Amon Düül II--Classic or Dud?

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.