Out of Focus

Ammon Duul II came out of the ashes of the original Ammon Duu collective, right? I have heard couple of works I think from the former; they were more prolific, I think. Ihre Kinder I will need to look for.

Lewian wrote: This is not accurate as far as I know. Amon Düül started in Munich (original members are from around there as far as it is known; German Wikipedia page confirms this as well as Ingeborg Schober's book, which chances are isn't available anymore - unfortunately I don't have it anymore so need to rely on memory). They had contacts to Berlin and there were maybe two people from Berlin joining at some point, but they were based in Munich, ADII the whole time (not sure whether members of AD after the split relocated to Berlin).

yeah, I was shooting from the hip on AD & AD2.

I'll check in my Asbjornseen book (they've got separate entries, if memory serves)

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Four Letter Monday Afternoon is their bolded/recommended release on AllMusic but I was honestly disappointed by it [it's sheer length didn't help either]. I am currently listening to their 1971 'Out Of Focus'. It has atleast two great songs: the opening track whose name is a riff on Rolling Stones' Street Fighting Man and a meandering instrumental. I think there is only one political statement on this LP in the form of final song where the instrumentation is more restrained.

FLMA is an impressive magnum opus, but indeed overlong (to think the posthumous release Rats Road is more frim those session....)

I much prefer their second s/t album, but I'm also partial to Never Too Late (their fourth never released at the time).

Saperlipopette! wrote: I'm like you I think. And prefer those same three albums. Weak vocals and on the nose lyricism also tend to get in the way of my general enjoyment. I would probably have listened to Wake Up! (again) if the lyrics were sung in German, so that I could listen to the voice itself like any other instrument. The vocalist would have been the band's weak spot regardless, but themes/melodies are quite lovely throughout - and the musicianship excellent.

I absolutely love Moran's vocals, but indeed some of his lyrics are so-so (see how a white negro fies ??? WTF...)

All six OOF release are very worthy (there are few bands where I have everything ever released of theirs - including the Kontrast albums from the mid-80's), including the Live In Palermo 1972 - their only gig outside Germany.

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Hi,

You can not get a nice and clean view of "krautrock", just from listening to 5 or 10 bands. 

Per the book "Future Days" there were at least 4 or 5 areas that were very active and extremely different. 

You have to see a few of the early films, going back to Fassbinder. Wenders and Herzog, Schlondorff and then chase down some theater and the plays from 1965 to about 1975 ... so you can get a much better idea of what the whole thing was, and how folks saw themselves and each other. Separating the music from the rest of these folks is bizarre, and not very smart ... since so many of them were school friends, and were doing basically the same thing, though it is hard for folks to see and be able to pick up the wide open improvisations that a lot of their theater had at the time (as well as beautifully written stuff!!!), which was not exactly visible to our senses only because our antennae were/are set towards westernized music that we are familiar with and not something that was trying to be different. The end result of this exercise is that too many folks won't like it, or worse ... won't "get it".

And we forget that sometimes there is nothing to get except to watch the experience, which is something that rock audiences don't like, and Tangerine Dream had a lot of rock'n'roll fans bother them a lot (in America!!!) because it had no lyrics and its was a visual story for your mind ... the music was designed for you to close your eyes and live inside it .... but rock audiences are way too lazy and always want the "lyrics" so they know what it is all about ... it feels like saying that rock audiences can not listen to music ... because it couldn't tell them anything ... and you have to be aware of how different European audiences are to a lot of music, a respect that shows that they have had a massive history of music over several centuries, whereas in America, the whole thing has been about a very racist famous first talkie (the singer had a painted face and was not black) ... something that lasted until the 1960's when some black folks broke the gates down ... completely. Heck, we could even add Bob Dylan using an electric guitar and him being roasted and abused senselessly for a few years ... in the end, Bob will be remembered a very long time as a poet and writer, and those idiots that were not interested in listening to music will be long forgotten and gone!

Some folks have this idea that determining what the whole thing is about via a few bands, and that is a back hand slap to the artistry involved and the folks in that country, specially one with such a rich history of the arts ... something that America has tried to kill, and now even saying that the Smithsonian and the Carnegie Hall are not getting money because they were too liberal ... and Edgar Froese explained it best in one of the episodes on "krautrock" ... no past and the present was kinda invisible and that allowed for a new future, and the artists were the ones that jumped on it first!

I wish we would stop looking at this as just songs, and some kind of mindless pop music ... the same stuff that we are most familiar with in radio since the rape of the early FM Radio stations that were all bought out by 1980 to prevent new music from taking a stronger effect than it already had. And to this day, since then, radio has not been as meaningful about anything except more Coke, Pepsi, Army and Navy commercials!