Future Proof
The Can Live series resumes with early 70s Damo line-up on fire in Paris. The best yet, according to Kris Needs.
CAN Live In Paris 1973 ★★★★★
Future Days/mute FDSPOON 66 (2CD, 2LP) Since witnessing this truly magic band in full flight at Aylesbury’s Friars club only weeks before the Paris show highlighted on this latest addition to the Can Live series, I’ve spent over 50 years recalling that life-changing night in features, documentaries, pubs and on panels.
For stunning impact, shapeshifting musical significance and lifelong resonance, the supernova catharsis of that extraordinary night is up there with witnessing Bowie unveil Ziggy Stardust on the same stage the previous year. Deploying tracks from recently released Ege Bamyasi as launch-pads, Damo Suzuki, Holger Czukay, Irmin Schmidt, Michael Karoli and Jaki Libezeit routinely went off like an express train to the outer limits, driven by supernatural telepathy, innate virtuosity and fearless spirit.
This similarly stratospheric set constructed by Schmidt and producer/engineer Rene Tanner from superior audience recordings of May 1973’s Paris Olympia show is welcome proof I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing, its five selections numbered in German affirming the gig I saw wasn’t a stellar one-off (and that no two shows were the same). It has to be remembered that, at this time, Can were still an underground cult band, attracting good reviews but too weird and volatile for the prog mainstream despite being the world’s most progressive rock band.
After a half-hour “warm-up” builds ferocious steam through various moods, track Zwei’s nine-minute One More Night ignites tingles as Leibezeit’s jazz-inflected funky drum tattoos
Can were still an underground band, too weird for the prog mainstream
plug into the supercharged muse that grips his deftly complex playing for the whole set, further elevated by Czukay’s minimal James Brown-simple propulsion, Schmidt’s synthesised night club icicles, Karoli’s liquid guitar snakes and Damo’s other worldly vocalising. Their thermonuclear cavalry charge through Spoon ascends aboard Jaki’s merciless human drum machine locomotive refusing to dock for 16 minutes, Karoli soaring and skydiving without a gap like a monstrous stream of radioactive toothpaste being squeezed by the ghost of Hendrix. After stirring in a dense wind tunnel,
Vier careers into motorik overdrive, Schmidt setting his Pandora’s box keyboards to screaming flying saucer freak-out mode, detonating one of Can’s infamous “Godzilla” meltdowns as their rampant kinetic energy erupts into mutual meltdown. The evocative killer punch comes with Schmidt’s luminescent baroque melody getting lathered by Karoli into 13 delirious minutes of Vitamin C, rhythm section flashing red before the tape cuts mid-flight.
In my half-century reviewing Can, this miraculous set can only rank among the greatest documents of their untouchable alchemy, now revelatory all over again.