Collecting CAN records – update 2024 – English Version

Collecting Can Records

Update 2024

Can is the only German band besides Kraftwerk whose music is as popular with vinyl collectors nationally as it is internationally. The first pressings of their classic phase, from Monster Movie to Future Days, are still highly sought after and are subject to a dynamic upward price trend. The prices given in the last edition of the Cosmic Price Guide (2018) are therefore certainly out of date. If you want to hear Can authentically in the original, you will have to dig deep into your pockets. It’s time for an update!

The early period from Inner Space to Monster Movie 1968 – 1969

Can was formed in the spring of 1968, initially under the name Inner Space. The founding members were Irmin Schmidt (keyboards), Holger Czukay (bass, sound effects), Michael Karoli (guitar, violin) and Jaki Liebezeit (drums). Other musicians in the band’s primordial soup include saxophonist Gerd Dudek, flutist and sound engineer David Johnson, flutist Manfred Löhne and singer Rosemarie Heinikel (Rosy Rosy).

At the end of 1968, the group was joined by singer Malcolm Mooney, a freelance painter and sculptor from New York who was living in Paris and did not want to return to the USA because of the Vietnam War. At the invitation of Irmin’s wife Hildegard Schmidt, Malcolm came to Cologne. But instead of hanging out in galleries, he ended up in the studio as a freelance singer with Can.

During these early years, Inner Space kept their heads above water by doing commissioned work for film and television. In late 1968, the band recorded the soundtrack for the soft-porn film Kamasutra Vollendung der Liebe. Inner Space can be heard in the WDR production Das Millionenspiel (starring Jörg Plewa and Dieter Thomas Heck, among others) and can even be seen briefly in the film itself. Only the two singles Agilok & Blubbo (July 1968) and Kamasutra (November 1968) were released on vinyl in 1968. Material from this period was posthumously released on the albums Delay 1968 (released in 1981 as Can), Agilok & Blubbo (released in 2009 as Inner Space), the Kamasutra Soundtrack 2-LP-Set (released in 2009 as Irmin Schmidt) and the Lost Tapes 5-LP-Box (released in 2012 as Can).

This phase ended in autumn 1969 with the renaming of the band from Inner Space to Can and the release of the first Can LP, Monster Movie, on the independent Music Factory label, produced by Scheisshouse Records Production. The label and production company were the brainchild of a certain Karlheinz Freynik, a protest singer who had released a solo record on Hamburg’s Star Club label in the mid-sixties. Freynik knew the head of Liberty Germany, Siggi Loch, well from their Hamburg days and played him a tape of Monster Movie during a visit to Munich. Siggi Loch was hooked and wanted to sign Can to Liberty immediately. The two agreed, but Freynik also knew Abi Ofarim, who offered the rights the next day for twice the price! Can finally signed with Liberty, with Abi Ofarim temporarily taking over the band’s management. This unfortunate relationship came to an end with the release of the Tago Mago double album. Hildegard Schmidt now managed the band with great dedication.

The singer on Monster Movie is Malcolm Mooney, who reads a letter from his American girlfriend during the track ‘Yoo Doo Right’.

The edition was limited to just 600 copies and was distributed by the band themselves. Decades later, Holger Czukay said in an interview that the entire edition was sold in just 14 days. Today, the first edition of Monster Movie is the most expensive Krautrock album and one of the most expensive LPs in the world, with a market value of around €10,000 to €12,000 for a mint condition first pressing and around €6,000 for a second pressing.

After Liberty finally signed the band in late 1969, a new second pressing was hastily released. The cover and the green Music Factory label remained unchanged for the time being. However, the Liberty order numbers 83342 A and 83342 B were added, along with the famous Made in Germany stamp in the grooves of the record. On the back of the cover, the upper part was simply pasted over with a revised text – now with the Liberty order number – and a different design.

A record dealer friend of mine from Oldenburg still remembers a memorable event that took place at the end of 1969. A media representative entered the record department of an Oldenburg radio and TV shop with a box of records under his arm. The box contained 25 brand new copies of Monster Movie. Today’s market value is easily €150,000. Out of curiosity, the employee takes 10 copies, which he sells over the next few years. Luckily, he kept at least one, which is still in his collection today.

The classic phase from Monster Movie to Future Days 1970 – 1973

began in early 1970 with the reissue of Monster Movie on Liberty.

A new cover was required for this edition, but the same pressing dies were used. Fortunately, this meant that this essential classic album could be purchased at a fraction of the price of the two original pressings, with no known loss of sound quality. The third pressing had a completely redesigned cover featuring a mixture of Godzilla and a giant robot. The pressing now bears the famous Liberty label. Whether the writing is to the right or below the centre hole of the label, this third pressing sounds just as authentic as the two original pressings. New pressing tools were made years later, which can be seen by the gradual disappearance of the SRS 001 A/B engravings in the grooves. First the A side is affected (fourth pressing), then the B side (fifth pressing).

Malcolm Mooney finally succumbs to the call of love and returns to his girlfriend in New York on New Year’s Eve 1969. On New Year’s Day 1970, Can was without a singer. In February 1970, a four-page article on Krautrock appeared in Bravo. One of the pictures of the group shows Christine Lingh as the singer. In the 1970 film Mein schönes kurzes Leben by Klaus Lemke, Can and their entourage can be seen and heard in a pub scene followed by a session. Singer: Christine Lingh. Apparently she was supposed to replace Malcolm Mooney. But it probably didn’t happen.

In May 1970 the Japanese musician Kenji ‘Damo’ Suzuki adventurously took over the vacant position as Can’s singer. Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit found him on the streets of Munich without even looking for him.

Soundtracks, a compilation of recordings Can made for various film projects, was Can’s second release on Liberty. It included the classic ‘Mother Sky’, which is still played by knowledgeable DJs today. The cover, which was simply laminated on the front, was contributed by the Carl v. d. Linnepe printing company. The cover of the second edition, which was fully laminated on both sides, was printed by the successor company Druckhaus Maack KG. The ‘electric-rock’ sticker can be found on the front of the cover of both editions. On the first edition the sticker is often square, on the second it is more oval. On the third edition, United Artists instead of Liberty is already written in the text around the label, and the cover is unlaminated on both sides.

With the third release, Tago Mago, released in 1971 on Liberty’s successor United Artists Records (UA), Can broke new ground. It had to be a double album. The initiator was Hildegard Schmidt, who convinced first the band members and then the record company of this costly project. Years later, Irmin Schmidt said about Tago Mago that the first LP was the finished Tago Mago album, while the second LP was the ‘Making Of Tago Mago’. Also good. For my taste the first LP would have been enough, as it contains one of their strongest songs, the hypnotic, almost twenty minute long Hallelujah. A song that makes Can so unique that almost everyone who hears the first few bars of this song immediately knows: this is Can! The first edition still has Liberty/UA in the label text, the second edition only has United Artists Records. The third edition is unlaminated.

Their fourth album, Ege Bamyasi, contains their biggest commercial success to date, Spoon. Spoon is the soundtrack to the Durbridge thriller ‘The Knife’, which was an absolute blockbuster at the time. The single sold more than 300,000 copies in Germany alone, while the album also achieved impressive sales figures. From now on things went much better in Germany as well. The band was suddenly booked for bigger venues and the crowds were almost always full. A poster with pictures from the legendary Cologne concert film is added to some of the first editions. This extra can double the price of the album.

Future Days was released in 1973. Can’s fifth album sounds very relaxed and some listeners consider it the invention of ambient music. In an interview, Irmin Schmidt said that during the recording sessions for the 20-minute track Bel Air, the double door of the recording room was wide open and the scent and sounds of a nearby summer meadow flowed pleasantly into the room. Yes, it really does sound like that: the buzzing of bees, the chirping of birds, everything begins to float at once. The first pressing has a blue to dark blue cover with raised gold lettering and the also raised I Ching symbol no. 50 ‘Ding-der Tiegel’, which can mean something like ‘accepting the new’ or even ‘sublime’. Information about this album can be found on the inner sleeve, or a similar insert is included with the album, printed in blue on white card. Future Days is a wonderful album of wonderfully relaxed Can music. Perfect. Just the way you want the future to be.

Future Days is the last album with Damo Suzuki. He left the band in September 1973. Can (reluctantly) mutated into an instrumental band, although they tried out different singers in the mid-seventies. Tim Hardin (!) tried out live with the band, and Japanese artist Michiko Nakao sang with them on Unfinished. Michael Cousins, known as Magic Michael, also tried his hand at singing with Can and even went on tour with the band in the spring of 1976, but his rock voice didn’t really fit the Can sound. The same happened to Indonesian Taiga Raj Raja Rantam, whom Can met in Brussels in January 1976 and with whom they performed live and jammed in the studio, but he wasn’t right either.

The late period 1974 – 1979

Soon Over Babaluma is the last Can album to be produced using the two-track method. The music catapults the listener from the flowery meadow of Future Days into a bizarre, interstellar mountain world and invites you on a journey to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The relaxed calm of the previous LP Future Days gives way to a more feverish machine sound. The shiny metallic cover is difficult to produce. An issue with a fully preserved lamination requires a surcharge.

In 1974 a single LP with outtakes and remnants from 1968 to 1974 was released as a limited edition only in the UK. In Germany, the unlimited edition was finally released two years later, with an additional LP to the double album containing material up to 1976.

Can’s seventh album, 1975’s Landed, was the first to be recorded and mixed on a 16-track multitrack tape machine. However, the new technical possibilities didn’t seem to suit Can’s music very well. The record sounds a bit poppy, random and interchangeable. The magic of the earlier recordings is gone. I find it interesting that on the current live series (Stuttgart 1975, Brighton 1975, Cuxhaven 1976), edited by Irmin Schmidt, the tracks sound much more homogeneous than on the studio albums Soon Over Babaluma or Landed. The pieces are developed live from improvisations whose end is uncertain and which can easily last 20 minutes or more, depending on the ideas and enthusiasm of the musicians. You can tell that the musicians feel more comfortable in this collective improvisation, and most listeners like it; this is how many music lovers want to hear Can. The first edition of Landed appeared in 1975 on the red Hör Zu label, the second in 1976 on Harvest.

In 1976 Can released Flow Motion, with the same line-up as on Landed, but with much better material. Can even had a minor hit in the UK with ‘I Want More’.

In 1977, two professional musicians, Rosko Gee (bass, vocals) and Reebop Kwaku Bah (percussion), from the English band Traffic, joined the group. Holger Czukay’s bass became silent. Instead he contributed sounds, loops and all kinds of noises. Saw Delight was released in 1977. Can sound pretty funky now. I remember a performance on WDR-3 in the same year. Can play ‘Dizzy Dizzy’ and ‘Don’t Say No’ live. Especially on the latter, you can see Holger Czukay in full action, turning the knobs, with strange radio sounds coming out of the speakers, like from an Arabic bazaar. The radio announcer sounds like he comes from Jupiter and then the phone rings, Holger picks it up and a woman’s voice says ‘hello’ several times. Holger hangs up irritated, everything swings to the beat of the music. Can has never been better.

Holger Czukay finally quit in the middle of 1977 and the band drifted towards arbitrariness. 1978 saw the release of Out Of Reach, an album that seemed to reach no one.

At the end of 1978 Can released their last album before the band broke up. Obviously, the musicians pulled themselves together for Can, as the album was called, and delivered a compact work, of which the eight-minute ‘All Gates Open’ stands out. Can broke up in 1979.

Reunion in 1986

The individual band members worked on solo projects. But their first vocalist Malcolm Mooney surprisingly returned after finding a plane ticket to Germany in his sofa, which the band had sent him in 1979 as an invitation to their 10th anniversary. Recorded at the end of 1986, Rite Time 1989 is a nostalgic late work in the original Monster Movie line-up with Malcolm Mooney as singer. After that the musicians went their separate musical ways again.

Reissues on Spoon Records from 1980 until today

From 1980 onwards, Can’s own Spoon label released not only the solo projects of the individual band members, but also all the Can albums. The first series of reissues were released on Spoon Records in 1980/1981. The recordings I have sound excellent, airy and not over-compressed. They are therefore a pleasure to listen to. These editions cost between €20 and €100, making them an affordable alternative to the high-priced originals.

In 2013 the band was commemorated with the Can LP box set. It is a massive 6kg box containing all of Can’s albums plus a bonus live LP and various exquisite extras in a thick, bright yellow slipcase. The recordings have been extensively remastered and sound wonderfully balanced and differentiated, yet extremely powerful. Irmin Schmidt’s son-in-law Jono Podmore is responsible for the clean production. The edition is limited to 1500 copies. The box set sold out in no time. Today, this artefact can only be acquired at a high price on the collector’s market.

Interestingly, I had test pressings of individual LPs from the box set in my hand, which were manufactured by Pallas in Diepholz and addressed to WEA Germany in October 2010. This may indicate that WEA and Spoon Records were considering a distribution partnership at the time. This apparently came to nothing. The box set will only be released in 2013 via Mute in England. After the release of the Can LP box set, the Can albums were also released individually. They are still available today for a standard retail price of €25-30 each.

The Lost Tapes 2012

In 2007, the legendary Can recording studio in Weilerswist near Cologne was completely dismantled and rebuilt in the Rock-‘n’-Pop Museum in Gronau. A treasure was also stored in Weilerswist: a box of unsorted tape material that was deemed worthy of preservation but had not been used to date. The Can tape archive is not part of the inventory. Jono Podmore, Irmin Schmidt’s son-in-law and musical collaborator, was given the task of sorting through the material. After extensive restoration of the tapes by Sonopress, Gütersloh, in the spring of 2009, Jono Podmore finally distilled a good 3 hours of fascinating Can live and studio music from the remaining 50 hours of music. It sounds simply wonderful, fresh, experimental and timeless. The 5 LP box set has become a collector’s item. You can expect to pay around €250-300 for a mint copy. The box is worth every penny!

Can Live series since 2021

By the end of 2024, six albums had already been released, featuring Can live music from the years 1975 to 1977 (with the exception of Paris, which features a recording from 1973). At that time Can mainly played songs from their albums Soon Over Babaluma and Landed. Unlike on the two studio albums, Can developed the album tracks live through improvisation; listening to what the other musicians were doing, hearing how the audience reacted, and developing their music from that, fascinating.

The sources of these recordings are different, so the sound quality varies. Basically, the recordings that have been released so far sound pleasant and powerful, but audibly manipulated. More live albums will follow in the next few years. The Can management are currently putting out advertisements to find ‘bootleg’ recordings that could be used as a source. We are curious to see what is yet to come.

Singles 1970 to 1979

Can are not the kind of artists who aim to produce singles for the charts. That’s why their singles are such a fascinating subject. Only a few 7″ singles were released during their existence. This was more by chance than design, because a film score, for example, was well received by the public. This was the case with their biggest hit, Spoon, the title track to the Durbridge thriller Das Messer (The Knife). The film is a 1971 blockbuster that draws millions of people to their televisions. The music fits the film perfectly, giving it a futuristic touch with a clever, intellectual flavour. The single sold around 300,000 copies in the first six weeks alone.

As Can mainly produces long tracks, the singles often feature interesting edited versions, such as Halleluwah or Future Days, which, when reduced to the essentials, develop a special charm of their own.

In 2017, Can – The Singles was released, an excellent compilation that allows you to explore the world of Can’s singles for relatively little money.

Can leaves vinyl collectors and listeners with a still manageable number of wonderful releases of unique, timeless music.

The original editions of the classic albums are recommended for those who want to experience the music authentically. None of the later remastered editions sound as relaxed and magical, even though they offer all sorts of technical wizardry and really do sound so fantastic that the listener’s ‘mouth may remain open in amazement’.

Their authenticity and relaxed nature justify both the original pressings and the excellent editions remastered by Jono Podmore. It’s best to have both editions in your collection.

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