Amon Düül II - heavy krautrock

the heavy guitar is a trademark of John Weinzierl. you will find it on "Wolf City" and "Vive la Trance" too. here "Mozambique" from "Vive la Trance" with really heavy guitar in the last 3 minutes.

Birth Control, Wallenstein, Lucifer's Friend and Epitaph (strangely not in the archives) are really heavy too.

the early Guru Guru albums have already been mentioned; here "Hinten":

YETI (the main piece), for me, is the perfect compliment to the early SF sound and "loud" guitar and the only other moment where the guitar is that strong in with Janis Joplin, in the live version of BALL AND CHAIN in the outstanding album, CHEAP THRILLS.

For me, and I have mentioned it before, GURU GURU in their Ax Genrich days, was about what Jimi Hendrix might have sounded like when he was stoned and didn't care what came out of the music, which would still blend into something or other. It is my believe that the Jimi Hendrix archives have a lot of this stuff, but no one will ever hear it, because the family does not see it as important and valuable to his musical legacy, and think that the wild side of JH's is the part that undid him ... and these guitar forays into insanity and total let go, is not something that "musicians" like to do, or try, because it is very difficult to stay with and end up with something that most folks can not relate to.

YETI, is in many ways, the ultimate creation of the improvisations that could have started as a simple drum circle or just a bunch of folks at the commune doing anything they could and wanted, however, somewhere along the way what separated I from II, was the fact that II obviously wanted the music to be taken a bit further than just stonned noodling and meaningless meandering. And in YETI they proved that the "origin" of the music was indeed a powerful idea to create some outstanding works. The sad shame of it all is that AFTER the album VIVE LA TRANCE they stopped and while MOZAMBIQUE is very valuable (that country got its freedom some 2 months later!!!), in the end, it is APOCALIPTYC BORE that is the more important side of it all, when in essence, they said goodbye to all the tripping and the "stoned" music, and right after that song went into a series of "pop songs", which were nice in their own way, but it brought ADII down to a less important level and while many of their albums after that were fine, they never stood up to any of their earlier albums. And were NOT as "heavy" and likely because they could not agree on anything, the worst curse of all for a band!

HEAVY is an interesting term, and is usually associated with cheap music that merely uses the lower side and scales of music in rock. The HEAVYNESS in ADII has more to do with their well defined (so it seems) music in their early days, as an alternative to the mindless humanoid BS from the earlier commune version ... and as long as they had those memories in mind, they did wonderful work, but when they became a "band", they lost their source and their touch ... they could still do some great things, but while Archie is fun to listen to, in many ways it is a real come down from the guadaloop, and the really strong drug song. Not to mention that the Firesign Theater had already done Archie in their albums by that time.