Can News

(5/31/99, 1 a.m. PDT) - Legendary German krautrock act Can is celebrating its 30th anniversary in style. While in the recent past the band has been the subject of the two-CD Anthology 25 Years and the 1997 remix double album Sacrilege (featuring the likes of such hipsters as Sonic Youth, Brian Eno, and the Orb), there has not been a comprehensive collection until now.

Can Box, an impressive collection of material which will leave disciples occupied for weeks and offer new fans a chance to delve into the group's revered oeuvre, was released earlier this month by Mute.

Can's amalgamation of numerous musical genres within a semi-improvisational setting was groundbreaking back in the '70s, and even today, there is no other group like it.

Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt says the band's philosophy was to bring together several different elements in contemporary music. "The jazz experience, the classical/ new music experience, and rock," he says, "everybody represented some of it. The idea was to bring this all together not only with people with this experience, but who were also really strong personalities.

"We are all very passionate about music and we all wanted go to the very end of what our vision is. Our vision is not one--it's four different visions that have one common center," he adds.

Appropriately, the results have inspired radically different artists such as Eno, John Lydon, and the Fall's Mark E. Smith.

The Can Box is a multimedia package. The first part is a double-CD set featuring live performances from between 1971 and 1977. The live tracks were assembled from cassettes and non-professional recordings, which were made or collected by Andy Hall, a friend of the band. The final track list was compiled by guitarist Michael Karoli and keyboardist Schmidt. Four of the songs are previously unreleased live improvisations.

The second part of the package is the 478-page Can Book, edited by longtime band manager Hildegard Schmidt and journalist Wolf Kampmann. It's an impressive tome published in German, English, and French, all within the same edition. The book includes interviews, photos of the band, and a discography.

Finally, there is a 130-minute, two-part videotape. The first tape is the Can--Documentary compiled by Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher, edited by Sven Offen, featuring TV appearances in Europe including Old Grey Whistle Test and Top Of The Pops. The second tape is the Can-Free-Concert, a film by Peter Pryzgodda and Robby Muller, who have worked on films by Wim Wenders as an editor and cinematographer, respectively. The Can-Free-Concert, an event which drew 10,000 people, was filmed live in Cologne, Germany on Feb. 3, 1972.

An interview with Can founder Holger Czukay appears in issue No. 29 of LAUNCH on CD-ROM.

-- Bryan Reesman, New York

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