Amon Düül II--Classic or Dud?

instead, try this : play one side of dance of the lemmings then play, say, plague of lighthouse keepers. ie go back to favourite songs and especially playing the lps the way they were designed to be played, one side at an instance.

there's a lot of material there, so sifting through gradually, getting to know the band mixing "chill/ drone/ trance" with "rock" quite cruisely is my advice. They're almost chris&cosey "subliminal", they creep up

but if i hadn't heard yeti first (thanks to duane playing them to me while we were arguing the virtues of "rock"), they would have seemed both too "rock" and too "trance" (even "trance" or "drone" as those words meant in 1973), and i wouldn't have bothered follow-up

(oh, i found the original viva vinyl in a well-maintained thrift shop some time later. The inter-layered drones on "mozambique", once the truncated b-side of that weird "pigman" single then splayed out to full length on the lp (with secret message at end), that may be my favourite "trance" song, and i like the way that that lp itself from 1973 was possibly the first to use that word "trance" with justification and admission, and "mozambique" one of few pieces to justify that label, imo)

Generally, I would recommend avoiding Amon Düül, unless you are one of those saddoes who think the more unlistenable something is the higher the hipness quotient. The exception is "Paradieswarts Düül", which is good and even better with the addition of the Eternal Flow/Paramechanical World single.

NB that the recent round of repertoire remasters of ad2 albums have all been sonic maximised, somewhat to the detriment of the music.

if they're in little cardboard fold-out sleeves, that's probably them. "Yeti" has the paramechanical world 7" as a bonus which would have been neat, if they hadn't maximised the whole fucking thing. It really pisses me off.

listening to albums one, two and three will be a chore -- maybe i think of a golden period for that band -- Dadamais, Can had a golden period and are forgiven for their mid '70s burn out crap -- i think both bands are the same in lot of ways -- maybe communal bands have a cell structure that means some cells are self defeating, lots of little marching cans from nonwarholia, but that's as good at or better than the marching music of some Kraftwerk and some Can (who sometimes sound too uptight or too mellow)

oh, hush.

so, avoid the first three jam lps (well the ten jam sides, like the greatful dead, no synths, a waste of time)
(and avoid all jam lps obv.)

The only crap Can album is "Out Of Reach", certainly Can never plumbed similar depths to ADII. ADII were always really just a rock band, Can weren't.

Mr Gossett, I like Wolf City shitloads, esp the last track (title eludes me) & I'll have to get it again soon I suppose. IIRC as well as the synth, they had an optigan, or its high-end spinoff (I forget the name, I'm very tired) as well. "Vive la Trance" I've never got around to buying, b/c a lot of the later stuff is so lame, and I always lumped it in w/that for some reason. Poss I shd pick a copy of that up as well.

Once again I agree with Pashmina, a worrying development for both of us I feel - title of the last track: "Sleepwalkers Timeless Bridge", written, sung and mostly played by everyone's favourite drummer/guitarist, Daniel Secundus Fichelscher. As for the objections to "Lemmings" being based on a "knee-jerk reaction to the more superficially "prog-rock" sound" - well, if we leave the knees out of it, the fact that it's more prog rocky than the earlier albums is indeed one of the main problems with it except that "Wolf City" is much more proggy and is much better.

Cope's book is entertaining yet frustrating. I really wish he made his top 50 list in order of preference rather than alphabetical. Occasionally he would make a solid statement, like, "this is my favorite Can album" (Ege Bamyasi). I made a top 13 of Cope's picks, gauging them by the amount of hyperbole he spewed.

1 Ash Ra Tempel
2 La Dusseldorf
3 Neu! 75
4 Can - Ege Bamyasi
5 Ash Ra Tempel - Schwingungen
6 Neu!
7 Amon Duul II - Yeti
8 Popol Vuh - In den Garten Pharoas
9 Harmonia - Deluxe
10 Tangerine Dream - Zeit
11 Cluster - Zuckerzeit
12 Can - Tago Mago
13 Tangerine Dream - Alpha Centauri

I need to check to see if there have been any exceptional remasters of any of the above in addition to Amon Duul II. Anyone know?

I don't know that anyone will answer, as I don't know that anyone will find this with both the Search and New Answers functions broken. I found this thread with Google. Sigh.

these albums were already re-mastered in '02. read the thread linked above

"Vive la Trance" is so f'in great. I don't see many folks vouching hard for anything thereafter, but I just gotta check more stuff out... if the SONGZ stay even 1/2 as good...!

Also, as mentioned above -- the last track on "Wolf City" = 8-)))

My favorite Krauts by far!

I have at least one later than Vive La Trance called Hijack. It's awful.

See, I may have bought that once and then returned it, I can't remember! Maybe I'll skip to "Made in Germany"; the allmusic write-up on that one makes it sound pretty great...

Something about the funny/serious, clever without being too goofy, great songwriting that's self-confident without taking itself too seriously, thing on those later albums really hits a sweet spot for me... I'd try to name a few other bands that kinda work the same way, but it'd seem flighty, they're all so dissimilar. (I guess Guru Guru does something kinda equivalent for me, without the songwriting part; they're similar enough.)

It's like this certain vibe -- adult musicians at the peak of their playing and songwriting prowess; so great at what they do that they can be totally relaxed, though focused and totally on-point; a little dryly "whimsical," almost underplaying their hand, but also "nailing" it somehow...

it's been a while, but I'm starting to appreciate the post Wolf City stuff.

1978's Only Human doesn't get nearly enough love. It's my favorite AD2 release post-Wolf City.. very different, but still well crafted. Some songs work better than others. "Kirk Morgan" is so ahead of its time as far as the guitar playing and electronic beats.

APOCALYPTIC BORE

Amon Düül >>>> Amon Düül II

Yawn

Haven't heard it

get on that, colonel.

also it's

YETI>>>>WOLF CITY>>>TANZ DER>>>>PHALLUS>>>>>VIVE LE TRANCE>>>>CARNIVAL

not to imply that any of them are terrible, though, they're all worth listening to.

I think Carnival is certainly better than Viva Le Trance. The first few songs on Viva are really good, but then it falls off...

Anybody want to buy my Hi-Jack LP?

i was actually going to put them as tied

but you're probably right, now that i think about it.

I can't really argue with the rest of your hierarchy. Yeti is spectacular and Wolf City purrs along like a dream.

I find this band perplexing. I like various chunks of their catalog but sometimes I am baffled that the term krautrock is used to encompass acts as disparate as Amon Duul II, Cluster, and Neu!, all of which seem wildly different for the most part. have had Wolf City and Yeti (never heard any of the Amon Duul stuff) and they're okay - not as goofy/fun/random as Faust. Kinda of a piece with Hawkwind but not as conceptually together.

AD2 had more range than Hawkwind. Tanz der Lemminge, one of my favorite albums of all time, zigzags thru a panoply of psychedelic flavours. Restless Skylight Transistor Child goes from awkward Teutonic boogie to sitar-addled psychedelic folk idyll to distorted overdriven acid rawk to impending doom. The next track, Marilyn Monroe Memorial Church is a stagnating pool of echoey Goth bleakness.

I love Hawkwind and can see the comparison but I think it sells the Duuls short and ignores just how much they could do well.

Amon Duul II is def more all over the place than Hawkwind (who pretty much just cycled between one or two modes for the bulk of their early career). whether or not that's a virtue... eh, I'm undecided. I find the sprawl of Amon Duul II's stuff a bit off-putting.

Yeah well that sprawl is the essence of the band. No other band combining Jefferson Airplane, Incredible String Band, Velvet Underground and Night on Bald Mountain

So I guessing Stefan Zauner, singer of Freiheit, is the only former member of Amon Duul II to have appeared on Top of the Pops? (This could have gone on The Rolling "Top of the Pops" BBC4 Revival thread, er thread).

Amon Düül II--C, because

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqxH2aU9z-Q

"Hijack" is rubbish.

Me otm. I listened to this today, along with a lot of other shitty so-called Krautrock, and... well, put it this way, Renate sings two songs on this album and Lothar Meid sings THREE, I mean, wtaf?!?!? He's the worst singer in a band that contains Chris Karrer and John Weinzierl, need I say more? And what's with that song where he just lifts entire lines of lyrics, unchanged, from Mott the Hoople?

HISI (had it, sold it) - long gone from my collection, never to be heard again

Chris Karrer sings three songs too! But then Renate did say the guys in the band were a bunch of sexist hippie assholes.

Touring next year… could be exciting or maybe not?

I hear they're pretty good! I mean it's an oldies act, but most of the original lineup iirc

Okay thanks! Going to buy the tickets. Will give me a nice run up to spend the time with their music.

please report back! very cool.

And what's with that song where he just lifts entire lines of lyrics, unchanged, from Mott the Hoople?

It's worse than that, there's actually TWO songs on this album ("Hijack") that lift entire lines of lyrics, unchanged, from the same Mott the Hoople song!

Maybe the clue is in the album title; a détournement.

For the record, the Mott song is "Hymn for the Dudes" which is quoted in both "I Can't Wait" and "You're Not Alone"; the former also contains a line lifted from Leonard Cohen's "Stranger Song", which maybe does suggest this is a conscious repurposing.

I only heard this album this year but I found it a lot easier to digest than Vive La Trance; the band just seems a lot more confident about their efforts even as they scatter their energies. They're not "trying too hard" but the creative decisions seem less contrived; I was touched to hear Chris Karrer contribute a long sax solo to "You're Not Alone", or to hear elephants trumpeting over a "Shaft" funk groove. For what it's worth, this is probably the best of their "non-classic" records (though I haven't heard Made in Germany because only the single-disc version is streaming).

I quite enjoy Made In Germany

"Hijack" is terrible.

What you call a "conscious repurposing", I call lazily stealing some lines to fill out a lyric - and it's not like it's they're referencing some lines from a classic song, it's from a contemporary song!

idk i like "hijack"

What you call a "conscious repurposing", I call lazily stealing some lines to fill out a lyric

It just makes it more interesting for me, more than if Lothar Meid had scrambled his brains to come up with two or three more lines of English lyric.

made in germany is interesting because it's one of those records where a completely different guy takes over and then vanishes, in this case a guy named nando tischer

i guess it's kind of the end of "classic era" adii tho... lothar, falk-u, and renate's last '70s outing with them, right?

Lothar's not on it I think? It's the bass player from "Vive La Trance", Robby Heibl, but Danny Fichelscher is on at least one track!

The comings and goings in this band make Hawkwind seem steady and sedate.