, for that matter; if any record made money i would think In a Glass House which, despite having no American distribution, sold something like 100,000 copies as a British import - I seem to recall...and age may have weathered that number). If anything, Civilian was the death knell because, AFAIK, Derek Shulman wanted a hit record and, after their last album flopped, that was that.

I don't know of any bands that are still writting strickly prog as it was in the old days... Most everything I know of has some appeal to the modern current marketplace. I'd be interested to know of what bands are still around today or just starting out and are creating Prog.... the long lost, unpopular Prog at that.... and yet remaining a working band. I think most any band working today in prog has some market. Much of the newer stuff is sadly Metal, Shred, Prog, A guitarist I once worked with called it "SHROG"

While absolutely contemporary, I'd say Van der Graaf has managed to retain all the things that made it great in the day while still acknowledging the passage of time and evolution of music. I think each successive studio album since they regrouped in 2005 has been better than the last, with A Grounding in Numbers, for me, as good as anything they did back in the day. Yes, shorter tunes but as I was discussing, this very day, with a friend over coffee, they somehow don't feel shorter as the whole album feels so cohesive as a whole.

[firth5th]

Yoko Ono on vocals?