can reissues

Woebot

Well-known member
has anyone heard these? there's rumour they sound powerfully good. better than the original vinyl? i bought my copy of tago mago in a record store in an underground station in vienna in 1989 (aged 18). taking it on board was probably THE pivotal moment in the development of my musical agenda. that sounds pretentious, so what...

nights spliffing endlessly to tago mago. mushroom.

rececntly, pursuant my la monte young fetish (bit of a digression that maybe?) the velvets edged can off the number one spot. quite why on the face of it i do not know. one has to listen to the velvets with a bit of imagination, with can WOOOOMPH, it hits you. its completely undeniably. itd be quite easy to argue that EVERYTHING came from can.

in fact i reckon i got into funk and jazz funk AFTER getting hooked on the can riddim. i remember, and this recurs wierdly in my head like a mantra, a remark made by some wire journalist (i think hopey glass, whoever he/she is) to the effect that such and such a piece of music could never appeal to him as he was a "can fan and jazzophobe". i've never shaken that phrase out of my head. tuning into resonance fm the other day on the way back from the airport i heard "halleluwah", man i was pulverised, rocked to the core, i pulled up at the house and just sat there in the dark for 15 minutes as it steamrolled to a close.

and yet theyre so ubiquitous now we almost take them for granted. like the fookin air we breathe. discovering those spoon records in the early nineties, alongside the rave explosion, well it was mind-altering, paradigm-shifting for young nobs like me.

i think the packaging of them of quite exquisite, i love the thick curved-edged jewel cases and the layout. however the artwork reproduction came in for a little criticism (from rob young in the wire). i was on the inside track on this one and have it from the horses mouth, so to speak, that the design company were handed the scans used by the record company (spoon, mute i dunno) and did their very best with them.

we actually have a czukay signed up to dissensus (delusions of grandeur soon to be dashed to pieces, is it mike czukay from sacramento..?)
 

francesco

Minerva Estassi
I have bought Tago Mago and Egebamyasi. I used to have those on vinyl and still have it far away from there on my parent house. I listened to the first CD reissues and they were, if memory serves, a bit flat and with studio or tapes background noise clearly audible, but i don't have those or the vinyl there for comparison, sorry. What can i say is that those new reissues sound very good, but also if I could have the vinyl at hand probably i wouldn't care buy again maybe. I have nothing again the cover scans, they seem good to me, but maybe is because i got the european version that is not Spoon/mute/emi but Spoon/mute/Wea manufactured? The booklet could have been nicer with bigger photos and less text but really i have seen far worse reissues.

But then is the music that is incredible.

It was Paperhouse and Spray by Can who turned the very young me on "underground" music. A older friend made to me a cassette compilation of krautrock and at the beginning put those two songs. Paperhouse was like an illumination, i still can belive how much i love this song.

To everyone interested in the reissues, my verdict is that spoon/mute made an excellent job, and me too also like the "round" cd case (also used for Virgin Prunes and by Auralux for Lee Scratch Perry 14 Blackboard Jungle Dub).

francesco
 

nonightsweats

Active member
WOEBOT said:
has anyone heard these? there's rumour they sound powerfully good. better than the original vinyl?

i've got them and love 'em to bits.

sound quality wise - ege bamysai has sparkled up best but probably only because they had better recording equiptment at that stage. in any case, all of them sound far better than the previously available spoon/mute cd releases. no hiss! more bass. better definition. a full sound spectrum. louder. etc. i've dragged my vinyl copy of ege out and, to my ears, it sounds better than that as well. (not that i actually like vinyl, btw).

not quite sure why the guy from The Wire went so overboard on the packaging. the actual jewel cases are wonderfull and the cover pics don't look as bad as he made out. the new pics are terrific - small... but it's cd packaging, innit? the text is the real problem: there's nothing new and no expansion on the old stories.

i can't wait for the re-release of future days and babluma - they should sound spectacular.
 

redcrescent

Well-known member
WOEBOT said:
i bought my copy of tago mago in a record store in an underground station in vienna in 1989 (aged 18). taking it on board was probably THE pivotal moment in the development of my musical agenda.
That can only have been the now-defunct Atlantis store, from which I took home tablets by Pere Ubu, Thomas Mapfumo, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Sugar Minott...
Funny to think one of your musical epiphanies happened down my neck of the woods, in that store, no less. It's a small, small world indeed.
 

carlos

manos de piedra
i have all the spoon / mute / restless reissues on CD and i can't imagine buying all these new reissues- even if they sound "better"- i just don't have the energy to re-buy them, let alone do some sort of listening test to see if they do indeed sound "better"
 

rob_giri

Well-known member
Ah Woebot, after reading your blog so much in the last year, i've always felt that you're like an older version of me (in relation to the Can, Lamonte Young obsession). Future Days and then later Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi (the former, i'll have you know, still remains my favourite) blew my 16-year old mind to pieces and opened me up to limitless possibilites. The calm intensity of Future Days still shakes me on every listen. As a drummer myself, Jaki Liebezeit is my god.

Speaking of which, i've always liked hearing people's say on their favourite Can records. Mine are:
1. future days
2. ege bamyasi
3. tago mago
4. Monster Movie
5. Soundtracks
6. Soon over Babaluma
7. Delay 68
8. Landed

etc, tell us yours..


The only obsession that has ever rivaled that of Can is, funnily enough, Neu!. I listened to their first record, bought on beautifully reissued white vinyl, every day for about 9-months when i was 15, spliffing away in my room in Melbourne's southern suburbs. I even made a t-shirt out of that Michael Rother photo on Neu-75 in year-10 art class, wore it just the other day :).
But as for Lamonte Young, well, he was like my hero for a while there. My favourite track on the first Neu! record is Im Gluck (the double-bass drone), and this mind-blowing discovery led me to Young - i've since been obsessed with drones in general. The only way one can really come by his music is, unless their a middle-aged record-fiend, which i myself would one day like to be, is the ole' Soulseek. What was weird was that i was completely obsessed with him even when i'd only heard a three-minute version of the Shandar Dreamhouse record on that Fluxus compilation. Weird how music-fanatacism works. Just reading miniscule facts can create such an amazing fantasy world. And lets face it, sometimes a good story can make the music sound better. Can't remember if it was Ingram or Reynolds who polarised between the music-fanatic and music-connoisseur, but i am most definately the fanatic :)
 

rob_giri

Well-known member
Ingram i just read on your blog a while back that you spoke to Young over the phone!! ARRGGGH. "Good one, chuck". Nice
 

carlos

manos de piedra
i've always had a soft spot for "landed" and "Delay 1968"- which are at the bottom of your list so i'll just write about them a bit

i love the raw sound of "Delay 68"- the way they plod through these velvet underground-inspired jams and try to find their own sound. it's a heavy record, and flawed but i find it very vital. "little star of bethlehem" is a monster song.

"landed" was my second Can purchase (after the Cannibalism 2LP comp) - i find a used vinyl copy around 1985... it is very "pop" in its own way- "hunters and collectors" and "full moon on the highway"- but karoli's crazed fuzz guitar and jaki's precise mechanical drumming really affected me back in 85 and i would place this LP high on my list. and "unfinished" is one of their best cut-and-paste sound collage jams.

their later albums like "flow motion" and "saw delight" have some great moments also- dub, funk and disco get thrown into the mix
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
can can

the original cd reissues have diabolical hiss levels going up and down whenever there's a Czukay edit and totally ruining things like 'quantum physics' where there's a lot of near silent empty bits with miniscule scurrying details

in terms of the Canon:
for me it's Tago Mago battling it out with Babulama to be #1. Side two of Babaluma would just inch ahead of the 'mushroom/yeah' side of mago.

with Future Days not too far behind either of them

for some reason Ege Bamyasi has never hit me that hard whereas for a lot of Americans, that record is The One

Unlimited Edition has some really out stuff on it as i recall

i like the idea of reconsidering the Virgin era stuff but practically speaking i never put them on, although Landed has got so nice stuff on it

when i was a Pil-head in 80 or so i heeded wobble's word in the nme and went to check out Can and bought some comp whose name i forget, it was all Virgin era and i was exceedingly underwhelmed -- 'i want more' and the violin-y one (half past dawn?) on landed. couldn't see what the fuss was all about.

okay where do we stand on the solo stuff? for me it's Movies by several miles.

PS btw matt , hopey glass = mark sinker (the name coming from that character in Love and Rockets, which Mark is obsessed with). there was a classic letter in the Wire's letters from readers page, complaining about some Hopey Glass piece and saying "she tries hard but she's no Mark Sinker"
 

nonightsweats

Active member
ege bamyasi is the one i've always loved but, that too, was the 1st thing of theirs i purchased so maybe the constant repeat playing in my bedroom had something to do with it.

i'd read about the band in NME mid 70s and wanted to get the records badly but could never find them (australia being a complete backwater at the time). then i accidentally saw the ege cover in a really bad record store in a biggish suburb near me in the $2 rack. and never looked back. i think this was the experience in the US too : cut-out bins everywhere full of them - at least that's what i've read a few people say.

as also mentioned - that 2nd half of babaluma is near their best stuff.
 

rob_giri

Well-known member
groove, i love that word!

Funnily enough everytime i think of 'Soon Over...' I think of you Reynolds when you mentioned in your blog once (or was it in Energy Flash?) that you thought Quantum Physics/Chain Reaction was Can's most 'cosmic groove'. And also your description of Can's "ethnofunkadelic groovescapes" haha, great!

As for side projects, true 'Movies' is a gem, but i think Canaxis was just too cool to pass up. There was a period where i'd just listen to 'Boat-Woman Song' over and over. Now thats cultural imperialism for ya! (yawn)

Anyone seen Damo Suzuki play? Saw him twice in melbourne, utterly cosmic. Unfortunately i didn't see his third show, which apparently was completely insane. Damo himself said later that it was the 'third-greatest show' he'd ever played, and that included Can! He's going to release it i've heard. Meeting him was the first chance i've had at meeting an a near-idol. Twas quite an strange affair. 'Damo, you changed my life, man!', and this strange bearded Japanese man looks back at me with a smile to end all smiles.
 

xero

was minusone
Just read simon's piece on DFA - does James Murphy own scores of Can 'Future Days' t-shirts or does he wear the same one every day?
 

Woebot

Well-known member
blissblogger said:
when i was a Pil-head in 80 or so i heeded wobble's word in the nme and went to check out Can and bought some comp whose name i forget, it was all Virgin era and i was exceedingly underwhelmed -- 'i want more' and the violin-y one (half past dawn?) on landed. couldn't see what the fuss was all about.

yeah for a while the virgin things were the only things i could find. i think i picked up flow motion (is it?) a couple of years before i bought tago mago, and just couldnt see what all the fuss was about. i remember that comp with its almost apologetic liner notes, the writer professing to have found nothing worth checking out in the later Can-onTM, before being chastened by a friend along the lines of, you really should check it out, theres some worthwhile things in there....(tympani rolls.......whopee cushion)

for me Can is best broken out into single tracks (cos lets face it even the great LPs are marred by slightly crazed forays into the bizarre, thats the charm/genius of the crew) In no particular order:

1) Paperhouse/Mushroom
2) I'm so Green
3) Pinch
4) Yoo Doo Right
5) Dont turn out the lights leave me alone
6) That one off Limited Edition with Damo and the flute
etc ad infitinitum

blissblogger said:
okay where do we stand on the solo stuff? for me it's Movies by several miles.

Well Canaxis is essentially a Holger solo record, so probably that. Ive always thought those Liebezeit Soundtrack things were pretty disappointing. I guess Holger worked better as a collaborator, and thats Can isnt it, a Fourth Mind thing: Phew, Vamps, Rastakraut Pasta etc

People have nice things to say about Damo Suzuki's solo stuff, but I often fear out of generosity.........

blissblogger said:
PS btw matt , hopey glass = mark sinker (the name coming from that character in Love and Rockets, which Mark is obsessed with). there was a classic letter in the Wire's letters from readers page, complaining about some Hopey Glass piece and saying "she tries hard but she's no Mark Sinker"

Ha! Thats brilliant! Well whaddaya know!
 

Woebot

Well-known member
redcrescent said:
That can only have been the now-defunct Atlantis store, from which I took home tablets by Pere Ubu, Thomas Mapfumo, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Sugar Minott...
Funny to think one of your musical epiphanies happened down my neck of the woods, in that store, no less. It's a small, small world indeed.

sweet, i was hoping someone would know that! aah those were the days, egotripping round europe. i still have my notebook from that day, drawings i made at an egon schiele exhibition. vienna rules..........
 

Woebot

Well-known member
childOftheBlogosphere said:
The only obsession that has ever rivaled that of Can is, funnily enough, Neu!. I listened to their first record, bought on beautifully reissued white vinyl, every day for about 9-months when i was 15, spliffing away in my room in Melbourne's southern suburbs. I even made a t-shirt out of that Michael Rother photo on Neu-75 in year-10 art class, wore it just the other day :)

hey cotb!

you're so OTM here. without a shade of a doubt neu! were up there with can for me too in that period of rediscovery/fetish. again (weirdly) a mantra. ive a memory of scouring nyc for neu! in 1991, standing by the guggenheim going "neu! neu! neu! neu! neu!" in my mind. after can nothing came close to the hit of those records, and (pre-eBay) they were EVEN MORE IMPOSSIBLE to get my mitts on. i had two tracks from Neu 75 on a tape my girlfriend's big brother made me, and that was enough to send me round the bleeding twist.
 

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
Solo-wise, the Holger Czukay/Jah Wobble/Jaki Liebzeit set Full Circle on Virgin is fantastically good, pretty much like prime era Can but deeper, more dubby and soundtrack like. And Canaxis (Czukay and Ralf Dammers is a staggeringly good tape experiment thing that's fully the equal of yer La Monte Youngs / Alvin Luciers.
 

jwd

Well-known member
'ege bamyasi' was the one that got me, my best mate james being a mad can fiend when i shared a house w/him at age 17-19, i remember finding 'future days' on vinyl (one of the few he hadn't scored) and he pulled such an incredible guilt trip on me i had to let go of my copy (i did trade it for an orig. vinyl 'dreamweapon' so i didn't do too badly, only to have a spacemen 3 obsessive friend guilt me out of THAT one too. i'm stronger now.) but yeah, 'ege', the ONE for me, "pinch" moves... after that 'tago mago' and 'future days', i think i'm alone in finding some of the malcolm mooney stuff a bit too rigid.

one of the loveliest things can ever did was their short contribution to the soundtrack of wim wenders' 'alice in the cities', i wish they'd make that available on some odds'n'ends cd, alongside those 7" singles that are impossible to find. their relationship with wenders leading to them contributing to the soundtrack to one of his weakest films too, can't even remember the name of it, but the song was... "last night sleep"? not so bad for late 80s can actually. wenders should have stopped making films after that road trilogy. solo stuff? after 'movies' it was all a bit feh really wasn't it. that irmin schmidt 'toy planet' thing, i'm glad i only paid 50c for that one!

damo suzuki gig in sydney, a friend reports damo sighing into the microphone "i am so happy, i could cry."

childofthebogosphere, if you need some (more) lamonte, drop me a private message.
 

hamarplazt

100% No Soul Guaranteed
On the way to the peak of normal is by far my favorite. I even play it more than the proper Can records. Actually I must admit that when I finally got my hands on some Can, after I had read all these highly evocative articles about how far out and mindblowing they were supposed to be, I was somehow not blown away at all. And that wasen't the later stuff, but Tago Mago!
 
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