Can- I want more.

Been a long time since I left you, without a dope beat to step to, is what Eric B & Rakim opened their 'I know you got soul' ditty with, and the reason why I quote them is because I have not posted anything here for 4 months, which when you consider that at one point I was posting up to 9000 tracks a day, is pretty fucking poor.

Anyway, for the last 4 months I have moved out to Germany to try to embody the spirit of Bowie, Iggy and Lou, the holy trinity of music, from which all things came and to which all will go again. Of course I'm not actually a fan of Bowie, Iggy or Lou but I am trying to gain extra hipster points by namechecking them.



Lou's earlier outting with the Velvet underground was not only influential on Bowie or Iggy but also proved to be the starting point for German experimentalists 'Can' who not only managed to get the first velvets album but also managed to create a band with a similar sound. By the time the Velvets had disintergrated due to in fighting and drug addiction, the Cologne band had undergone several changes of their own, a name change from 'inner light productions' and the recruiting of Damo Suzuki had led to Can releasing an album which would cast a similar shadow to the Velvet Underground.



Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi are easily in the chin stroking realm that the 'Velvet Underground & Nico' or 'white light, white heat' inhabit, they are all revered with critical acclaim today and often feature in music critics Top 50 of all time, but at the time, no one bought them.




These albums turned on artists like Bowie Iggy and Lou to the music that was coming from Germany, German music at this time had such a profound effect on the 'magic triangle' (iggy, bowie, lou) that they all left New York to live in Berlin. Bowie apparently tried to recruit Ralf Hutter to record with him, while bands like Tangerine Dream gained popularity among the prog listeners of 70s Europe.

Krautrock, in general benefited from the attention it got from Bowie, as did Nine Inch Nails, Placebo and even the Arcade fire who Bowie dueted with on American TV to gain them massive popularity did- But unlike the latter bands, there is an obvious sense that Krautrock helped Bowie, Iggy and Lou develop as artists. All you have to do is listen to tracks like
'V2 Schneider' from Bowies 'Heroes' or all of Lou Reeds 'Metal Machine Music' (go on, I dare you.)

So in my search of the essence of what made Bowie Iggy and Lou so awesome, I have become bogged down in squelchy German progressive music from the 1970s, strangely, it sounds a lot more adventurous than 90% of the music I can find at the moment, but maybe that is just because I am becoming an old man.

Having gone a little bit too far in spouting pretentious bollocks about a genre of music very few people care about, I'll not leave you with the most obscure 'Cluster' track I can find, but a track that the Krautrock purist turns their nose up at because it was Can's crack at the charts, but the hook from it is used as the incidental music on BBC Radio 6 music, and for that reason, its as good a place as any to start with Can.