Krautrock

Jacob Schoolcraft wrote:   ... Many people do not understand when a musician practices. Typically if they become aware of a family member or a neighbor practicing an instrument 10 hours a day they often believe that somehow...something is deadly wrong. They make judgements. They link it to depression and that is ridiculous. A Classical guitarist will practice 5 hours of scales in the morning...then 4 or 5 more hours of working a piece out along with practicing pieces they already know. You have to alternate your fingering hand and truly get used to doing that or you'll never be able to play Classical music. ... I had students that struggled even when they practiced..but other students had natural talent to play things back to me after hearing me play it only once.  ...

Agreed Moshkito. Well put!

Lewian wrote: ^ Well, the word "skill" can mean many things. Somebody without training on an instrument can still have some kind of skill. They can have musicality, originality, a sense of rhythm, and an ability to listen and react to their bandmates. Some kind of skill is certainly needed to do anything interesting, and of course you are right that proper mastery of the instrument is required for a good number of things. Still people like Damo Suzuki can bring a unique, fresh and worthwhile element to the music, which was welcome in Krautrock. (There is also bad Krautrock made by people without skill, probably far more than we know.  But then chances are Krautrock is not alone at that.) Personally I have little skill, and I think of my music as OKish.

Edited by Valdez - January 14 2025 at 19:58

Not having skill on an instrument isnt always a requirement when you play Space Rock or Punk Rock..and sometimes regular Rock..however it's quite important to be somewhat of an above average player if you're going to be Steve Hillage's back up guitarist...or a member of Gong.

You have to know how to play an instrument and in some cases it's more important than reading. It's easy to understand why people that couldn't play an instrument did not end up in Weather Report.

A person that has no skill joins in..and attempts to play in the key of G. They may choose to hang on a G note throughout a piece which they play rather loud because of the fact that they don't understand dynamics. In the end they're just wiping everybody out. They're not giving other musicians space to play a solo or anything for that matter because they're just striking a G note endlessly and hogging the music. Why? Because they're ignorant.

You have to know when not to play. I'm sure you've heard that before. People that have no skill or talent do not belong in songs that are constructed with dynamics. People that have no skill might fit into Space Rock or even the early Punk..but most certainly not a Symphonic Prog Rock piece. ..unless you want to become a music director or instructor at band rehearsal.

Does Steve Hackett work with people that have no skill? And if he did where would that take him? Would Univers Zero or Far Corner do that? I don't think so. It was fine in certain Krautrock bands but certainly not too many other sub-genres of Prog. If it were it would sound intrusive or unnatural..like AK-47's blasting away throughout every Triumvirat song.

The musicians in CAN were skilled and they utilized an idea..but music itself is not generally a free-for-all. There's a lot of organized composition in almost every style of music on our planet which requires precision and accuracy and far from holding someone's hand at band practice, (so to speak), in order to guide them through something they have no experience playing or comprehending and that can be disastrous 😀



Edited by Jacob Schoolcraft - January 14 2025 at 15:41

Jacob Schoolcraft wrote: The idea that you didn't have to be skilled at voice or an instrument became an interest to pursue in Krautrock.  ... Faust and Cluster were not trained musicians. Florian Fricke played the piano beautifully and heard music in his heart...while other electronic and or experimental artists didn't know how to play an instrument at all....yet they experimented by using repetition. ... Then another list of German bands were made up of skilled musicians. Highly doubtful that such an idea was popular in England during the early 70s .That mentality didn't develop until the early days of Punk. ... In strange ways the lack of academic surroundings and music education was a reversal in the process of music composition. By not being traditional. ...

Jacob Schoolcraft wrote:    Jurgen Fritz it seems grew up in Cologne...a place where Edgar Froese was from and a kind of development of Electronic Music existed there during the Krautrock movement

^^It is interesting to note that the debut Passport album consisted of most of Amon Duul 2, and then after that they changed their lineup and added Wolfgang Schmid on bass on Second Passport, and then on the third album, Handmade, Curt Cress was introduced. Cress sure was great on the Triumvirat album Pompeii, as well.

Edited by presdoug - January 13 2025 at 08:20

presdoug wrote: Jacob Schoolcraft wrote: presdoug wrote: Two of my favourite bands, Germany's Triumvirat and The Pink Mice, are from the place and era that the term krautrock came from, but are not so, being Symphonic Prog groups embracing classical music in a more direct way.....and I concur as has been pointed out that the term krautrock was initially any German rock music of any type, but then evolved into what it is known as today.                     Peter Hetch is a brilliant keyboardist! My favorite Pink Mice album is IN ACTION. I have the 2 on 1 cd released years ago. It has a glitch or perhaps the original recording had a defect and was never corrected. It's a whole of 3 or 4 seconds. It's never been properly released and it would be nice if Esoteric did it. The first 2 Lucifer's Friend albums were decent...but the most progressive sounding is Where The Groupies Killed The Blues. Back in the 80s I heard a bootleg cassette tape of Lucifer's Friend performing live in the 70s. They had a piano on stage and they played Rose On The Vine, Prince Of Darkness, Mother and also tracks from their first album. The sound quality was good and the band were tight. Supposedly it had been recorded in a club in Germany. However it is written that Lucifer's Friend didn't do much touring or live performance...unless of course they mixed a fake audience in not unlike Omega did in the early 70s or perhaps Kayak on Witness... Thanks for your reply; he really is a brilliant keyboardist! I guess I prefer The Pink Mice more than the Lucifer's Friend recordings I have sampled....thanks for the reference to Where The Groupies Killed The Blues being the most progressive of theirs...I don't believe I have heard that one, and I will search it out....I would love it if Esoteric would do those two Pink Mice albums, and wish they would tackle the early Triumvirat recordings, too, and Helmut Koellen's overlooked solo album, which has never seen the light of day on cd by anybody....I love the Esoteric cds that I have in my collection, they sound so good!

Jurgen Fritz it seems grew up in Cologne...a place where Edgar Froese was from and a kind of development of Electronic Music existed there during the Krautrock movement OR....the German youth movement expressing their anger about the old Germany through music.

Jurgen Fritz being more of a Classical player began fusing it with a Rock style. Tales Of Mediterranean follows that path. In a sense I see Triumvirat as Classical Rock. It's a strange album. I get a strange vibe from Illusions as well. Spartacus and what followed sounded further into a progression of style that was developing alongside slightly more commercially viable type songs...although they were not....for example Old Loves Die Hard . But enter Curt Cress and now you've got an amazing drummer in the band who is a monster player alongside people like Billy Cobham, Simon Phillips, Carl Palmer, Bill Bruford etc...but is less known in America just as PASSPORT were less known.

Lucifer's Friend...Where The Groupies Killed The Blues featured piano playing in a style like Vincent Crane, Rick Wakeman ( on "Mother"), and Classical Rock style. "Prince Of Darkness ", "Where The Groupies Killed The Blues" , "Mother" and "Rose On The Vine" fall into a Progressive Rock territory more so than their debut album. "Summerdream" adapts a Bella Bartok piece . I'm not fond of it's vocal melody, but the instrumentation is interesting. The musicianship sounds very skilled particularly on "Rose On The Vine".

Sometimes they are mistaken for Uriah Heep because of the John Lawton delivery but I can't see the Demons And Wizards incarnation playing the aforementioned L.F.songs without struggle based on the indication that L.F. were more skilled. Ken Hensley was a fine keyboardist and Gary Thain was a decent player but the rest of Heep were not skilled like Lucifer's Friend. Lucifer's Friend just decided to be more progressive for this one album. They sometimes drift into King Crimson territory on drums ,guitar and bass along with a kind of creepiness on Mellotron.

This was the only Lucifer's Friend album to sound like this. The debut had similarities to Deep Purple and Uriah Heep. In Vineland, New Jersey the Menantico Cult were preparing to repeat the "One Hundred Year Ritual " and were interested in hiring Lucifer's Friend to perform after the ceremony. Lucifer's Friend were The Pink Mice...

Certain German bands which fell under the term Krautrock may have engaged in Space Rock temporarily or rather periodically throughout their albums. Eloy being one of these groups. They were more Symphonic Prog and didn't rely on Space Rock. Unlike Can , Neu, etc. and several Eloy albums revolved around Sci-Fi stories as such concepts...fantasy.

Jane had similarities to Pink Floyd and they sometimes layered their music in slow motion.

Guru, Guru in the early days had a Space Rock style that sometimes crossed over into a Hendrix, Redding, and Mitchell style. Instrumentals like "Spaceship" were more in the style of Hawkwind. Of the early albums I like Kanguru the best. I felt they found the right sound by then. On albums like Guru,Guru, Don't Call Us, We Call You, Dance Of The Flames, and Mani and Some Friends ...each is an experiment in a different direction and they all differ from each other.

"Another World" is a revisit to Electric Ladyland while "Woodpecker's Dream" reminds me of P.F. "Grandchester Meadows"
The Jazz Rock side to Mani und Some Friends was a major change in style that surfaced on Tango Fango, Globetrotter, Live 78' and the style was...many times...reminiscent of PASSPORT. Klaus Dolinger was an amazing musician and writer. This part of Guru Guru's career I was intrigued by. Their musicianship proved to be dimensional to me. To go from being a 3 piece Rock band to sounding off in the style of PASSPORT was mind blowing to me .

Ash Ra Tempel and Popol Vuh I followed for decades. Ash Ra Tempel later known as Ashra were more Electronic than Space Rock. Popol Vuh had a completely different style from anyone in Europe..and having a unique originality with their sound as a band and their style of improvisation. I often visualized the Himalayas and their natural meditative sound was spiritually sophisticated in a strange way...creating a dreamy affect in my mind..

Edited by Jacob Schoolcraft - January 12 2025 at 19:26

presdoug wrote: Two of my favourite bands, Germany's Triumvirat and The Pink Mice, are from the place and era that the term krautrock came from, but are not so, being Symphonic Prog groups embracing classical music in a more direct way.....and I concur as has been pointed out that the term krautrock was initially any German rock music of any type, but then evolved into what it is known as today.

Peter Hetch is a brilliant keyboardist! My favorite Pink Mice album is IN ACTION. I have the 2 on 1 cd released years ago. It has a glitch or perhaps the original recording had a defect and was never corrected. It's a whole of 3 or 4 seconds. It's never been properly released and it would be nice if Esoteric did it. The first 2 Lucifer's Friend albums were decent...but the most progressive sounding is Where The Groupies Killed The Blues.

Back in the 80s I heard a bootleg cassette tape of Lucifer's Friend performing live in the 70s. They had a piano on stage and they played Rose On The Vine, Prince Of Darkness, Mother and also tracks from their first album. The sound quality was good and the band were tight. Supposedly it had been recorded in a club in Germany. However it is written that Lucifer's Friend didn't do much touring or live performance...unless of course they mixed a fake audience in not unlike Omega did in the early 70s or perhaps Kayak on Witness...