Yes by a very long distance (runaround or not), although I might find some delight in Can (saw or not). 

Btw, I favour both bands over the Pointer Sisters.

 

I entirely agree

I can Can only when I am in the mood (for a day)

Lately I've listened to Yes a lot more than Can - mostly Drama & Fly From Here - but Can were really important to me in the early-2000s. I've been fortunate to meet both Damo & Malcolm Mooney. Can were all about the "spontaneous composition" and that's a path that I'm more interested in for my own music, though I also appreciate the more traditional compositional aspect of Yes too.

Yes I can

Can I cannot

do listen more to Can 

but then again as much as for the brilliance of Can there is the fact that I can mentally listen to each and every 70's Yes album and every note from them in my head without ever putting on an album of theirs.   They are sort of ingrained in one's musical DNA...

For me it has to be Yes, they are one of my favorite bands and I've never actually listened to this 'Can.'

But once again it looks like Logan recommends it, so it's probably good. Man that was a fun album that he recommended on the other thread! Not sure about better than Gentle Giant at their best but boy.. that was from back when albums were a real adventure and I sure enjoyed that one! 

I envy you brother.. for some day you will.. and will be like having 4 men achieve simultanious orgasms in your ears...

those kinds of discoveries are what makes this music so great. You are in for a treat when you get around to cleaning up that black mark on your prog fan resume...

Yeah them and 'Gong' I keep seeing mentioned on here but never got around to listening to either. And as far as that black mark on the resume, it's probably too late at this point since there's so many popular artists on here(particularly all those ones from Italy) that I haven't heard yet that.. there's just too many man. Anyway can  you recommend an album from Can for me to start with? I would appreciate it friend. 

I'd think of the first album of Tago Mago as the best introduction to the band. Rougher and more powerful than Future Days, Ege Bamyasi and Soon Over Babaluma but more varied and subtle than Monster Movie. Ultimately I love them all and they're more or less on a par but Tago Mago album one should be the best for recognizing at first listen what a force they were. (There's just the danger that the faint-hearted of the just converted get out of them again when listening to Tago Mago's second album. )

Can can

I love Mother Sky but overall Soundtracks for me is a rather inconsistent listening experience. Which is natural given that the tracks were meant to serve some other purpose in the first place than pure music listening, and that on top of that they were put together from I suppose quite different films. It's surely not a bad album but for listening from beginning to the end I'd rank it clearly behind the other listed ones.

Yes is sort of standard - maybe a little too much at times - while Can are/were crazy. I appreciate their looseness and silliness, such as Halleluwah(?) with Damo's oddball singing. Also things like Malcolm Mooney's crazy stories, Holgar Czucky's picking up strange radio signals and mixing them into the music, and Jaki Leibezeit's hypnotic drumming. Lots of tribal jamming too, striking up a great groove and vibe.

I like the live version of Dizzy Dizzy on YouTube. That version is not necessarily flashy or prog, but it's still fun and infectious. It shows that you can draw out a lot from even simple rifts. Pulling the marrow out of the backbone of a song and running with it. Another way to use prog, but from a simple structure.

micky wrote: A lot of bands loved to dither on about outer space.. no band tackled the inner space of one's mind like Can.. and the 2nd side of Soon over Babulama was and is in my humble opinion the single greatest sides of music that exists.    In fact since I was thinking of you, Can, and this album today I brought it in to work today and subjected my chaffeur and helper to this as we were driving.. at about the 5 minute mark he said.. WTF is this.. this is amazing.. indeed... it is..... Chain Reaction and Quantum Physics...   listen to these with a glass of wine in hand and the lights down low and see what Can had worked toward with the previous albums. Start here with this album, then go backwards and see how they arrived here. Unlike Magma.. Can is a band best served by introducing them at their apex then working backward..

Its miraculous yeah. Nothing quite like Chain Reaction existed before it and maybe not after. Your post reminded me of this  http://https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11699-future-days-soon-over-babaluma-unlimited-edition-landed/" rel="nofollow - Pitchfork text/review  by Dominique Leone: 

There are four small miracles in Can's "Chain Reaction"/"Quantum Physics", from 1974's Soon Over Babaluma. The first occurs at about 40 seconds into "Chain Reaction" when the 4/4 stomp of Jaki Liebezeit's drums line up with Holger Czukay's bass pulse, alongside tambourine and percolating drum machine; I realize that this song is closer to trance techno than the minimalist funk or psychedelic motorik of the band's earlier records. In fact, the first time I ever heard "Chain Reaction", I was mostly unfamiliar with trance, and wondered if Can had actually invented the music. I'd never read anything to that effect, but it seemed obvious they must have had at least a hand in its creation. In any case, the only music I've heard since that approached their primal, impressionistic romp has been by bonafide dancefloor shamans like the Orb or Orbital, or even Aphex Twin's ambient stuff. Of course, I loved Can a lot more: They seemed subtler and messier, like Claude Debussy's ghost tripping over a Mayan ruin mid-thought.

The second miracle occurs at the 6:28 mark in "Chain Reaction", when the swirling mass of synth and Michael Karoli's brain-fried guitar solo is brutally interrupted by a chime and black void of metallic, echo-chamber ambience. The beat stays intact (Liebezeit couldn't stop playing that pulse on a bet), but the mood goes from proto-jam-band orgasm to stark ambience with drums of death. Had Terry Riley not nabbed the Phantom Band moniker for one of his records, Can could have stolen it here-- and Liebezeit did for one of his solo projects in the 1980s! Unlike virtually any other band on the planet, Can were able to straddle the line between primal and progressive, popular and avant-garde in a way that made both extremes seem like the best possible end for Western music.

The third occurs five-and-a-half minutes into "Quantum Physics", when Irmin Schmidt's Alpha 77 synth cluster chord suddenly becomes a fully-fledged major one. By this point in the song, the raging, percussive momentum of the previous track has almost completely evaporated into only the hint of a beat, as if the spirit of the piece had long since been shot out into space, left to dissolve into what popular physics author Nick Herbert once described as "quantumstuff"-- the one true matter of the universe, of which we and everything we see or feel is made. Schmidt lets his tones sustain, and I can hear the overtones forming, one by one, until the chord is more than just major. In fact, the physics of sound dictate that if you let a note ring long enough, you'll get the minor-7th harmonic, and eventually a 9th-- exactly the notes old Debussy liked to insert into chords to make them all pagan and erotic.

The last miracle occurs as the song is fading away from us entirely, when even Liebezeit's drums have dried up and the only discernable sound comes from Schmidt's endlessly spiraling synthesizer overtones. Mid-period Can is arguably the band's most interesting because it witnesses them having to explore more than just the backbeat of experimental rock, more than just the ambience of the space music they helped create. "Quantum Physics" is what happens when discipline and intelligence rams head on with divine inspiration. It is understated and refined, but glowing with life. It's not the kind of song you put on to start a party, but if you want to send a few of your best friends home like angels, you'll put it on at the end. It sounds like the music of the spheres to me.

so today I had to merely paraphraise the esseence of that wonderful piece of musical analysis..

bonus points of recognizing it...  now brother.. do you agree with it? This album, those pieces were not indeed the apex of Can musically.

I just listened to Ege Bamyasi, and I really liked it! Some of it was very rhythmic and some just relaxing. I think it would be great for meditating which is right up my alley. So thank you all for your suggestions. Micky, I'll try to listen to those two you posted sometime later tonight or tomorrow. Thanks bud. 

Oh and the hurricane hasn't really gotten to where I live yet, but my brother is at Fort Bragg and they are getting hit hard. We told them they could come stay with us but he can't get away at the moment. So wishing them the best right now. Thanks everyone. 

Edit: Oh and Mortte, I'll have to check out that Gong album you suggested sometime. Seems like it might be good. :)

cool man...  definitely let me know what you think of those and keep safe down there.  

Hope you and your brother will get over that hurricane.

Thanks Mortte, I think I'll be fine. It's my brother and his family that need your well wishes.

Oh man, I just listened to those two selections that Micky posted.. tribal.. rhythmic.. I'm starting to think maybe bands like Magma and Can are where it's at. *shakes head vigorously to try and snap out of it* No, it's about bands like Yes and Genesis.. and and Gentle Giant. Has to be. 

Oh and Mortte, I'll get to that Gong album hopefully tomorrow and let you know what I think of it. 

Great to hear your opinion about Gong!

lol...  awesome..  yeah they are a kick in the ass aren't they...  

no it is not.  Those are gateway bands that sadly too many stop at and just masturbate over.  Digging deeper finds the truly inspiring (non English) stuff that makes prog so great...

 

Micky, what other non English prog stuff do you recommend man? Nothing evil though. I've determined that Magma isn't, and I don't think Can is. Amon Düül ll I'm not sure about though. Just nothing evil. 

 

About non-English (well they sing mostly in English, but are Finnish, really great band) not-evil music, I think you should listen Wigwam. You can start from the Hard N Horny, their first album.

 

But of course thinking the members of Amon Düül 2 I believe they have lots of fights and members leave and come back all the time.

Dellinger, thanks for the recommendations friend. Pink Floyd and KC aren't really my style though, or the Inferno deal lol no thank you. Some of the Spanish language ones might be good, or that Swedish deal. And yeah I'll try one of those from Italy at some point, they seem to be popular on here so eventually I'll give it a try. 

Mortte, thanks buddy. I've seen you mention this 'Wigwam' deal a few times now on here. I will have to try that album and see what I think of it.

Yeah Caravan is definitely one of my favorite bands(of any genre), and actually I was listening to Nuclear Nightclub(didn't see the full album of hard n horny anywhere on youtube) and it sounded kinda like Cunning Stunts or Blind Dog at St. Dunstans. Good stuff. Also I was listened to one those bands that our friend Dellinger recommended, Ekos, and that was actually surprisingly good. 

So these could be two new bands for me. Thanks guys. :)

Mortte, yeah that was good what you just posted. I would have liked it better as just instrumental(with no singing) but musically it was very good. I'm starting to actually like Wigwam a lot. 

Dellinger, I was listening to some of Unreal City's self titled album and it is very eclectic. Sounds really good but some of the lyrics turn me off a bit. Do like Ekos though, I will keep listening to them. And as far as that four hour drive, I would say maybe don't go to the Nightwish deal but do go to the one with Focus and Ekos plus that classic Italian band. I don't know that's probably what I'd do. 

Micky, I feel your pain. As Dellinger knows I quit the forum for about 3 months this past spring because of Captcha not letting me post. Was actually trying to post a response to him and it kept not letting me, so eventually I just quit. 

 

Actually "Losing Hold" is the only song where these three great composers worked together. Story tells Pekka had made those instrumental parts, but he thought something missing, so he asked Jukka to do something into the song. Jukka added that vocal part and thought when they were working together that he would ask Jim to make lyrics. Jim did them and then they also sang it together! I think this is the greatest Wigwam song and really would like to imagine what would have happened if they had worked more together, but I quess it just couldn´t ever been possible. What I have read they were all quite individualists and really had a strong view how they wanted their songs to sounded like.

 

But when you liked those Pekka-made instrumental parts, you should listen this song from the same album (as one can think about the song name, it´s higly influenced By Zappa´s Hot Rats-album):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsT2vYkBPIc" rel="nofollow -