TAGO MAGO

Somewhere end of the nineties - through an Italian music afficionado I shortly e-mailed with - I came into contact with bands as Can, Amon Düül II and Faust. They were a revelation to me, after slightly earlier having become impressible to the more complex and out of the box kinds of music through listening (and accepting!) Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band.

I did enjoy Can a lot, but somehow got really and completely addicted to Amon Düül II that I played until I could dream it, resulting in more or less forsaking other music, including then of course Can.

It took me a couple of years to get rid of my addiction to the Düül and to spend time on listening to other interesting music. I - to my happy surprise - discovered RPI beyond PFM, a true rich world of fantastic music, but I also took some time to return in my own footsteps to "rediscover" the neglected music I liked some time ago.

So, I just now listened to Can's Tago Mago. I remembered Oh Yeah and Halleluwah of course, tracks I liked back then and still do. While listening to the tracks I was reading the reviews. Someone already noticed this is either a 1 to 2 or 4 to 5 star album, it either hits you, or it hits you (Good or bad that is :)). Apparently Aumgn and Peking O were responsible mostly for the 1 to 2 star ratings; a lot of people dislike these tracks, while other people that rated higher did like them but thought these tracks were "difficult". So, while listening to the first part of the album and getting on my way to Aumgn and Peking O I started getting a little afraid of having to wade through two quite long extending pieces of difficult or bad sounding music. I couldn't remember what these songs were musically about anymore, but I did remember that back then they hadn't been my most favourite songs.

But much to my surprise I had worried for nothing; I did LIKE Aumgn. And then Peking O - having been painted off as even more difficult - well, I even liked it better!

More or less this means that my musical taste is (has become in fact) different than that of most reviewers here, while a couple of years ago I probably would have thought the same about the two "difficult" songs. Beefheart taught me to open up my mind to different sounding music (and the enormous rich musical world that lied behind), this what now happened with Tago Mago more or less tells me that "training" makes you recognize the "value" of these "difficult" songs a lot faster than initially, if at all. So, I do understand those reviewers having diffuculties with this album, but I also think it takes a musically more matured mind to fully comprehend it. And that's much more an observation than a recommendation.

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