It was another uncomfortable night owing to the cool change
arriving later than expected although fortunately another Black Saturday did not occur. “M”
spends part of the morning watering and I take advantage of this to visit a
nearby second hand place specialising in books and CDs. I purchase Damon Alban’s opera Dr Dee, Don Felder’s book on his time in The
Eagles and Graeme’s Thomson’s bio of Elvis Costello. The CD goes into my plastic pending listening crate
and the books onto my library shelves.
We then head into the City for lunch at a recently
discovered Chinese restaurant with extremely affordable prices. It is located in the Port Philip Arcade and
we enter from Flinders Lane passing the original location of the Missing Link
record store, now a ladies shop. My mind
wanders back to the early 1980s when I stumbled across an impromptu gig being
given to a large crowd by what I assumed was a trio of American buskers. It turned out to be my introduction to The
Violent Femmes. Unfortunately Police
terminated the gig only a couple of songs after my arrival. After lunch, we return to Flinders Lane. I take the opportunity to pop into Polyester
Records and purchase a ticket to see Bob Mould in March.
Back home I settle onto the couch determined to make inroads
into my current reading. I’m going
through Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Ordinary
Germans And The Holocaust. I decide to
have some music on my headphones and scroll through the iPod for something
instrumental. I settle on:
Tangerine Dream – Rubycon
Along with Phraedra and Ricochet, this seems to be regarded
as the best TD album. It certainly is my
favourite. Like Ricochet, the album
consists of just the title track split into two parts almost certainly due to
the requirements of vinyl records. I’d
set the two sides up on the iPod to omit any space between tracks and the
result is one seamless track. What was
originally Part 2 has a distinct Kraftwerkian feel about it. Were the German bands of this era ripping
each other off? I remember that members
of the key acts of the era TD, Can, Neu!, Harmonia, Cluster, et al did
collaborate with each other and so, without any real knowledge of the TD story,
conclude the answer is probably no. (Or,
if you will, Nein.)
The sythns whoosh so magnificently in my headspace that it
takes about five minutes before it dawns on me that I’ve chosen an album by a
German act to go along with my choice of reading matter. Did I think there was a connection? Another no.
After all Rubycon was the first instrumental album I came across while
scrolling. More importantly, I remember
the one thing that seemed to unite all of these German bands of this era was a
desire to create music with no discernible connection to the past either
historically or musically.
When the album concludes, I look for something else and
select the first album by another German act from the same era, Neu! Another question for me. Is this blog influencing my choice of
listening matter. Nein again. After all, I could have chosen something by any
of Damon Alban’s bands, The Eagles, Elvis Costello, Violent Femmes, Bob Mould or his former bands but didn’t.
Neu! – Self Titled
Released, I think in 1971, this is one of the great albums
of 20th Century music, let alone the “Krautrock” era. (Personally, I find the Krautrock term to be
inherently racist and prefer to use the
term 1970s German experimental music.) A
mixture of early electronica, sound collages and traditional instrumentation,
it is one of those records you could play endlessly and find something new each
time.
Two tracks in particular stand out. The first is the opener Hallogallo. Employing
a masterful beat with integrated guitar that might have provided the blueprint
for Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, this track is simply a rhythmic master class. It is one of the few tracks that I could put
and keep on repeat for hours. But it is
the second last track, Neujatirband that
is the stand out. Commencing with the
sound of jackhammer (a nod perhaps to Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and a
possible influence on the yet to be
formed Einsturzende Neubauten) this track employs an industrial sound and bass
line that has effectively been appropriated by the English post punks.
On this listening, there was something that hit me for the
first time. The fourth tracks begin with
and the final track ends with the sound of oars being rowed in water. There are also voices buried into soundscape
of the final track that remind me of Pink Floyd’s work on The Dark Side Of The
Moon. I then remembered the opening
track of Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, Signs Of Life, which begins with
the sounds of rowing. A Floyd nod to
Neu!?.........Maybe!
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