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Fretless wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2017 9:31 am I keep thinking that I should get hold of some MSG (Michael Schenker Group) albums, anyone any suggestions?

They are all good, the live album at the Budakon is a good start.

Saw UFO on their tour last year. Saw them when they reunited with Schenker in the late 90s and it was one of the best gigs I have been too. Not so the following year. There was a note on the door saying the gig was cancelled. The previous night Mogg and Schenker had come to blows on stage, never to reunite. A great shame.

Continuing my Krautrock month - I have managed to get hold of a couple of CD's from the group Jane. I did hear most of these in the 80's but found them (at that time) to be too rough and rocky. Having said that, my tastes have mellowed and now can thoroughly appreciate their brand of bluesy, psychedelic rock.



Jane - Together (1972) [Full Album] [HD]

Debut album 'Together' has a great laid-back opening, reminiscent of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac playing 'Albatross' and then launches into Floyd-esque organ workouts á la 'Astonomy Domine', really great sounds that sweep you along.

It is a pity that Jane remained relatively unknown outside Germany (where they were huge) as the music is superb. Also worth checking out are the very-proggy 'Fire, Water, Earth & Air', the guitar-driven 'III' and the powerful 'Lady' where they could be mistaken for Leslie West's Mountain.

Much to enjoy here, seriously.

JANE -- Fire, Water, Earth And Air -- 1976

Jane: Jane III (1974) [Full Album]

Jane - Lady (1975) [Full Album] [HD]

Next up: Novalis and KRAAN.
Oh - and there is a copy of Schenkers's 'Budokan' on the way.
Yay!

All Klaus Dinger really wanted to be was a Rock Star!

Kraftwerk Live in the '70's w/ Rother & Dinger

He was a drummer in the late 60's avant-garde music scene in Dusseldorf where musicians were trying to create new forms to break away from the UK/US-influenced beat music. Joining up with two arty types in a band called Kraftwerk he made wild and formless 'space-music' then guitarist Michael Rother was pinched from pop group The Beathovens (featuring future Kraftwerk drummer Wolfgang Flur) and a rockier direction was taken for a while until Rother and Dinger felt that their music had a different course to follow than Ralf & Florian's , so they left and called themselves 'Neu!' (New!).



Neu! - full album

The legendary producer Conny Plank helped out by recording them and an album was released featuring Klaus's 'motorik' metronome drumming underpinning Rother's melodic guitar artmospherics. A second album was begun but money was tight and they could only record a couple of tracks - so they released an album with on side 2 the same tracks speeded up and slowed down. Anarchy !

Neu! 2 - full album

They argued, split up, Rother joined Moebius and Roedelius of Cluster, calling themselves 'Harmonia' and recorded 2 superb albums, also working with Brian Eno along the way.

Neu! 75 - full album

Rother and Dinger made up and cut another album 'Neu! '75' with a proto-punk edge to some of the tracks. But it wasn't to last and Rother went off to begin a solo career (more of that another time). Klaus Dinger called up his brother Thomas and a couple of mates and they went on as 'La Dusseldorf' continuing the Neu! sound of simple rhythms, guitars and extensive electronics. The eponymous first album was also produced by Conny Plank and is very enjoyable if a bit lighter in tone than the experimentalism of the previous band.

La Düsseldorf (Full Album)

Klaus Dinger died in 2008 - but his legacy lives on and generations of artists have been influenced by his music and style.

Krautrock 'supergroup' Harmonia had a relatively short life-span, but made up for this in the quality of what they did. Michael Rother's rockier approach beefed up the ambient noise-fields of Moebius & Roedelius (Cluster) who in turn gave the guitarist more sympathetic support and space than his argumentative Neu-colleague Klaus Dinger.



The 2 official albums 'Musik von Harmonia' and 'Deluxe' are both excellent examples of 70's space-rock experimentation. Brian Eno was deeply impressed by their work (as was Bowie) and travelled to Germany where several sessions were recorded, these later appeared as the 'Tracks and Traces' album.

An interesting artefact has recently fallen through my letterbox, the CD 'Documents 1975'. Harmonia played a couple of concerts in 1975 in Hamburg with Guru Guru (great psychedelic freak-out unit) drummer Mani Neumeier. They always had a Revox A77 tape machine running to record gigs for their own use and promised a fan (a collector of rare recordings) to send him a couple of live tracks - to his surprise he received a high-quality reel-to-reel tape with two live tracks and two unreleased studio numbers. Years later Michael Rother got in touch and asked if he still had any Harmonia material in his collection, he remembered this tape, dug it out of the archive and found that it was still in perfect condition.

Harmonia - Documents 1975



It is a short disc, just over 30 minutes, but what you get is some superb ambient rock that makes you wish that they had gone on to do more. There are apocryphal tales that Harmonia almost appeared on Bowie's 'Heroes' album and Eno went on to record two full albums with Cluster, who never quite broke through in the way that Kraftwerk did.

So much good music - so little time ...

Thanks for your thoughts Fretless. This thread will be a goldmine of information for anyone wanting to collect some Krautrock and who knows very little about it (me).

Thanks, Stu

Thanks for the compliment Stu.

Not EXACTLY KrautRock. But Denmark is an extension of the North German plain...

They're called Palace Winter and their album is 'Waiting for the World to Turn'

http://www.palacewinter.com/

Certainly blew me away and in the vein typical of KrautRock

Thanks for all this wonderful info fretless. I am now a fan of Neu! And Can. Music that passed me by but not now thanks to you❤

kimangelis wrote: ↑Fri Oct 20, 2017 5:45 pm Not EXACTLY KrautRock. But Denmark is an extension of the North German plain...

They're called Palace Winter and their album is 'Waiting for the World to Turn'

http://www.palacewinter.com/

Certainly blew me away and in the vein typical of KrautRock

Thats a good sound Kim, dreamy atmospheres - a bit like Engineers (link to Ulrich Schnauss).

Chunk McDaniel wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 9:09 am Thanks for all this wonderful info fretless. I am now a fan of Neu! And Can. Music that passed me by but not now thanks to you❤

Thanks also Chunk - and there was me thinking I was subjecting folk to my weird music tastes, only to discover that there are like-minded eccentrics out there.

I dug out my German vinyl prog & krautrock;

Mythos : Dreamlab 1975
Embryo : Opal 1970
MEGA TRIP : MEGA TRIP 1996
Witthuser & Westrupp : Der Jesus Pilz Musik Vom Evangelium 1971
Blackdance : Klaus Shulze1974
Timewind : Klaus Shulze 1975
Soft Explosion live Belgrade 1978
Amon Duul : live in London 1973
Faust : you know faust 1997
Faust : The faust Tapes 1972/73
Starglow Energy : Time Mchine 1995
popol vuh : in den garten pharaos 1972
Wallenstein : Blitzkrieg 1971
Brainstorm : smile a while 1972
emtidi : saat 1972
Mythos : Mythos 1971
GURU GURU live 1978