Can - The Lost Tapes

Anyone know the full story of why Czukay left Can? I've just read another interview with Irmin Schmidt where he drops all sorts of dark hints about it being a "private matter" - I say another because it's not the first time I've read him say that. Whereas I've read Czukay say that the rest of Can didn't think he was a good enough bass player (and having just heard a live bootleg from 1976 I can tell you he is, uh, a good bass player)

@jon re. 1) - that was what I'd heard initially; that it would include even the previously brushed under the carpet album. I hope so! There's not been any real news on it though yet. We shall see...

The first couple tracks of that Irmin Schmidt & Kumo album were excellent...anyone heard of it?

Czukay's stuff is just on a whole other level to anything any other member of Can has achieved outside of Can

I'm objectively with you on this one, I always played Movies / Peak of Normal / Rome Remains Rome more than most Can

Yeah that nonsense about Rosko being a better bass player than Czukay always sounded like madness. Czukay was more interested in tablecore electronics & shortwave live-sampling than playing bass by that point, and the rest of the band felt that what he was doing didn't fit anymore. If it got more personal than that, it certainly didn't need to. Here's the bit about his interest in sampling & leaving from Czukay's interview in the Can Book.

I could use all possible sources of sound… the only problem was the
disagreement among ourselves. Reebop, who later had also joined the band,
thought that this music would steal people’s soul. That’s a typical native idea,
that someone can take your soul away by taking a photograph. Fine, you can
have this idea, but you can’t get out of the middle ages with it. I had, moreover,
a vision of special media-referent music. It even came to fisticuffs with Reebop.
I should say, he hit me and I defended myself. Ten minutes before the start of
a concert in Berlin. Of course he was sorry, and I’m only mentioning it because
it was a clear sign to me that it was time to go my own way.

Is The Can Book worth seeking out?

1) Does anyone know if the album box set is going to be all of their studio albums?

'The vinyl deluxe box set, due in early 2012, will feature remastered editions of all 14 of Can’s studio albums on both vinyl and CD, as well an exclusive, previously unreleased live album (vinyl-only), a newly remastered Out Of Reach, extensive booklets and more. It will be available for pre-order next month (October 2011).'

having a really hard time finding out about this online - i'm surprised they're remastering them again considering they just did this for the SACDs not that long ago

ah ok doesn't sound like a remaster so much as a repackaging

there are two books; the first one to come out was the 'Can Book': http://www.amazon.com/The-Can-Book-Pascal-Bussy/dp/0946719055

the second was the 'Can Box: Book': http://www.amazon.com/Can-Box-Book-Hildegard-Schmidt/dp/3933642019

my quote's actually from the later one. they've both got unique interviews. they were less guarded in the first book and more stuff about the solo careers; a lot of good journalism. the second book is much longer and is organized as four extensive interviews with each band member telling the history from their own perspectives, so their personalities really come through. really spells out what happened with their recording process when they moved to multitrack recording in 1974/5. I'd probably get the second one before the first one (if you can even find a reasonably priced copy of the first)

Good info, thanks.

(xp) Yeah, the Pascal Bussy book has good stuff, esp. from Jaki, who's such a tough nut on the band's career, he doesn't seem to rate much beyond "Monster Movie"!

The Pascal Bussy book was announced as being rereleased a couple of years back through SAF I ordered a copy which never appeared. Have wondered since if anybody did get a copy of it.
That was definitely between late 2008 and 2010.

I'm just wondering if it did actually reappear since SAF seemed to go into some kind of difficulty some time around then and several of their titles went out of print.

I kinda hope they have separate boxes, vinyl and CD, or at least if they are packaged together that it doesn't become prohibitviely expensive.

Even though their website is still up, SAF Publishing has pretty much gone under... Very much doubt anything will get reprinted from them..

aw, I have the Can book and the CabVol one.

Even though their website is still up, SAF Publishing has pretty much gone under... Very much doubt anything will get reprinted from them..

― Talcum Mucker, Friday, July 13, 2012 3:28 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Question was more did it happen at the time, I always wondered if it had seen a short run reprint before they sunk.

There are some very good books on that imprint so one might hope somebody else might pick up some of them. Thought there were other labels like Esoteric or Sunbeam might be interested in redoing some of them.
Probably other labels I can't think of immediately too.

2) Soundslike, are you ever going to get that blog going again? It was fantastic and I still check once a week or so in the hopes that its active again.

― heated debate over derpy hooves (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, July 12, 2012 1:02 AM (2 days ago)

Glad those mixes got you to give the maligned late-Can a chance. It isn't on par with the first half--but neither is 99.99% of other music, so that doesn't mean it's not great.

I've hoped to to get it going again, but returning to graduate school and working intensively in the summer has meant I've never been able. I've got about six or seven mixes for which I started culling songs, and several music-friends are working on mixes, so hopefully there will be some new content over the next year. Vast projects like '1981' are a thing of the past for me, unfortunately.

'A lot of it was bollocks'

http://thequietus.com/articles/09376-can-the-lost-tapes-interview

Thanks Soundslike! I totally understand "real life" gettnig in the way, I just wanted to thank you for your work on Musicophilia and to let you know it was appreciated.

been waiting for a copy of this for the last few weeks only to find that my order's still on hold.
Think I was having an intermittent trouble with signing into mute bank so ordered through a Can store I'm not sure how I connected to.
Pah

Great quote here

The reason why Can weren't this horrible, academic, German, up its own arse collective was because they had an African American singer who lit the fuse and gave them a proper sense of grit. He wasn't just any African American either, he was a proper artist and bonkers to boot. When we played the tapes at home my daughter, who was five at the time, would be jumping up and down singing along to 'Waiting For The Street Car'.

::facepalm::

NOT HERE

HORRIBLE :(

One can only guess that Jono has some unresolved issues with his father-in-law.

A lot of Holger Czukay's contributions to that Quietus interview are word for word stuff that I've read in previous interviews, is Holger really that boring?

he sampled himself

xp I noticed that too! Especially in regards to the first show w/ Damo, did they just take that section from a different interview?

Well that was what I was thinking, but then Holger seems to consider himself something of a comedian so maybe he just repeats the same amusing anecdotes

5lp box set version, £55 out in December, apparently

.. dudes

Just saw a party of a '73 live set from French tv yesterday. Don't think I've seen it before and didn't remember it being on the dvd.
Looked like it could be a half hour show or something, is it POP 2?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVAKoCJCL6w&feature=share

Potentially of minor interest to Can fans, a remix of sorts I did of "Vitamin C" mixing it with Steve Reich's "It's Gonna Rain (Part II)" (and Alvin Lucier deep in the mix) a few years back:

http://www.mixcloud.com/musicophilia/musicophilia-various-collidecoalesce-1950-2004/

Skip to ~50:30

Ha! Did anyone else get the email from Can with this in it?

Thanks for your support of Can this year, The Lost Tapes has been more enthusiastically received than we were expecting, we hoped a few people would be pleased that Irmin was persuaded to listen to the old Can tapes, it was beyond everyone's wildest dreams that so many people would love it and that it would get rated so highly in so many magazine end of year polls.

Anyway, we are writing to you as you bought The Lost Tapes from one of the Mute or Spoon sites, which gives us the opportunity to thank you directly, so thank you!

Along with the thank you we'd like to give you this track 'Fingers' by Cyclopean, an early Christmas present if you like.

I know, I know, I can hear you saying already "why are you giving me this track, you crass marketeers, this has nothing to do with Can", but actually, this is a brand new track from Irmin Schmidt and Jaki Liebezeit, it's a new project they have created with Burnt Friedman and Jono Podmore called Cyclopean.

Pronounced like this.

The four of them got together at Irmin's house in France in 2011 and Cyclopean was born.

aw I want an email from Can! How's the track sound?

Oh, that's nice.

I got a 'standard edition' off ebay, didn't know it existed. Basically, it's the three discs, in a wraparound CD sleeve with a booklet.

I don't know what the big box contained, beyond those things.

I've never been able to find this, so haven't bought it yet

Yours doesn't have the book? The book was really fun and informative (for me at least).
I haven't listened to the track yet, but gimme a sec...

It's like they didn't expect it to sell or something (xp)

The booklet is fun and informative. And slightly less than 5" square.

Deadly Doris and Dead Pigeon Suite are still two of my favorite songs I heard this year. Esp Deadly Doris. I LOVE it.

My booklet is full of pictures and about twice that size.

I ordered from Mute and have not seen that mail.. :-(
When did you receive it LL?

Ok I listened to it. Starts out kinda Pure Moodsy/late (not great) PV, somewhat corny beats, it evolves into some quasi "ethnic drumming" and then it gets pretty groovy and then it's over. That's my expert review. Would listen again. I didn't dislike it.

I got the email this morning, like 15 min ago? It took me all of 15 seconds to post here after I got it because i wondered if anyone else had gotten it.

I'll be happy to forward the email if anyone wants to hear the track. Don't know if they're being weird about how many downloads are allowed, but prob not.

Just got my vinyl set this week. It's a thing of beauty.

have we talked about how awesome this whole thing is? wow. one of the best outtakes collections ever.

yeah a while ago i listened to it all on spotify and flagged the must-have tracks. It turned out to be like 70% of the collection.

totally worth buying in the format of your choice imo
even though i have listened to it a bagrillion times already, i still get genuinely happy when dead pigeon suite pops up on my ipod while i'm walking

just endlessly great, what a cool band! also may have tipped me over to malcolm in the can vocalist championship sweepstakes.

too many box sets which I "need" "urgently"!

-this one
-Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall deluxe reiss
-BOC Complete Albums
-Star Trek TOS Complete Scores
-grrarghh the $$$$$