Can : Halleluhwah

Most folks, when they think of the prototypical German music, they imagine Kraftwerk, pristine, precise and mechanical, with neither a hair or a note out of place. But for me, the kings of the German rock scene are Can. They are the anti-Kraftwerk. They are dirty and funky, they improvise, they experiment, they rock.
Can started out in '68 as a bunch of German musicians, rooted in avantgarde classical and jazz music, and an African-American poet & singer named Malcolm Mooney. Malcolm only made it about an album and a half before he suffered a nervous breakdown and had to quit the band. After he left, they drafted Damo Suzuki, a wandering Japanese busker, who stayed with them through the rest of the second album and proceeded to record three seminal albums with the band. Damo's vocals are... unique. Sometimes he sings in English (I'm pretty sure) and sometimes in Japanese (I think). And sometimes I think he just makes shit up. But it doesn't matter, because, like the improvisation from the rest of the band, it always fits the song exactly right.

Can was equally inspired by the avantgarde and experimental movements sweeping through Europe in the 60's, by the progressive rock movement, also sweeping the continent in the 60's, and by funk, which might have made it to the continent, but not so you could really tell. If you ask me who my favorite drummers are, number one is John Bonham and number two would be Jaki Liebezeit. He could bring the funk like nobody's business. He had this amazing way of skittering across the drum set, performing what sometimes amounts to one giant drum solo, while keeping a funk groove going non-stop. He was as funky as Clyde Stubblefield or Zigaboo Modeliste and he was German.

Tago Mago was Can's first full outing with Damo and it has the rawness of the first album, but pulled in jazzier direction with more open structures. To me, "Halleluhwah" (not Hallelujah mind you) epitomizes all that is Can. It's raw, open and funky. On top of the funk, there's guitar riffage, electronic noodling, a violin solo and whatever else the boys can think to bring to the table. And of course, there's Damo's near-brilliant vocals. I'm not exactly sure what he's saying, something about his brother, I'm pretty sure, but he means it. And it's long; it clocks in at over 18 minutes of awesome and never dulls. And did I mention it's funky? Jaki and Holger Czukay rock that rhythm hard for the entire song. A brilliant song off a brilliant album from a brilliant band.

My personal mp3 of this song is over 26mb, so I had to scale it back to mono (you don't lose much) and resample it to 56kbps, which is the equivalent of 112kbps stereo. That still puts it at nearly 8mb, but I listened to it and I think it sounds fine. So, enjoy this truly epic piece. As I mentioned before you can find it on their 1971 release, Tago Mago. Although if you are just starting out with Can, I'd probably recommend Ege Bamyasi as a better LP to start with, then work forward and backward from there.

[You can listen to Can's "Halleluhwah" by navigating to the post "Song012" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

---