Amon Düül II--Classic or Dud?

"Very important: we are NOT a Krautrock band."

Oops!

"Eye-shaking king" is still one of the heaviest/ more fucked-up/ plainly weird songs ever.
Yeti = the real soundtrack to Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain (unintentionally funny bits included).

"Very important: we are NOT a Krautrock band."

Oops!

Has any 'Krautrock' band ever said, "We're a Krautrock band"?

Just Faust.

I put on Carnival in Babylon in hopes of liking it, and I'll admit I liked it more than I did last time I tried it, but it was still eh to me. What do I need to hear instead?

I like everything up to and including Wolf City.
― hstencil, domingo 16 de noviembre de 2003 03:39 PM (5 years ago)

i.e. YETI

i <3 yeti...i need to give tanz der lemminge more time...

still, someone go nominate AD2 in Sven's best band ever thread RIGHT NOW!!!

I like a lot of Yeti, but I don't like all of Yeti. The last two tracks (one of which is 18 minutes long) sort of lose the plot. At least, the plot I was following.

I put on Carnival in Babylon in hopes of liking it, and I'll admit I liked it more than I did last time I tried it, but it was still eh to me.

yeti yeti yeti

CiB is pretty eh to everyone, i think, it's got a couple of good songs but it just feels flabby and unmemorable.

OTM. Whereas "Wolf City" is sheer entertainment from start to finish.

Wolf City is a masterpiece. Even if the band doesn't agree.

since when has a band's opinion mattered

Yeti >> Wolf City >> Carnival In Babylon > Phallus Dei

And Dance of the Lemmings?

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.

can't believe they stole some lyrics on uh Hijack