HOLGER CZUKAY

Awesome.

Danke!

Watched some of this last night. Two things:

1) I wish I spoke German or this had subtitles – Holger doing an interview while splicing tape of a Papal service would be amazing to understand!

2) Is that one of the shows they used for Radio Wave Surfer?

3) Michael Karoli. I had no idea that the wispy guitarist from Can was such a damned handsome man!

1) Ditto.

2) Looks like it.

3) But of course!

haha! Michael Karoli was definitely the prettiest Can man

3) Michael Karoli. I had no idea that the wispy guitarist from Can was such a damned handsome man!

― Naive Teen Idol

dude that's his sister on the cover of roxy music's "country life"

True. But forgive me, I said two things and that was a third.

There's quite a bit about the making of that record in Wobble's autobio IIRC.

Karoli's girlfriend was the other woman on the cover of Country Life.

It's a bit daunting, but I got one, box dented and some LP sleeves a little creased, but apart from that all sound, for £40

Tempting to splurge, but probably best to just keep to one LP a week or some such.

https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/video/sendungen/rockpalast/video-holger-czukay---der-privatsinfoniker-100.html

Available until 2099

Wish he'd talked a little more about his time in Berlin. When he was a student, Czukay lived in Steinstücken, a tiny exclave of West Berlin that was surrounded on all sides by East Germany. He had to show his pass every day at the GDR checkpoint in order to leave Steinstücken and travel along the transit route to get to West Berlin.

"The East German policemen weren't at all like you'd expect. In Steinstücken there was an elite unit of 300 men. A hundred of them were assholes. a hundred were in-between and a hundred were really OK. They marched up and down outside my window while I practised on my bass and told me what I was doing well and not well. [...] Three of the East German soldiers, I brought them with all of their weapons to the West Berlin check-point. The police there brought out some bottles of beer and we all drank. This was during this hot time (in the Cold War). Somehow I survived."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bqtY2PtEyU

THis may have appeared before and also may have been seen from teh same link I got from David Stubbs today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klPlEJoHF1M
but pretty surreal. Surprised to see him on what appears to be a pretty mainstream show. & do wonder what response the competition question got.

I posted in some other thread, but it was a while ago now.

all the best avant-gardists did a solid stint on blankety blank or local equivalent: john cage with his mushroom lore, robert fripp and toyah, this whatever it is

"i thought i would get a kiss from you".

Didn't Frank Zappa appear on one of these? 🤔

Not with Anthea Turner though.

Thanks to this thread, I finally listened to Movie.

Oh I miss him.

Also, another good reflection from Sylvian on Holger:

🐦[Here’s the full transcript of my interview with ⁦@davidsylvian58🕸⁩ from the current issue of ⁦@uncutmagazine🕸⁩... https://t.co/M531wNQ4bU🕸
— Michael Bonner (@MichaelBonner) July 13, 2018🕸]🐦

Holger was evidently impressed with you; but what impressed you about him?
With Movies he’d created a genre defying classic album that continues to impress even when listened to today. It’s an incredibly innovative piece of work. We spent a good deal of time together in the ‘80s, prior to my moving to the States. He was an incredible raconteur with an endearing sense of humour. It’s virtually impossible to think of Holger without a smile on his face. In his earlier incarnation as a member of ‪the band Can, he tends to appear quite intense in group photographs, but he went through a radical change on leaving ‪the band. He claimed he suffered a minor nervous breakdown and the story of his recovery is a rather remarkable one in which it’s impossible to discriminate between fact and fiction, reality and altered states. When he emerged from this experience he claimed to have discovered his sense of humour, which is very much to the fore in albums such as ‘Movies’. One of the very few musicians who could incorporate humour into the fabric of an album without diminishing the powerfully groundbreaking quality of the work (Hassell claimed humour in music was comparable to the same in sex, which may possibly say more about Jon than anything else, but you can see what he was getting at). In his role as composer, producer, musician, and engineer he was a genuine innovator. To work with him, or to witness him at work, was to see an entirely different methodology utilized than the kind you’d likely find as standard in professional recording facilities of the time. Now that a good deal of recording takes place outside of such institutions it’s possible there’s more room for personal innovation than there once appeared. But judging by the limitations of the technology touted by the recording industry, harping on about authentic recreations of technology of the past, I can’t be certain. Holger’s was a uniquely inventive mindset, beyond replication.

thanks for sharing that video - both Holger and Anthea seem personable enough to make that interview fun instead of awkward like it ought to be. I never noticed how tall and imposing he was, but he seems so friendly. he reminds me of a few professors I had. Sylvian's story makes sense...Can had a sense of humor but were also serious and intense. by the time they were clearly goofing around Holger was out of the band.

Thanks for that interview excerpt!

This album is amazing, btw - gorgeous and silly and playful.

On The Way To The Peak of Normal is really slinky if you haven't heard it. Very recommended

so that led me down a rabbit hole of Holger interviews, including one where he's talking about electronic music. he says Can's music was out of fashion for a while because it wasn't "hi-fi", which to me is weird because the records sound amazing. but I suppose that's maybe not what he's talking about.

like Monster Movie *should* sound grungy but it's really crisp somehow. it was 1969 and they were broke, I dunno how they did it. Ege Bamyasi and Future Days sound like something that could have been recorded today.

I assume he means that, prior to 1975, they recorded everything on 4-track.

Having said that I don't really know what's he talking about. I don't know that the circumstances of the recording had anything to do with whether Can were "in fashion" or not - or whether they ever were particularly out of fashion. The post-74 (most hi-fi) version of Can seems like the version that was most out of fashion or favour or whatever.

does he say who they were out of fashion with?

it's at 2:00 here - I guess he says what Can was doing was "unprofessional" and "not accepted"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_s1aMhoMH0

he says they do 'lo fi' recording, but again the actual albums sound really good to me

"Some alchemists in the past have made gold/Out of STONES"

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