CANNIBALISM 1

Sometimes I feel like the original "anti-Can fan" ... because I really dislike this group's music. Perhaps I'd heard so many good things before I heard this band that I was bound to be disappointed ... but to me Can was a one-dimensional outfit that used monotous drums, blues guitar licks, repetitive bass lines, percussive, hypnotic keyboards and incomprehensible vocals (usual a blurred whisper but occasionally a grating shout) from either Malcolm Mooney or Damo Suzuki to produce dull psychedelic music that doesn't match up to the work of Velvet Underground, Silver Apples or the jam-era Quicksilver Messenger Service, which are three very different bands that Can fleetingly reminds me of.

This compilation covers the period from 1969 to 1974 when Can released six albums, although oddly enough there is no material from 1973's Future Days, widely believed to among Can's best works. Quite a few of the songs have been drastically re-edited like Tago Mago's Halleluwah and Aumgn both of which had more than 10 minutes lopped off the original version. Also worth noting is that the original double LP had 14 songs but Spray and Soul Desert were dropped so that this stuff could be fit on one CD.

As far as I'm concerned this is generally poor music, with hardly any creative moments. A lot of songs like Father Cannot Yell, Soup, Mushroom and Yoo Doo Right are actually painful to have to sit through. Others like Mother Sky and the funky One More Night start off exciting but don't go anywhere. There were only a handful of songs I enjoyed ... the late-night blues of She Brings The Rain, the angry Outside My Door and the quirky Spoon ... although none of them seemed remotely progressive to me.

Ultimately though, I'm quite shocked at the lofty reputation of Can and its individual musicians like drummer Jaki Liebedeit and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt who seem to me to do the same thing all the time. ... 24% on the MPV scale