Continuing more of where the live series of CAN have left off, ranging from Stuttgart, Brighton, Paris, Aston, Cuxhaven, has now made a soft landing at the heels of their Saw Delight years at Keele University on March 2nd, 1977. Following up to their Flow Motion album released on October 3rd the previous year, Saw Delight consisted of two band members from Traffic; Rosko Gee on bass and percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah.
Czukay moved on from playing the bass, to using experimental effects as Rosko took over. You have to understand at the time 1977 marked the beginning of the punk rock movement. Even its followers who worshiped CAN, ranging from John Lydon, Pete Shelley of the Buzzcoks, The Fall, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and of course Joy Division all admired the sound of what the band were doing.
Despite what Sniveling Shits punk Giovanni Dadamo calling Saw Delight “a turkey,” according to Jennifer Lucy Allan’s liner notes, the recordings from their performance at the University, showcases a band at their peak. There’s no preparation, no intro, the band starts things off with a bang thanks to this funked-up groove on ‘Eins’ that Karoli and Liebezeit delve into.
It’s almost as if they’re taking students into the future at the turning point of the 23rd century where the music itself is elevating and bringing the kosmische approach to its proper form. The music can be a hypnotic trance whenever Czukay goes into this middle-eastern arrangement throughout his synths, putting students into a meditated trance which can be very intense.
Then, in the middle of ‘Zwei’ which clocks in at about 15-minutes, it gets tighter and tighter. From the moment the rhythm section transforms goes into the Trans-Europa Express, adding through the fast-paced sections and segueing into the massive crazed tunnels on ‘Drei’, it’s time to get those sparkled jolts of electricity, flowing inside your body.
You can hear elements of the ‘Moonshake’ approach which the band delve into whilst the university are urging them to continue. It’s quite a reflection to see them returning to their Future Days period, knowing that the spirit of Damo Suzuki is flowing inside them where in a parallel universe he didn’t leave the band, and made some incredible kick-ass sound with them.
Audiences are clapping along to Jaki’s drum beats as it starts to get things rolling on ‘Vier’. They are in awe of what he’s doing as the atmosphere starts to change with Karoli’s shattering, yet Göttsching-like approach, heading towards the battlefield.
He brings a lot of those crazed-out momentum’s throughout his improv and chugging techniques before Czukay spirals towards the Riley effect on his keyboard. Throughout this dystopian universe, a universe where superheroes who were once the darlings of this other city, have now become homicidal maniacs.
And that’s what they’ve done, creating music for the imaginative mind before closing up the show with a 25-minute corker ‘Funf’. Allan’s liner notes say it all, “People talk about meditation, about the peace found in silence or quiet contemplation. I’ve always found silence terrifying. I find being left with myself and the noise bouncing around the inside of my skull a particular torture”.
CAN’s music may not be for the faint of heart, but when you get an understanding on why they were so far ahead of their time. They weren’t massive superstars, nor having explosives, laser light shows, or any massive stadiums, they were a band that loved doing whatever the hell they wanted to do.
The Keele ’77 performance is a piece of history that holds everything together as the band held audiences tight across the threshold, putting them into a sudden form of the university, would have them starting their own bands thanks to this incredible live recording.
And that’s what the CAN live series is, a cosmic yet intense voyage that brings in massive forms of energy, bringing the present into the future. And the reception is in the pudding.
