ILM Artist Poll No. 77 · CAN · Voting Thread [Ends 07/24/16]

What the fuck is going on with the drums on Pinch!? It's been years since I revisited it and my mind is being blown.

There's a particular moment from 7:00 to 7:05 after the ambient keyboards which is just too much. Is this the best track to showcase Jaki's drumming? It sounds like it, he carries the whole song.

Did a helluva lot of carrying did Jaki!

"Pinch" was the first Can song I heard...instantly hooked thanks to Jaki. Still a total fave.

Not seeing enough people mention "Future Days" - both the album and the song. Transcendent.

Currently, I'm tempted to vote Future Days and all tracks from it atop all else. This January I pretty much listened to it and nothing else for two weeks straight. Never got old.

Never understood the Julian Cope hate for Future Days. Has everything I love about Can.

Never understood the Julian Cope hate for Future Days. Has everything I love about Can.

fixed

i voted

Never understood the Julian Cope hate for Future Days. Has everything I love about Can.

Don't think he hated it, he just didn't like "Bel Air". Personally speaking, title track is in the running to be my No. 1, "Moonshake" probably top 10, the rest of the album I can live without.

Yeah Future Days' title track is the most organic piece of band music I can think of, the ideas just spill out of each other and it creates its own structure. I've listened to it so many times that it feels inevitable, but it's an incredible achievement requiring five musicians in total sync with each other.

bel air is one of their most underrated songs imo, it will be a top 5 candidate for me

never understood why people like Julian Cope's music or any of his fucking books or opinions full stop tbh. I remember walking a 15 mile round journey from Cottingley to purchase Future Days from Jumbo Records in Leeds due to lack of train fare. I haven't listened to it in years but it is a fucking great album and easily up there with Can's best.

Of the Damo albums I the Ege Bamyasi/Future Days were my absolute favourites.

The timing of this poll is so good. Everything I've listened to this week sounds so fresh, even stuff I'd kind of dismissed before.

Yeah I rate Ege Bamyasi and Future Days above Tago Mago which is the general favorite but it has too much noodling for my taste (although can noodles are the best noodles in all of prog).

Ege might be their most 'pop' and accesible and the Future Days song might be the most trascendent jam session ever recorded.

http://i.imgur.com/343N2qy.jpg

I was listening to Monster Movie, the original Spoon label cd and the sacd remaster back to back, and just noticed on the sacd three of the four songs are 5-8 secs longer. I can't actually hear why though?

On remasters: how do we feel about those anyway? I started listening to Can on 70s pressed lp's (an uncle introduced me to them). I got most 90s cd's, and in 2004 (?) I bought the Future Days' sacd, which sounded amazing to my ears. Because of that I bought the sacd of Ege Bamyasi as well: it's absolutely terrible. Drenched in a treble bath. Unlistenable (for me). All in all sticking with the 90s Spoon cd's and old vinyl.

Also putting in a word for Delay. I think it may just come down to liking a voice, but I love so much of the Mooney stuff. Thief in particular being a great one. I think of this album as being along the same lines of Velvet Underground's VU comps, in the sense that it's not just leftovers and crap, but songs that probably could have been released at the time. Actually the delay between recording and official release is about the same for both of those, I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1NR7lrmE50

tago mago is the best to listen to on psychedelics

The few CD reissues I have heard sounded too compressed to me compared to the original Spoon CDs.

However, I have the vinyl reissues of everything up to Saw Delight (except Flow Motion - already had a UK 1980s reissue of that) + Delay 1968 and I think they sound awesome. I think they used the same digital transfers as the CDs but perhaps with less compression in the mastering stage...?

Delay is amazing and Uphill'd be a contender for my #1 if I ws voting.

Why not vote?

xp OTM, "Uphill" is amazing

and yeah, vote!

Cos it'd all be from memory, and when I did that w The Smiths poll I turned out the most generic list ever. I like Can a lot more than them tho, I might give it a go.

Thief is another Malcolm one with a longer original mix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAiYRCpvC2c

Does anyone rate Out of Reach? I threw the first track on and thought it felt an awful lot more consistent with their mid-70s stuff than its reputation.

Also, this little sunkissed, Moonshake-inflected ditty with Holger jamming almost offstage on the shortwave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZkex5jHvuI&feature=youtu.be

From the same performance, this pretty unbelievable rendition of what is ostensibly Babaluma's Dizzy Dizzy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOfWKzMgeac&feature=youtu.be

"Tango Whiskyman" is such a pretty piece!

In defence of "Don't Say No", if I had written "Moonshake" I would pretty much want every song after it to be "Moonshake" as well.

Did someone post the longer (mono?) version of Uphill? Same recording, just more of it. Can't see it on YouTube but it used to knock around slsk.

I like Don't Say No, especially Saw Delight version. Maybe I would have liked it less if I had heard Moonshake first.

I suspect others are spending a lot of time on things like Lost Tapes. For my part, I'm finding myself probably giving way too much rope to the 74-79 material – in large part because I am fascinated by the idea of Can trying to shoehorn themselves into shorter forms and pop structures. Notwithstanding the reduced frequency of heavenly Jaki grooves, I find the majority of these records texturally fascinating and really easy on the ears.

I didn't spend very long on my ballot, because (as is rarely the case with these polls), I knew off hand what were my favorites -- and the vast majority is from the classic albums (of which I include Soon Over Babaluma). I do have some tracks on there from albums after that too (my pet "underrated Can album" is Flow Motion), but my main issue with late 70s Can is that they stopped being a studio-centric, tape-edit jam band, and became just a regular jam band.

Also, let me thank the poll runners for limiting this thing to 20 tracks and 5 albums! Nothing like not having to worry what my 37th favorite Can song is.

Yes, I found a Top 20 Can tracks list I'd compiled years ago and I don't think I'll be deviating from it very much, if at all. Ditto my favourite Can albums haven't changed over the years.

I can't get into any of their albums after Soon After Babaluma. There's one or two tracks per album and several moments I enjoy but they somehow sound more like a Can tribute band than the real thing.

Soon Over Babaluma*

Even in SOB a track like 'Come Sta La Lua' they sound like a more timid, domesticated band. Was Damo such a driving force to the band? He always seemed to me like the perfect fit but the weakest link in the band.

What sounds like 'Come Sta La Luna'? I wish more music did!

Oh I'm not sure what does just saying it sounds like a more timid band.

9 ballots one week to vote!

Not gonna argue that the band don't sound "more timid" on the post-Damo albums but there is lots of good music on them. I put off listening to those records for years because of their reputation but nowadays they are what I go to when I want to hear Can.

The intensity of something like "Father Cannot Yell" is not there anymore on the Virgin-era albums, but it's not there on Future Days either. They always had mellow songs.

my main issue with late 70s Can is that they stopped being a studio-centric, tape-edit jam band, and became just a regular jam band.

I'm not sure I agree. Surely, something like "Half Past One" is as tape-edit oriented as the early records, right? I think "I Want More" and "All Gates Open" and stuff on Rite Time might be as well.

"All Gates Open" is so good. That's Can for me as much as Monster Movie is.

I love All Gates Open, will definitely be near the top of my ballot. The chorus sounds like it was recorded in some kind of cosmic beer hall.

I don't mean every track is a jam track. I Want More is a straight up pop song! It's classic, but there way too many jams that don't really go anywhere on those later Can albums. All Gates Open is a great track (I voted for it), but pretty easily my favorite from that record. It also says something that my second favorite track is the Can Can thing (or Can Be). This isn't the otherworldly, beyond-genre music they were making on Tago Mago or Ege Bamyasi, it's basically Euro free-fusion, which *can* work when everyone is hitting (and probably when they made the right edit) -- or can be kind of nondescript and bland, which is how a lot of that era feels to me.

am I the only one that loves 'Augmmal to bits?

Xpost: they weren't particularly ahead of time and when they were it was accidentaly so. They were following trends in the 60's and they were still doing it in the 70's. Problem there is late 60's/early 70's were mindblowingly good and late 70s not so much. I guess we shouldn't blame Can for keeping up with the times but Western civilization.

"Father Cannot Yell" feels outside of time to me. Like a seven-minute long No New York track from 1969.

It seems Can's rep doesn't carry the same cachet with my friends who are into the more electronic side of krautrock, like Kraftwerk, Cluster (and to a lesser degree, Neu). Still, I think they were ahead of the curve in the early days, in the same way a band like Faust was -- mostly to do with how they constructed and produced music. In a totally different vein, they were ahead of the curve in emphasizing James Brown beats, and just by virtue of Jaki wanting to play like a machine, conceptually they're linked to Kraftwerk and Neu.

There was definitely something in the air, and Can were not only part of it, but (among its) leaders. However, I do think they became a bit one-of-many by the late 70s. Maybe that's related to Holger Czukay's lack of involvement.

am I the only one that loves 'Augmmal to bits?

― Mark G, Monday, July 18, 2016 4:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If you mean Augmn, then no, because that song would be very high on my ballot if I somehow find enough time to vote on this thing