CAN: TAGO MAGO (1971)
1) Paperhouse; 2) Mushroom; 3)
Oh Yeah; 4) Halleluwah; 5) Aumgn; 6) Peking O; 7) Bring Me Coffee Or Tea.
Acknowledged almost everywhere as the ultimate
Can masterpiece, Tago Mago is indeed
the most uncompromising, relentless, brutal exhibition of the Can aesthetics
that money can buy, which should also register a warning for the
not-so-extreme-minded: four LP sides with but seven tracks worth of material,
and two of them with very little rhythm support to speak of, can be quite a
heavy burden on the unitiated, who should rather start out with Soundtracks.
As far as kick-ass statements go, I'm pretty
sure Can never made a stronger one. Tago
Mago is a dark-'n'-brooding piece, exploring the world of insanity and
brutality that is so wonderfully encapsulated in the sleeve photo: see how it
seems to picture an infra-red portrait of an individual spitting out pieces of
his own brain, but that same portrait also has the shape of a nuclear mushroom
cloud? Well, you could dream of something like that just listening to some of
this music, without taking a single look at the cover.
Technically, Tago Mago completes the transformation of Can from a jam-based
outfit into a «jam-splice-based» unit: most of the songs here have
improvisational studio jams as their foundation, but all of them are then
taken by Czukay and «treated» with additional overdubs, shortened and spliced
with artistic purposes, as if Holger knew very well which moments of the
sessions «meant» something, which ones had to be embellished to mean something,
and which ones were senseless and had to be cut. You could, perhaps, call that
a waste of time if most of the material did not indeed sound so awesome — a
great lesson for so many psychedelic bands who thought that the very fact of a
group of free people freely experimenting in the studio should necessarily result in great art.
Amazingly, despite all the doctoring, all the tracks still preserve a certain
raw, visceral quality to them, which we should ascribe to Czukay's absolute professionalism.
When I'm talking about raw/visceral, I, of
course, mean primarily the rhythm section. If ʻMother Skyʼ used a simplistic
4/4 beat and could still put you in a trance any second, then Tago Mago shows how they can do the
same thing with slightly trickier means. In particular, ʻHalleluhwahʼ,
stretched over the entire second side of the LP, rides on an absolute monster
of a groove, captured so brilliantly you can almost feel Liebezeit's entire
drumkit rattling and wobbling on its platform, while the bass is pumping up a
feeling of inescapable doom. Honestly, the rest does not even matter all that
much — there are some fine, diverse guitar solos in all sorts of styles and
tonalities, there's Suzuki spewing crazy desperation ("searching for my
brother, yes I am!") all over the place, but my attention (and spirit)
just remain chained to that groove all the way through (there's a very short
bit early on in the song where the groove disappears for a moody piano
interlude, and it almost makes me sad — fortunately, it's just a thirty second
splice). How the heck is it even humanly possible to play that sort of stuff so
unfalteringly for such a long time? Must be far more difficult to get yourself
that disciplined than going all-out crazy a
la Keith Moon.
The shorter tracks on the first side are not
quite that powerful, but they also
form the emotional center of the album — the slow, trudging ʻPaperhouseʼ is
like the soundtrack to a funeral ceremony in a madhouse; ʻMushroomʼ, naturally
referring to a nuclear strike, is particularly poignant given its vocalization
by a Japanese singer ("when I saw mushroom head, I was born and I was
dead"); and ʻOh Yeahʼ, into which ʻMushroomʼ transitions after an actual
nuclear blast, is the album's fastest bit of music, but also one of the most
psychedelic, with backward vocals and synth notes that morph into gushing wind
as they fade away. This is not «just jamming» — this is every bit the
equivalent of the Stooges' Fun House,
only substituting a more complex and disciplined approach in the place of Iggy
and Co.'s untamed infernal energy. The message is the same, though — music can
symbolize and convey the collective madness of humanity better than any other
medium.
You have to keep that message very firmly in
mind when listening to the second LP, because I vividly remember myself hating
ʻAumgnʼ and ʻPeking Oʼ — why on earth, thought I, when we have here easily the best rhythm section of 1971 bar
none, do we have to waste so much time on two astral freakouts that feature no
rhythm section whatsoever? But even the cavernous echoes and keyboard escapades
of ʻAumgnʼ are quite a step up from anything in the same style done by, say,
the Grateful Dead — just because there's a fascinating tension to every single bit of the track, and because you can
visualize it as a dangerous journey through the corridors, winding paths, and
precipices located inside somebody's brain; if the first LP was completely
«external», now the sensations are being «internalized», and where you first
had access to the outward manifestations of insanity, now you are being put inside, where it sure ain't pretty but
sure is suspenseful. ʻPeking Oʼ is not quite as impressive, largely because
there's too much emphasis on outdated electronics (the drum machine stuff is
particularly flimsy) and because Suzuki's speaking-in-tongues on that
particular track veers into the comical; but it is also shorter, and it does
actually succeed in bringing the rhythm section back towards the end, so it's
not a big problem.
Like Soundtracks,
Tago Mago also ends with something
relatively close to a «normal» moody tune, the drone-based ʻBring Me Coffee Or Teaʼ,
where things sort of calm down after the storm, but clearly indicating that
this is just a pause, as the madness dies down because the madman has
temporarily run out of energy and is now quietly rocking back and forth in a
dazed, depressed, zombie-like state, his mind quietly preparing for psychotic phase
two. ʻShe Brings The Rainʼ was not exactly a happy song, but it reflected a
certain mode of inner peace and quiet; ʻBring Me Coffee Or Teaʼ ends Can's
alleged masterpiece with a musical cliffhanger, or, at least, a clear indication
that this disturbed state of mind is here to stay for a long, long time.
Paradoxically, perhaps, Tago Mago is far from the most «typical» Can album. The band's
flirt with musical insanity would go on for a brief while, but overall, future
releases would become more and more disciplined, more concentrated on the
groove than the atmosphere; and if the atmosphere were still present, it would
rather be an otherworldly atmosphere than this horrid feeling of being trapped
inside a madman's mind. Since rock music and rock criticism has this long
history of flirting with darkness and insanity, it is not surprising that Tago Mago has become, for so many
people, the Can album par excellence;
yet in reality, it represents but one particular stage of evolution for the
band, although for Damo Suzuki, it was certainly his shining hour of glory (his
vocal presence on the following two albums being far less important). That
said, on the «Great Mad Albums» shelf that was so densely populated in the late
Sixties and early Seventies, Tago Mago
has itself quite a place of honor — thumbs up, totally.
infra-red portrait of an individual spitting out pieces of his own brain, but that same portrait also has the shape of a nuclear mushroom cloud
ReplyDeleteIn other words: A portrait of mind-blowing.
A rare case where the performers were right on the track what they deliver.
How is this not in your important album series?
ReplyDeleteIt's down the road a bit.#68 on RYM, he just did #12.
DeleteI have to say, Monster Movie kind of annoyed me and I didn't listen to Soundtracks, so I was very hesitant to jump into TM. I have to say, "Enjoyment" is not exactly the word that applies, but it didn't kill me either. I actually got most of it. Some of the music is actually pretty decent. I like the sitar sound that pops up a lot, especially on Paperhouse. Not a huge of fan of the tinny drum sound, but might have been my phones. And Damo doesn't freak me out as much as I thought he would. His lyrics are no more impenetrable and obscure than most of Jon Anderson's shtick. And at least he's saying something, even if it is mad babbling most of the time. Peking O did in fact make me laugh, although I doubt that was the intent. And I'm weird, but Aumgn made me think of a great fat lumbering beast wallowing and moaning in its hole. I guess everyone has their own mad echoes. Not essential listening to me, but not as repulsive as I expected. I guess it helped to be doing repetitive mindless Motorikarbeit to appreciate it's twisted logic.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking from the perspective of a conventional listener, this album had scared the shit out of me even before I actually found enough guts to finally get down to listen to it. But I did, eventually and well, I've heard some twisted stuff before (Gong's "Camembert Electrique" for example) but this album blows them away for two main reasons:
ReplyDelete1. You can actually get SOME amount of true enjoyment while listening to this stuff (the rhythm section really helps on that one).
2. Unlike things like Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" (which I find overrated as hell) it takes your mind to certain places - weird and scary places but places nontheless and not just assaults you with some pointless weirdness for weirdness' sake. There are traces of genius here, whether they came about accidentally or not.
And Peking O is a little man trapped in one of the forgotten rooms inside your mind, furiously trying to get out. I'm glad he's there, actually.