Can: The Lost Tapes

What should be a major event in the life of a Can fan find turns out to be strangely disappointing. It's pretty common knowledge (certainly amongst fans) that all those classic albums from "Monster Movie" in 1969 through to 1974's "Soon Over Babaluma" (arguably their last really good album) were the result of Holger Czukay's editing skills. Their modus operandi - much like Miles Davis's from the same period - was to record absolutely everything and then leave it to Holger to edit it down and down and down until it sounded like a record. It's a great way to make records (I managed to have a go at being involved in the process myself with the first Lunar Dunes record). 

So anyway, all these years later, here come selected edits of what was left on the cutting room floor. 3 cd's worth - or, if you like, six LP's worth of unheard classic era Can to sift through. With all that music, it's impossible to make any snap decisions but a couple of random observation made whilst listening through might be of interest to fellow Can people.

Holger made the right decisions. Well, duh! But it's worth pointing out. You can hear the germs and embryos of many classic tracks in the brewing ("Spoon", "Mother Sky" to name but two) and in each case it just makes you want to listen to what Holger actually put out. 

Malcolm Mooney had a great voice but it can be really annoying. He was a mental patient, after all. When he gets a phrase between his teeth you surely know it, and know it, and know it.....

Jaki Liebezeit's drumming is a constant delight. It always was and it still is. Without him, so much of this stuff would be quite unlistenable. His crisp professionalism is, in some ways, what prevents Can at their wackiest from entering the realms of mystery that their great rivals Faust routinely occupied during the same period. But they could get right out there and no mistake. Some of this music is very extreme. But I find something lacking in it. It's distanced from the listener somehow. It has that Germanthing of nailing it to the floor and labelling it even when what it is is beyond description. Perhaps that's why I ultimately prefer Faust - they never gave a damn about any of that Stockhausen malarkey.

But Can could be extremely funky (in a way Faust never could) and when they get their hands around a funk groove they make every other European band sound plain silly (well, let's face it, a lot of them sounded pretty silly anyway). Holger Czukay was a marvellous bassist and Can's demise as a vital force can be directly plotted next to his growing disinterest in the instrument - as he became more and more concerned with texture and atmosphere, ironically the texture and atmosphere became one of increasingly subtle blandness.

Essential purchase? A bit like The Beatles "Anthologies", if you're a fan you will have to have it, but you probably won't play it very often.

Velvet Underground: "Live 1969"

“The Velvet Underground Live 1969” album has kept me company on more late nights and early mornings than any other person or thing over the last 20 years or so. There’s something, a true distillation of human compassion in that world-weary New York accent, the way he says: “Good evening, we’re the Velvet Underground, how are you?” and later in that little introduction: “you should give other people just a little chance”, before adding, in a typically laconic aside, “In football anyway”. Then: “This is a song called ‘I’m Waiting For My Man’”.

On September 11^th 2001, I stayed up, like many other people, till I couldn’t stay awake any longer, listening to the news reports on the radio. Over the next few days I listened to the Velvets continually. To me, they represent New York, and the whole precious concept of what it means to be a civilised American. To observe without judgment, to remain skeptical and retain humour, to empathise, to search for wisdom, to be unafraid – or rather, to be afraid as hell, but to do it anyway. To be truthful and despise bullshit. Above all, to be human. To me, this is the best of that culture.


It must be some kind of testament to the 60s that the Velvets could ever have existed – such an unlikely mix of characters! Lou Reed, the singer and songwriter, the leader, who wanted to be a rock’n’roll star and who is, by all accounts, the most odious man, and yet the author of the most compassionate songs I know of. John Cale, the Welsh intellectual, the classically trained art-terrorist. Nico, Hitler’s ideal aryan master-race hausfrau as professional heroin addict and authentic goddess of doom. Sterling Morrison, all-American rock’n’roll guitar player, who also happened to be a professor of English literature and tug-boat captain. Doug Yule, the overlooked one who Lou introduces to the audience as "my brother". And my favourite, Mo Tucker, the Velvets very own Ringo, with her mallets and her upturned bass drum; beer drinking, pool playing, bullshit-free Mo, without whom the Velvets would not have sounded like the Velvets.


What is it like to be a white, educated, middle-class American? To know that your country was built on theft, genocide and slave labour? What is the appropriate response to that?

                                                 “Oh pardon me, sir, it’s the last thing on my mind…”

It’s in the way the guitars lock in with the organ on the nine minute “What Goes On” (if only it went on longer), it’s in the exquisitely gentle regret of the original “Sweet Jane” (so different and so superior to all the subsequent versions), it’s in the joy and ecstatic yearning of the end section of “Rock And Roll” (such commitment, it amounts to a manifesto). To me, it’s beautiful music. If you can learn to love it even just a little, it will be your friend and protect you from loneliness as much as you find you are able to allow it to do so. And that’s not bad for an old rock’n’roll record. 

The Detroit Cobras: "Baby"

THE DETROIT COBRAS: “Baby” (ROUGH TRADE RTRADCD 193)

For those who still haven’t received the memo, The Detroit Cobras really are from Detroit and they revolve around vocalist Rachel Nagy and guitarist Maribel Restrepo. Their modus operandi is to re-work long forgotten soul and r’n’b songs from the late 50s and early 60s, paying particular tribute to such great performers as Irma Thomas and Etta James. The way they tell it, there are too many songs in the world already, and a lot of good ones have fallen by the wayside. What makes them special is their attention to detail, and the fact that Rachel Nagy can really sing. 

But the Cobras will insist on living and breathing the classic rock’n’roll lifestyle, and this can result in a few, uh, LOGISTICAL problems. Like they’re not exactly prolific: this is only their third album in seven years, and, like the first two, it’s all over in less than 32 minutes. Nevertheless, when they hit the spot they truly hit it, and your heart and feet tell you that they really are the best (the only? the last?) rock’n’roll band in the world and that the wait has been worth it. Here, they do it just right on Billie Jean Horton’s “Can’t Please You” - which has a groove and a riff and a vocal straight from God (or the Devil, depending on your point of view). It’s completely impossible to keep still while it’s playing and when it’s finished you have to play it again. That one occupied me exclusively for some time but eventually I noticed that “Now You’re Gone” has a minor key groove not given a proper airing for about forty years, since the days of The Beatles “Not A Second Time”, or The Searchers attempts at Jackie DeShannon songs. Drummer Kenny Tudrick updates the twist rhythm like some mythological craftsman and Rachel Nagy’s vocals have never sounded better. Elsewhere, “Slipping Around” is a cool opener, with some nice East Coast harmonies, and “I Wanna Holler (But The Town’s Too Small)” is a bit of an epic in the swamp rock mode. An odd choice is Bert Russell’s “Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand” – at first I hoped it would be the Professor Longhair tune but it’s the same one that The Animals did and that Bob Dylan stole for “Baby Let Me Follow You Down”. It shows off the Cobras increasingly confident backing vocals, and the grain of Rachel’s voice on the intro is sublime. Steve Cropper’s “Weak Spot” is indeed a weak spot, and the original “Hot Dog” is fun but hardly exceptional. “Everybody’s Going Wild” sounds like an out-take from “Life, Love and Leaving” (second album) but that’s OK, especially the yodeling… Allen Toussaint’s “Mean Man” is more ambitious with it’s New Orleans funk lurch and 60s pop chords in the bridge – the Cobras sound like they don’t quite know what to make of such dangerous revisionism, but Rachel holds it together and it ends up being one of the stand-out tracks. Naomi Neville’s “It’s Raining” is this album’s ballad, and only a heart of stone could remain unmoved. Maybe one day the Cobras will do a whole album of ballads like this and we will never again have to worry about what to play when we’re maudlin drunk and alone at 3am. 

What else? “The Real Thing” rocks like a mother, Bobby Womack’s “Baby Help Me” is a good example of how the Cobras serve up classic soul, but by their standards it’s a filler. Over here in the UK, “Cha Cha Twist” – the monster opener of the first album – was used recently in a Coke Cola ad, so the Cobras have tried to capitalize on this by re-recording it and putting out the new version as a single. It’s nice but they needn’t have bothered: it’s bigger but no better than the old version.

Production (by the band) and engineering is spot-on. Sounds marginally better than the first two but they sounded just fine to me, so this is just more of the same with a slightly higher quality of fairy dust sprinkled over. The playing is impeccable throughout and Rachel’s vocals sound superb. Any suggestions that she was losing it are hereby completely rescinded. There really is no-one else in her league currently functioning. If you like real rock’n’roll then this is far and away the year’s most essential purchase, if you don’t, well, I’m sorry I can’t help you. Word to the wise: Play track 10 (“Can’t Please You”) first. Loud. Ask yourself: When did you last hear a better slice of the real stuff? Ain’t cha glad this stuff exists? As for me, I’m gettin’ down on my knees right now…   

The Deviants: "Ptoof!"

Back in the days of free festivals there was an ignoble tradition of the ad hoc band that would appear from somewhere or other and take an eternity to set up a bunch of bashed up amplifiers and a barely functioning PA system. Eventually they would get out their guitars and start playing something barely recognizable as music and stoned people would lurch about to it. Hawkwind set the template but the tradition started here – with The Deviants. This, their first album, was recorded in 1967 with £700 of Nigel Samuel’s money and pressed up in a limited edition of 8000 copies, housed in a luxurious poster fold out sleeve and sold via mail order through International Times. Oh, if only it was chock full of great music, if only it was the great underground masterpiece. It ain’t and it isn’t. Mick Farren had everything going for him - the looks, the clothes, the attitude, the street cred – but he couldn’t sing for toffee. That’s not to say this record isn’t entertaining - it is. As a bona-fide 1967 curio it’s worth the price of admission but the period humour hasn’t aged well – the attempts at self-referential irony are teeth-grindingly embarrassing – but there are some rather touching moments, such as the acoustic numbers “Child Of The Sky” and “Bun” which really don’t sound quite like anything else of the period. The blues based “Charlie” is simply appalling but the “heavy” freak-out numbers possess the odd moment or two of genuine menace. If only it were sustained then we could legitimately point to this record as being the progenitor of UK Punk that revisionist critics wish it was and claim it to be. Amateurish it is, but amateurishness itself is not a virtue unless it reveals hitherto unsuspected talent. Sadly, this is not the case with The Deviants - or any of their mutant children: Pink Fairies etc. Compared to the likes of Syd Barrett’s Floyd, or the Soft Machine, this is just a bunch of bullshit. But hey! Don’t let me spoil the fun. It’s not about the music, after all. It was an Event, a Happening of sorts, and on that level it’s still quite funny – if extraordinarily paranoid. The cover was a genuine bit of period pop art. Too bad they can’t re-issue THAT.