Can: Monster Movie

Father Cannot Yell - my favorite opening tune on a debut ever* - Yoo Doo Right - not far from my favorite ending. Sounds just as "revolutionary" a rock album to my ears as Velvet & Nico, Stooges or Black Sabbath's 1st or Never Mind the Bollocks.... really

*& Kobaïa+ come to think of it... many more

I'm not sure that this album is the one that showed us all what CAN became, even though there are some things that seem to suggest that we might have something after all. The long cut on Side 2 of the album, supposedly came out of many hours of playing around, which of course was what happened to TAGO MAGO, a much superior album. But the strong free spirit of Damo, seemed to add something that was more vital and interesting than what Malcolm seemed to be bringing to the group, even if we have no idea what he is saying most of the time, and sometimes there are no words at all. 

The main thing in this album is Malcolm  Morley, and I am not sure that he was a good mix for the band as he definitely brought an American touch to their work, when in the next version they started saying they did not want to do "western sounding" anything. The change/addition of Damo Suzuki, helped define the band for good, and its spirit was not exactly alive in this first album of theirs.

I think it is a nice album to have, if you are a collector of CAN material, since their "Unfinished" stuff and other "Attic" material is probably better than a lot of the stuff that we have heard, but I am not sure that we will find a lot more now. With many of the folks passed on, I'm not sure that the one left has the energy for it, and Damo, seems to be completely desensitized from the CAN thing, even if he plays the pieces/parts he was on.

For my tastes, it's not a great album, but a nice one, and I had it on my collection since the days of "imports" ... Ege Bamyasi was first, Soundtracks next and then Future Days came out ... and those 3 dominated things until Soon Over Babbalooma which got played by Guy Guden to the tune of using about 3 or 4 copies of the album, and then Landed, which was a great fun album, but most rockers can't handle the mix of all the weirdness.

First heard of the band in the film DEEP END, by Jerzy Skolimowski. You did not see the band, but they were doing MOTHER SKY, for a couple of minutes during a scene. We went right after the albums at that time, but could not find the import "Soundtracks", and eventually Ege Bamyasi came out and the rest is history!

I'd be curious Pedro if you thought there was one that was...  it was a continual evolution as the truly greats tend to do.  As I've posted I've thought Soon over Babaluma represented the culmination of  all they had worked up to to that point but the next one, also a great one, however was a jump in a different direction.  I don't think there was a single represenatiive album that represenated all that Can was.

Hi,

Thx ... looking for it right now ... seems to be one of the few things I do not have. Mostly after "CAN", I stayed with Holger and his endeavors that I felt were more interesting and fun to listen to ... the later "ambient" stuff was not as good for me, but I thought it was a step for him to do something else with it ... but his first 5 or 6 solo albums, and even the albums with David Sylvan, were exceptional ... and for my ears a total riot, and one can almost see how CAN was such a "crazy" band, but only Holger had it in his albums.

Interesting thought about that comment above, was Jaki bringing in what might be considered classical music elements, or at least modern music, when I thought that his best work was not to be defined as a drummer at all ... so to speak. When you hear the transition in the two long cuts on the album (hopefully the CD did not break them up ... I would be mad!!!!!!), you have several minutes of material, where the drums slowly wind up to NOTHING ... except a little tick, a little tack, a little touch here and there, and the timing for them, is unbelievable ... with nothing in between, but not seeing it as "music", but as an honest feeling, or touch .... or feel.

You can not teach that in schools ... you have to live through it and understand your part and work well enough, that you almost always want to expand/experiment with one little something or other somewhere, and it is not ... it is NOT ... related to the beat or time keeping of the affair ... it is related to the FEELING of the piece at that moment ... and this is the part that people think they can create on a DAW ... and you can't ... it's a living moment in time ... you can not "freeze" that moment in a DAW, and think you created something, since, at the moment you play it, it will feel differently than you thought ... and this is the part that defines CAN for me ... music that is "thought" about, and music that is "lived" through ... and their rehearsals, and it shows with Malcolm and Damo, are more about "living through" than they are about anything else ... and sometimes, some groups (same in theater) learn a certain cohesion between each other that makes for amazing productions and work ... perfect examples would be the English "Angry Young Men" scene, and 10 years later the West End (NT and RSC), and so on, and the amazing number of folks they brought us, and the kind of work they did ... almost all of it, having arrived through the magic of rehearsal and improvisation.

The hard part in all this is ... why was "pop music" late to the party? I know "rock music" did show up and it was then called "art music" (and similar) and later ... progressive), however, both rock music, and pop, and even jazz music since then ... have almost all of it been completely riff driven and sequence derived and processed to the better known ways, styles and designs for the better top ten/top 100 things around.

The individualistic nature of it all, helped create CAN at that time in the late 60's, which you can see in time ... but if this were done today, everyone here on PA would laugh, call it stupid, uneven and bizarre ... because of the lack of ability to listen/hear something so drastic and different, and a further inability to "resolve" what it is, when the lyrics are ... not the clue ... they are just a part of the whole. 

To me, this is the fallacy of a lot of "progressive" things, that the lyrics MUST TELL US what the whole thing is about, and in the end, this is not true, and shouldn't be ... since we all think and feel it differently anyway, but a top of the pops mentality prevents folks from seeing that, specially in a historical context, that many here think I am inventing, when all I am doing is seeing the theater, film, literature, around these bands ... and they are all doing the same thing the band was doing ... it's not my fault that London was not smart enough to create other arts around the punk scene to take it away from the laughing stock that they became, specially for making fun of a lot of music that was, and is still, revered as outstanding and very well written.

CAN, is a magnificent example of all the arts at the time ... you really think there is a difference between the famous improvisations by Klaus Kinski in a Werner Herzog film, and Damo's improvisations on TAGO MAGO or EGE BAMYASI? At the very least, you find out real quick how important it can be ... Werner Herzog was so enchanted with the insanity that Klaus created and he made it the last 20 minutes of AGUIRRE ... no script necessary! Damo and CAN, did the same thing ... those moments were too precious and valuable to be wasted ... and that is what most rock bands do, because they trust the DAW, and their thrashing, and not the rest of the life of the piece. And the lyrics tell you what they are about, of course ... hahahahahahha!