14: Can - Delay 1968

Again, not one I bought prior to this and to be honest a bid of an odd inclusion in the list. According to Wikipedia this was meant to be the first Can album but was too raw, so they made the more accessibile Monster Movie. Though referenced that sounds like nonsense to me - if anything this record is more straightforward than Monster Movie - it's not like an album with a 20 minute track is more accessible than one with regular songs on it...

Anyway - my copy of KRS is lost in decorating debris but I seem to recall Cope describing this record as the link to Can's desire to be like the Velvet Underground or the Stooges and this is borne out somewhat on the record. The stuff here is closer to Outside My Door than it is to Tago Mago. Butterfly is fairly Stooges like, all repeated lyrics and heavy riffing. Pnoom is a joke song (27 seconds) and is mainly parpy sax. This was part of the Ethnic Forgery series, I never quite understood what this series was meant to represent. A lot of it was collected on the Unlimited Edition album and I always thought it was a useful indicator of the worst tracks on the album. Utter bobbins.

Nineteen Century Man is like Butterfly part 2 but less tempo and more pontificating and moves the band into more of the Velvets territory. Thief could have come off Tago Mago or one of the later albums and is closer in the sound of Can than anything else on the record.

Man named Joe is stupid singing and largely forgettable. Then it ends with the best tracks - Uphill which is still quite Stooges like but works better than the other tracks with Mooney doing his man on the edge stuff. Then Little Star Of Bethlehem which sounds like it's going to be awful but actually works pretty well.

And that's Can. Despite them being revered, I think when it comes down to it, I like the idea of Can far more than the realisation. The idea of a bunch of Stockhausen students and devotees getting together and make heavy rock is awesome, but there's too much of the ethnic forgery in them for my liking. I remember a discussion with the guy in Revolver records where he chastised me for starting with Tago Mago, as everything else is downhill from there. To be honest, I could live with just that record in my Can collection.