Tag Archives: Germany

All Gates Open by Rob Young & Irmin Schmidt

Rob Young & Irmin Schmidt – All Gates Open (Faber & Faber, 2018)

When the FM airwaves started to emit the sounds of “underground radio” in the late 1960s, a whole new world of music began to open. WABX was the first such station to enter this area in Detroit in 1968. A short while later, CJOM hit the airwaves on my side of the border in Windsor, Ontario.

One of the most interesting things to appear were programmes which features “import” records. Suddenly, people were able to hear music which was not even available on domestic labels. These LPs often never got released in North America.

It was on one episode of these broadcasts that I first experienced the music of Can. It was 1970 and Monster Movie had just been issued in Germany (and the UK). The disc jockey talked about the band and even before he started playing the record, you knew that you were in for something special. I vividly recall his playing Father Cannot Yell and Outside My Door followed by the side-long epic Yoo Doo Right. From that moment, I knew that I would be a fan of this band.

Unfortunately, import records were few and far between at my local shops and it would be a while before I had my own copy of this record. My first purchase was their album Ege Bamyasi which was closely followed by Future Days. At that point, import LPs were starting to become easier to obtain and I was able to get copies of Monster Movie, Soundtracks and Tago Mago.

I kept following their work through articles in magazines like Melody Maker and  was able to keep up with their LP releases from that point.

Over the years, there have been a couple of books published about the band. The Can Book by Pacal Bussy and Andy Hall was an essential purchase for any self -respecting Can fan. There was also another book which was available as part of the Can Box (book, VHS video and 2 CD set of live recordings). Those, however, were mainly a mild warm-for this new volume.

All Gates Open is actually two books in one. The first two thirds feature Rob Young’s details of the individual members’ lives and their subsequent collaboration in one of Germany’s most revered and respected bands.

The final portion of the book belongs to found member Irmin Schmidt. This section is decidedly different to Rob Young’s writings.

From Young, we get a flavour of the times in Europe when the various members of the band were growing up. The four core members of the group all came from quite diverse backgrounds. Irmin Schmidt was making his name as an orchestra conductor. Holger Czukay was fascinated with all things electric including radios. Jaki Leibeziet was a jazz drummer who had worked his way into free jazz with Manfred Schoof. Michael Karoli was some ten years younger than the others with a more rock vision in his guitar playing.

The only things that any of the members really had in common was that both Schmidt and Czukay had both studied with the legendary German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
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It’s this diversity of talent and vision which was soon to give Can its unique approach to producing inventive and original sounds.

Vocalists also made an appearance in the group. This started with Malcolm Mooney and continued with a Japanese busker in the form of Damo Suzuki.

Throughout his portion of the book, Young paints a vivid picture of the environment in which Can existed. His presents details about their recording process, live performances and track by track analysis of their albums. This is the kind of material that any hardcore fan of the band will relish as they make their way through the pages of the book.

Irmin Schmidt’s portion of the book is a totally different affair. He edits together conversations with a host of interesting people from music, art and film.

Featured in the conversations are Mark E. Smith (The Fall), Geoff Barrow (Portishead), Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream), Hans-Joachim Irmler (Faust), Peter Saville, Wim Wenders, Duncan Fallowell, Nick Kent, John Maokovich and many others.

These vignettes open up the conversation to many aspects of music and all types of artistic communication. It’s a fascinating glimpse into creativity.

Schmidt also relates many entries from his diary which also give a look into his creative life.

Overall, this is probably the book that all fans of Can have been waiting for over the years. It’s a detailed look at the band from the inside and the outside. A compelling read for those who have listened to the intriguing and original sounds of one of the most compelling bands to ever put sound onto recording tape.

 

 

The Tefifon – Obscure Audio Playback from Germany

While recently doing a search for something audio-related on youtube, I came across an interesting video about an audio playback device of which I was totally unfamiliar. It’s a device called the Tefifon.

The Tefifon got its start back in the 1930s as a recording and playback device much like the Dictaphone. Towards the end of the 1940s, the company decided to enter the commercial market and began producing consumer-oriented machines as well as music cartridges to play on them.

Cartridges for the machine could hold up to four hours worth of recorded material. Unfortunately, they were unable to license audio recordings by popular artists and had to make do with cover versions of material that was popular at the time. This put the company at a bit of a disadvantage.

As you can see in the video, the cartridges for this player are somewhat like the endless loop 8-track tape cartridges that were fairly popular back in the 1970s. However, the Tefifon cartridges do not contain magnetic tape. They contain a thin plastic band which contains parallel grooves like a phonograph record. You can think of the playback medium as something like an old thin flexi-disc record. Instead of the grooves being pressed into a circular format, they are simply located on a very long piece of thin plastic.

By the early 1960s, the Tefifon had finally had its day. Despite the introduction of stereo playback, the limited market in Germany (it was apparently never marketed internationally), the unimpressive music offered for the format and competition from the LP record, the Tefifon finally vanished.

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And if you enjoyed that, here is a follow up video with more interesting details.