No Filler Music Podcast - Ep 21: Can - Tago Mago

Episode Date: October 15, 2018

The Prodigal Twin returns to nerd out with Quentin over ​​Tago Mago,​ the third studio album from experimental krautrock band CAN. Damo Suzuki, with his eerie whispers and his nasty shrieks, steps in as lead vocalist after years of busking in the streets of Munich, and CAN feels fully realized and complete...The Gods of Krautrock are born. For more info, check out our show notes: https://www.nofillerpodcast.com/episode/ep-21-can-tago-mago Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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My name is Quentin. I finally got my bro. back on the phone with me. And that means we're back on Skage. I'm pretty excited, dude. It's been a while. I feel like I haven't sat down in front of this microphone in like a month. I think it's been a month, dude.

Or close to it. Actually, you know what? It says on Skype, man. Our last Skype Convo was September 13th. There you go. So, yeah, just about. So have people been all over Twitter and Facebook? being like, hey, when's Travis coming back?

You know, it's not the same without it. I don't keep up with our tweets, do you? Because we don't have any. No. I mean, I'm pretty sure I took off the link to our Twitter account. Because we had one. Because it's non-existent, really. Yeah, there's no point.

There's no point. I've never been a tweeter. Is that even what you call it? Tweeter? I don't know. I've never done it, dude. And I don't plan on starting. So you've been,

You've been doing your thing with your company, huh? Yeah, I mean... It's probably boring, huh? No, I don't think it's probably boring. No, dude. Well, of course you don't, but does anyone care? Maybe. So we do this thing called Hackweek, where the entire company goes to this one particular client of ours called Heifer International.

They're a non-profit charity organization, and we do... Basically, we just tackle various projects for them. But it's the entire company. So, like, all of our resources thrown at one client for a full week. So it was kind of fun. But, dude, let me tell you, dude, best dumpling house I've ever been to is in Little Rock, Arkansas. Hold on now, dude. I know.

You know where I work, right? I do know where you work. I know exactly where you work, dude. Now, was it dim sum? Let me do some quick Googling here. It's called 10. one-fold dumpling house.

Okay. Okay. In Arkansas. Wait a minute. Maybe it wasn't called tenfold. Three-fold. My bad. Oh, you know what they're probably talking about, dude?

I'm sure one of the dumplings has three-folds in it. What does that mean exactly? When they're folding together the dumplings before they steam them, they probably have like a dumpling of theirs that has three-folds. folds in it. Yeah, but what's the difference between three folds and four folds on a double? Nothing, dude. It's just the way, it's just the, you know, the aesthetic.

Anyways, God damn, this is boring, bro. Nah, man. You know what, dude? I'm back. I'm back, dude. I'm just trying to get back into the folds here. Yeah, it's been, it's been, how many folds? Three?

Three folds. It's been, or is it ten? About three folds. Okay. So anyway, we're back. And what are we, so what are we, who? Who we talk. So actually, let me back up.

You've been busy recording some episodes on your own. I recorded one. Okay, you recorded one. Measly little sidetrack. But then I threw up that Kings of Convenience episode that we never aired. Heared like it's TV. When we originally started the podcast over a year ago, we started with Kings of Convenience and their,

debut album, Quiet as the New Loud. And then we ended up re-recording the episode entirely, and we ended up doing their second album ride on an empty street instead. So I threw up a little intro explaining where the fuck you were and why we weren't going to be doing any full-length episodes for a bit, and then threw that up there. And dude, it's actually, it's not a bad episode. Oh, yeah, I listened to it. You know, it's funny, dude.

There were moments. I'm pretty sure it's you. and I warned people that the recording might not be that great, but there's like breathing into the microphone at one point. Yeah, heavy breathing. It wasn't the best. But yeah, I thought it turned out pretty well. And hey, did you listen to my side track, dude?

Yeah, I liked it. I liked it. It's a cool song, right? Sure. So, yeah, okay, so today we are covering Cannes. We're finally getting around to it. So this is a German experimental rock band that formed in Cologne, West Germany, in 1968. Let's not get into it yet.

And I'm really not going to spend that much time diving into their history. I got a lot of music going to play from this album. So we're covering their third studio album, Tago, Mago, which came out in 1971. And I've got three songs I'm going to play for you. So most of this episode is going to be music, which is honestly, I think that's our best episodes is when it's majority is just music and us getting into it. So, but first, let's do our watch your hear as Brother Bear. And you said you've been, you've been holding on to yours for a few weeks now.

Yeah, I mean, I've been listening to these guys, this album in particular for three. I feel like I've been sitting on it forever because this was my planned, next what you heard. And, you know, it's, like, it's held up. You know, sometimes they'll be like, all, I'm going to do this as a sidetrack. Or, I mean, as a what you heard. And then, you know, I'll start listening to some other band

and switch to that band, you know. But this one, like, four weeks later, I'm still, like, pumped and excited to share this band with you. So did you just, okay, we don't even know who it is yet, but this is a band that you just started listening to recently? Yeah, I stumbled upon them on a Midwestern emo music playlist, just to give you a little hint. So do you think your song will tie into Cannes?

Yes. Well, let's start with you. So these guys are actually based out of Denton, Texas. They're called Two Knights. The guitar and vocals is a feller named Parker Lawson. Did you say a feller? I did. I did say that.

I enjoyed that. So is this Knights with the K? Yeah, two knights, uh, Knights spelled with a K. And then on drums is Miles de Bruin. So anyway, what I like about these guys,

um, this album in particular, it's called effing. It's actually a, uh, an EP, effing. EFF,

I, and G. It's just, uh, you know, now this is 2017. So this is new, this is relatively new material.

Uh, but, you know, we talked about on our Jimmy E World episode. about how there's three waves of emo music, right? Yes. And how there's a fourth wave. I guess you would throw these guys in fourth wave

because they're making music right now. But what I like about it, maybe this is kind of what fourth wave emo music is. But it, you know, it borrows a lot from a bunch of different genres. But, you know, it does still sound like an emo song at the end of the day, emo music at the end of the day. But you hear a lot of different genres. different sounds and influences.

And this EP, it's just really like, there's just something very casual and laid back, lighthearted about it. Like all of the song names are puns. Like one song is called Stoned Legends of the Hidden Temple Pilots. Isn't that fucking awesome, dude? Yeah, that's pretty good.

And the song I'm playing today is called Regina's Specter. So here we go. Okay. It was fucking great, dude. Yeah, man. I'm telling you. Fuck yeah.

This album is just great, man. I haven't really listened to any of their other stuff, but... Yeah, man, that brought me right back to the early 2000s, too. Yeah. Yeah, but they're bringing something new to the table, too, a little bit, you know. Yeah, and you're right. It's a mix of all the different waves, it feels like... Yeah, you know, there's, you know, there's some songs where he, he'll, he'll, he's,

he'll do kind of the typical emo scream, right? But it's, it's, you know, there's just something, something, it's emo music, but it's not, like I said, they're doing it in their own way, you know. Yeah. So I got a question for you. I don't know if you'll have this information off the top, you know, in front of you. How old are these guys?

I'm guessing they're. you think they're our age probably but I'm just curious you know they could be straight out of college you know that's what I'm saying like I'm curious because it's cool to think that there are you know young

musicians tapping into that that emo sound yeah I mean or you know equally as cool if they're our age you know and they're just keeping it alive I bet you that it's probably a little bit of both you know as far as a fourth wave emo

but the fact that these guys are based out I didn't you know I could probably catch a show of theirs oh yeah man they'll probably find their way to Dallas yeah I mean if not I'll just drive to Dinton dude it's 40 minutes away what you're talking about yeah but so what's great about this like I said it's an EP it's six songs the album in total is 12 minutes long six songs 12 minutes you can literally listen to this

in in less than 15 minutes and every song is just great like this. Like I said, they all have like these kind of really clever names. Lex Luser is one name, you know. Yeah. Here's another song named. And this is kind of in the same vein as the emo tradition, a very long name. But it's kind of funny too.

The name of the song is I ate an entire pizza during one episode of the West Wing. That's a song title right there. So anyway, you know, that kind of tells me. that they're sort of nodding at the emo genre, you know, by having this long name that has nothing to do with the actual song. But anyway, so that's that. One more thing I wanted to mention about this album, this music. Okay.

They are, um, there's a lot of math rock in this too. Like, you know, they kind of do some playing with time signatures and like starting, you know, a beat later than you'd expect them to start, uh, on, you know,

transitioning from one part of the song to the next. So anyway, That's, again, it's in the same vein. Like, you know, we kind of discovered, or I sort of had an epiphany moment when I realized that emo music uses a lot of math rock and emo music kind of worked together a lot. I didn't ever really put those two things together until I really dove into the history of email music and all those bands that we listened to back in the early 2000s. A lot of them would be considered emo.

I just never labeled them as that. And, you know, Math rock is a consistent thing between all those bands, you know. Yeah, I was going to say, like, the, you know, the one Math rock band that we've covered so far is Foles. And I could see them kind of getting lumped into that emo category. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, you're definitely something different, but yeah. All right.

So this, my, what you heard is going to be another band that I heard in Austin. I was at another little boutique vintage store off of South Congress, and they were playing nothing but like, and forgive me, because I'm not as well-versed in the language of metal as you. Okay, you got my interest piqued. Uh-huh. These guys, I, okay, so this is a band called Mountain Witch. Ever heard of them?

Probably. Dude, man. So I only know one song because there's a lot of, there's a lot of bands right now in sort of the, uh, do metal, I guess, uh,

stoner metal in, that have, that use the word which, uh, in their, in their name or mountain or any combination of, well, I guess there's only two combinations of those words,

but you know what I'm saying. So, okay, uh, here's the tags on their band campaign page for the album of the, of the song that I'm gonna, that we're gonna play.

Tags. Black Sabbath, metal, doom, heavy rock, psychedelic. So it's a, it's a safe bet

that I'm gonna like this. You're gonna love this, dude. And like, dude, I, man, again,

I've only heard this one song. All right. It's a fucking doozy. Let's do it, man. Let's a fucking do it. Okay. So, hang on.

Okay, so this is, and honestly, they don't have much on the webs. They don't have a Wikipedia page. As far as I know, they've been around since, let's see, they've been around since at least 2011. Did you pick up this record or what? No.

Okay. No, I just, I just heard him while I was down there. Okay. You know, I shazammed it. So this album is called Cold River. That's their second studio album, according to band cam. And this song is called The Covey. Dude, drop some metal.

knowledge on me. Where do they fit in? They've, I mean, they're not doing anything special here. I'll just say that. I mean, let's just, so that's interesting. Fuck me, dude. Fuck me. Just hear me out. Okay. The, the, the, the, do, do, do, do do do. That's been done to death, man. Sure.

And he is, he is doing an Ozzy Osbourne. impersonation basically. What? He sounded, he was singing, I don't know. Maybe this is me. You know what, dude?

I'm never going to listen to metal ever again. Dude, there was just nothing, it was just, it was underwhelming, dude. There was nothing, there's no hook. There was nothing unique

about the guitar riff. Damn, dude. Have I deflated your balloon yet, dude? Yes. You're like, you're probably like, man, wait till he gets a load of this track.

Man, Travis is going to love this. Dude, okay, fine. Look, let me, let me, look, I will give them a fair shake on me, I will save their latest album because I want to hear what they're doing now because if that's, can I just say something real quick off topic? Go ahead, man. Go ahead. You've said, you've used the phrase, give them a fair shake a few times now on our podcast.

Every time you say that. Have I? And this is going to be a little bit in a sf, every time I hear you say that dude I just think of you like you know giving it giving your peepee a few shakes at the urinal that might I mean maybe that's the origin of it no I don't think that's what that means but that's what it sounds that's what I think of well I don't know if that could apply here fair sure that's what I'm saying that's what I'm saying dude I'm worried that you're not using that phrase right no I'm using it correctly dude

You're just, you're, you're, you're going to a different place with it. What, okay, what are you giving a fair, what are you shaking? I think it's like, you know, you shake that. If you walk up to a tree and you shake it, you're trying to get the coconuts out of it or something. That's, that's kind of what it, what it means. Like, yeah, like, I've walked up to it or essentially you've, you've, you've, you've, like, shaking the tree a little bit and nothing has fallen out to me. Because I'm like, this is. Okay.

There's no, there's no, there's no fruit in this tree. So I want to go over there and gave it, gave it even more of a shake. So I'm going to give it an even, you know, I'm going to make sure I shake it enough by listening to more of their stuff to see if there's anything worth a damn out of these dudes. But I wasn't impressed. That's all I'm saying. Well, you know what I liked about it? I like the route that they took for recording his voice. You know, it kind of sounded like, you know, it was in the room next to the microphone, you know, so I did far away.

Yeah. Like, almost like he was singing into a fan, you know. Oh, yeah. I'm sure they recorded it. The production value wasn't very high. You could tell that right off the rip, so. God, damn, dude. I hope they never, I hope they never listen to our podcast.

I mean, hey, you know. Like I said, I'll give them a fair shake. I'm just going to try to use that phrase as often as I can. Yeah, dude. Great. Well, sorry to disappoint you. It's fine. Everything's fine.

Let's get into Candid. So, you know what? I think what I want to do before we get into, before I kind of talk just a little bit about the band, let's just go ahead and play our first clip. All right. So this is going to be track two off the album. So I heard this band for the first time back when I was living in Austin.

So right out of high school, probably 2007. My dear friend Larry introduced me to these guys. he actually had this album a copy of this on vinyl and this was the song from this album that that I had always remembered so this is track two on their album from 1971 Tago Mago it's called Mushroom that's so

when I stole mushroom head when I stole mushroom head that's a cool song man Right. Yeah, so let's talk about all the different parts here. So, like, that drumbeat is killer. Dude, I mean, this...

It's just so, it's such a casual kind of like just... Yeah. Okay, so let's get into it just a wee bit. Let's dive into this band a little bit. So, I agree. This guy's up there for me as far as memorable, you know, unique drummers. Yeah, because, I mean, you know, there's nothing... there's nothing like super it kind of reminds me of of uh i'm trying to blank on his name but the

spoon drummer you know where it's simple jimino yeah jimino where it's uh you know it's simple but like also dude let me say something man very effective yeah and okay so um i've never actually it fits the it fits the the vibe the feeling and like the because it's a very casual like passive kind of song, you know. Yeah. So I've never really... Okay, actually, I don't think... I don't think the name

Radiohead has popped up out of any of our, either of our mouths since starting this podcast. That's a shame. I don't think so, dude. But he's... So he's one of those drummers, dude. Yeah. He's one of those drummers.

The drummer for Radiohead, um, his name is, uh, his name is Philip Settleway. Um, and he's one of those drummers. And for me... me and same with this guy from can and i'll get into him a little bit more here in a bit i appreciate drummers that lay down beats and approach their drumming for a song almost like it's a a looped beat do you know what i mean and that that's where the simplicity comes in where

like with the clip that i just played that drumbeat didn't really change that much i mean there some cool little drum fills that he did you know that kind of like stopped on a dime little drum fill built back you know back into the regular beat but for the most part it's the same you know it's the same phrase

over and over the same beat over yeah no I hear you and I love that dude Jimino is a master at that Philip Selway from Radiohead he is one of the best at that dude I love radio head beats and that's yeah I mean that's a huge draw for me with this band is the percussion.

So this guy, I guess I'll start, we'll start talking about the drummer first because that's what we first noticed about the song. So his name is Jackie. Fuck. They're all German, so this is going to be bad. Jackie Liebush. God, no, I'm not. You know what? His first name's Jackie.

That's all you need to know. Leavitts? No, close, but no. He's a jazz drummer, and he actually used to play alongside Chet Baker. That's interesting because Jam Eno started as a jazz drummer as well. Yeah, yeah. And Chet Baker is, you know, the super famous, what did he play? Trumpet?

No. Jet Baker? Yeah, I think he was a trumpet player. And he sang, too. He was a singer. And he's saying, and he has such a beautiful voice, dude. Oh, yeah. So, yeah.

So he played with Chet in the late 60s before joining Ken. And then we've got, so let's talk about that singer, dude. And again, I'm not going to get too into it here with history with these guys. So the thing about this singer, his name is Damo Suzuki. He joined the band for this album. He wasn't in the band before this album. So if you listen to Cannes pre-Tagomago, you're going to hear another guy whose name is Malcolm Mooney.

And he got kicked out of the band. Hang on now. Now here's what obsessed me, friends. I had a little story to tell about Malcolm Mooney in his demise. But for some reason, it's not in my notes. So, yeah. Oh, well. He got kicked out of the band for some shit that he did.

They didn't want to associate with him anymore. And then they got Damos Suzuki involved. And he's been with them ever since. and man there's something about the way this guy sings um i don't know where i'm quoting from can you tell that i didn't really put together the best notes for this uh episode but someone um describes suzuki's singing style uh really well he says you know it's just the way that Suzuki can switch from an eerie whisper to a nasty shriek from one line to the next. And that's, I mean, that's very prevalent in this song, dude.

And that's what I, that's one of my favorite things about can is Suzuki's voice. Yeah, I mean, these guys, you know, they're, they're, they sound like they're ahead of their time, obviously. I mean, this is 70s, right? Or 60. This is 19, this is 1971. Yeah. You know, they don't sound, you know, they sound very.

much left field compared to everything else that was coming out. Which makes them ahead of their time, right? Because they were very experimental, obviously. Yeah. So their Wikipedia page kind of says that they've got this. So they draw from backgrounds in avant-garde and jazz, jazz being from the drummer. You know, they kind of have all these different styles that they're kind of pulling from. It's psychedelic for sure.

The complexity of the rhythms, you know, and the melodies. They are very complex. And, dude, just wait until you hear a couple more of these songs, man. They were way ahead of their time. So another thing that I thought was cool, they actually recorded this album in a castle in Cologne. The band was allowed to stay in this castle. I'm not even going to try to pronounce the name of the castle because I'm going to butcher the shit out of it.

But the owner of this castle was an art collector named Mr. Vo Winkle. Not lying about that name. Yeah, and he let them stay there for an entire year without paying any rent to record this album. And so anyways, dude, I just love that image. You know, like, it's cool. to picture these guys playing this music, recording it in a castle,

you know, an ancient castle in Germany. Fucking cool. So let's go ahead and play my next pick, which is the next track on the album after Mushroom. So this song is called Oh Yeah. Man, I absolutely love that song, dude. That's great. Yeah, so, so I'm hearing a lot of radio head in this,

just. I'm so glad you said that, man. I'm so glad you said that because that's why I picked this song. Yeah, the vocals. I mean, so, so that that kind of sounds like sort of the sounds that Radiohead were were playing around with on their latest album, Moon-shaped Pool. Which honestly, dude, I haven't given that album a fair shake. I need to visit that one again.

You got to start shaking right now, dude. How does this great album track? by track. Yeah. So obviously, so the vocals are backward masked, right, throughout the entire song.

Tom York does that on, on track number two, daydreaming on that, on that album. Hey, they've done that before. Yeah, yeah.

You want to talk about one of the most experimental groups, obviously of the last, from our generation, obviously is radio head, right? Dude, and now, now listening to this track.

Oh, yeah. It's quite obvious that Tom York and the gang probably got a lot of influence from this band. If not, then, like, you know, I'm sure they at least listen to them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, dude, that's what's... There's no way you can deny that.

Yeah, it's, yeah, really, really cool song. Again, for me, I just love that simple drumbeat, dude. I fucking love those kind of beats, man. That's what I'm all about. Just simple and repetitive. Which, I don't know, man. And some people might think that's boring as fuck, especially like maybe other drummers might think,

like, why is that so great? For me, I just love, like, simplicity. I feel like you have to be a creative drummer to confidently lay out simple beats to drive a song. You know, and like, I don't know. That's just how I approach drumming myself, and I always have. It's probably because I've been listening to bands like Can

and Spoon and Radiohead for, decades now. So again, this guy, Damo Suzuki, joined the band, you know, and then this album came out. So this is his first album with the band. So this guy could be found busking in the streets around Europe, you know, making small change, you know, singing and playing guitar in the streets. That's how he made

he's living and a few of the members of can actually encountered Suzuki while he was busing in Munich Germany the two of them were sitting outside in a street cafe and they heard him playing and they invited him to join the group how fucking cool is that that's cool but uh the last song that I want to play is is the last track on the album this one I like because it's got kind of a different vibe for sure. I'll just let it speak for itself. This song is called Bring Me Coffee or Tea.

Yeah, so I'm going to use this word again. It's a very passive album. I feel like it doesn't demand much of your attention, you know, which is I like it a lot for that reason because it's very much sort of this very like, you know, casual listening experience, you know? Yeah. Dude, should we, I mean, can we go as far as to say that it's similar to down tempo

and that you could just have it playing in the background, but it is worth paying attention to? Yes, yeah, yeah, I could say that. Yeah. And, you know, to the point you made earlier, how, you know, the drumming and even the, you know, music that accompanies the drums, it's very sort of a drum track. you know, looped. Yeah. Now that was a much more complex drumbeat.

But yeah, it was very repetitive. Yeah, so this is can, and this is a band I've been wanting to cover since we started this thing, dude. Yeah, this is great. Yeah, I know you will, I know you'll find some more can tunes that you'll love if you, if you dive in a little bit. So for our outro, so I mentioned earlier that, drummer for can he used to play drums for chat baker um and actually the name tagomago came from a so that's

that's a little island in barcelona and jockey was playing uh drums for jad baker and they were recording out there um on that island um there's a story behind them but the name tag omago always kind of stuck around in Jockey's head because of Jad Baker. And that's, they ended up naming the album off of that experience that he had with Chet out there. So I wanted to just fade us out with, with some, one of his, uh, crooney tunes. Okay. Crunty tunes.

I don't know if that's the right word. Did you come up, did you come up with that yourself? That just came out of my head. Dude, that's amazing. That's amazing. Okay, but what I meant was, you know, this is one of his love songs, okay? This song is called Time After Time from his album, Love for Sale. And that's going to do it for us today.

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