Julian Cope POUT ITM AVSA HEAD HERITAGE COSMIC FIELD GUIDE: 5 CLASSIC IMAGES OF KRAUTROCK When Glam-rock appeared around 1972, the West German bands again took it all, assimilat- ed it, and came out looking funnier & more con- vincing than any groups had since Funkadelic/ Parliament. On Amon Diiil II's Viva La Trance, the group successfully combined theatrical animal costumes, harlequin Teutonics, and the current snakeskin platforms and fake furs, a la Sly Stone meets Bowie. Even more ridiculous was Can’s sudden pursuit of glam in a Velvet Underground style. | was very uncomfortable to see all these older guys poured into leathers & shades, especially as Michael Karoli, the only young pretty one in the group, was photo- graphed on his knees in a particularly submis- sive pose, surrounded by 3 pouting middle-aged Sugardaddies. But Krautrock was the German pre-punkself- awarenesstrip of all time. And these groups had suddenly plugged into where the post-war British psyche still had the Germans pegged — as the Bogeyman Rotter of all Europe. And they exploited the situation in thee most genius of ways. From Amon Diiiil | to Amon Diiiil II, via Faust, Cluster, Can and Guru Guru ~ Krautrock groups played this role. Here are my 5 favourite Krautrock images: 1. Faust IV opened with their 12 minute epic called Krautrack. (A huge double-album sam- pler on the hip German Brain label was also called Krautrock, and after Conrad Schnitzler's time in Tangerine Dream & Kluster, one of his early solo LPs also contained a track called “Krautrock”,) 2. Amon Diiiil's “Mr. Kraut’s Jinx” and “La Krautoma” both appeared on the sprawling 1975 double-album, Made In Germany, the first (and only?) Krautrock-opera. 3. The first ‘kraut' reference of all was on Amon. Diiiil 's 1969 “Mama Diidl and her Sauerkraut- band Start Up!” from their first LP Psychedelic Underground. 4, Cluster’s Dieter Moebius and his producer, Conny Plank, released an album of Bavarian reggae-meets-New York-fuzz and called it RastaKrautPastal eT Sac en CT LET desians Te by Jane Stevenson 5. But the greatest Krautrock image of all is surely the sleeve of Amon Diiill I's Live in London. A gigantic German-helmeted Storm- trooper insect claws the London Post-Office tower from its foundations as fiying-saucers lay the city to waste overhead. In hindsight, Krautrock was not remotely ‘hippy’ in its modern post-punk definition. It was soar- ingly idealistic and hard as nails. This Kosmische Musikwas played by painted freaks and longhairs whose attitude had never left the idealism or the communes/collectives of the mid 1960s. Krautrock’s heart was still in the MCS's guitars and the White Panthers’ civil insurrection of 1969 Detroit, and the sheer moment of Andy Warhol's 1966 Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Guru Guru even tried to redeem the swastika on the eponymous Guru Guru LP, placing it in the centre of the record- sleeve, and reversing it on an ancient woven design, therefore restoring the swastika to its original peaceful direction. (It was a brave idealism but, like The Swastika Redeemer, a contemporary New York artist who is tattooed with hundreds of different & ancient swastikas allover his body, itwas hardly enough to obliter- ate such recent memories). But Krautrock can only truly be defined in hindsight, as many of the groups were only intent on capturing the Moment. There are more classic extended true 20 minute-freakouts with- in the sleeves of Krautrock LPs than in the British & American music of all time. And all in space-punk gatefold sleaves, too. Albums were impossible to judge as they came out because they defied analysis alongside anything else but other Krautrock. And for all its ‘60s idealism, the West German scene was never in a stasis — it did not yearn for some lost undefined Golden- age, but constantly dipped into the new music forms that arrived and adapted them as its own. This ability to assimilate all the best of the New conspired to make Krautrock a substantial art- form with considerable stamina. And so power- ful has the term Kraut remained that its modern connotation to any German Head is as a description for the finest Marijuana w= Fy: Trad Decry ublishing division ofiin AGO eG Clealaic ‘om the LP Gilles Zeitschiff. PUREE LER UCC ED CrrT tog scene: this book is my opportunity to thank al of you visionaries, fuck-ups, guriis & magicians of BRAS Cee uk ee ence a RRC mee See RU ect nc ULs MPR CRS TICLE Te Th Ree (ook es AAU ROD ee CCS cues mantras of Dark Side of the Moon- period Pink Floyd, Thank you for CO RU UA LC a UCT ate uy rr DT more whole and more Holy everyday. Beech Re agra ee PU eee Ce ae OT rer Runner en teen a ores sucker eae Peer tea sort of lysergic Lester Bangs. Polen co pou erie een ae