CAN PART ONE : Canned Turkish Okra

My fascination with CAN started with Until The End Of The World Soundtrack and continued with Unlimited Edition, but my first proper album was Ege Bamyasi.  CAN is a band that is always in my top five and I have featured them on my old blog and also when I was in radio I featured them twice in tribute to their huge influence in music.  Ege Bamyasi is their most accessible, but true to CAN form it's still a classic Avant-Garde masterpiece.

CAN to me was unique and interesting.  Each member of the band brought some kind of musical style to the table.  Jaki, the drummer brought his past playing in Jazz groups that were a bit left of center.  These bands were not straight ahead ensembles and laid the ground work for his perfect and awesome style of drumming.  Michael Karoli came from school with a Jazz and Dance band background, but also he loved the Blues.  Also he not only played guitar, but he also played violin and cello.  Irmin Schmidt came from a Classical background and on a trip to America in 1966 saw the different ways rock could be twisted and changed.  Holger Czukay also loved Classical, but when he heard a Beatles song he was so fascinated by it's odd structure and sound he became in awe with bands like Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa.  Lastly, was Damo Suzuki he had no musical background, but was found by members of CAN while he was doing street performance in Munich.

You would think after all these different mix of styles ideology and genres this would be tough to blend together correctly and make work.  Somehow they did make it work and their influence was extraordinary.  For more information check out the Wiki page and under the style section.  It's a worthy read for more information. When I first heard this "mix" as it were I knew that they had something promising.

At first listen you might that your author is on drugs, but I'm not...yet. CAN were unique and different.  They broke barriers of what can be included in a group or for that matter a band who is supposed to stay on the right track or tracks.  From the opening notes to Pinch you know they were not going to be the typical band who followed The Beatles or British Invasion or whatever was the hip trend of the time.  The marched to their own unique way.  It was controlled chaos in more ways then one. Their song Spoon was the only "normal track on the album that sold 300,000 copies.

It's the middle album in a part of three classic albums CAN put out in the early 1970's.  It's an album that I can play more and more and never get tired of.  It's the album I introduce people who want to 

start listening to CAN.  When I first heard it, it sounded nothing like the music of the time.  Even people who like me want to explore something new to listen to.  CAN is a band that still reverberates today.  I could write about all their albums in this blog, but there will be time later to do that.  Take a listen and tell me what you think.  I know this album is in every music geeks collection.  Listen to it and soak it all in and you will be amazed.