Can Pt I
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Hey everyone, don't forget that every playlist for every single episode of No Dogs in Space is available on both Spotify and YouTube. Just search my name, Marcus Parks, on Spotify and you'll find every single playlist. And just search No Dogs in Space on YouTube to find all the songs there. Enjoy the show, y'all, and enjoy the music. Have a new time, have a new life. I'm trying to come up with themes, like an 80s theme song. We're doing it!

Doing it our way. You can gotta get it. Take that. You can get a rule and break it. We're gonna make our dreams come true. Doing it our way. That's perfect strangers, right? Is it? Yeah. Oh, I thought I made that up.

Welcome to No Docks in Space, ladies and gentlemen. No, that was the perfect Stranger's theme. Oh, really? I think it was... No, I think it was written by Carolina Hidalgo.

No, they're going to make their dreams come true. They're in Chicago. My name's Marcus Parks. I'm here with Carolina Hidalgo. Say hello. I'm the writer of the theme song of... Yeah, Perfect Strangers theme song. Nothing's going to stop me now, by the way. So, no, this is doing it our way. It's the Carolina Hidalgo and Marcus Parks No Dogs in Space podcast.

New theme. Yeah, we'll just get a hold of the same guy that we had to write the first theme. We'll just have him write a new theme for this new era of No Dogs in Space, which is the same era as the one before. Thank you, everybody, for your patience waiting for this series to...

Waiting for the big time to come. Waiting for the big series. It just took a little while. There was some mental health issues, some physical health, chronically ill, and that's just me. That's not even counting all the shit that I had to do. We were busy, but now we're back, and now we're actually even more busy because we got more stuff and we're on to the next band. We're continuing our Kraut Rock series. Finally, here we go. Here we go.

So when a relatively well-known band is described as challenging, people sometimes try to sell it as being your favorite band's favorite band. But what used to bother me was why my favorite band's influences were just above my head. I just didn't fucking get it. But after thinking about it for a while, I settled on a pet theory called the sound above. Basically, what this entails is that if all an artist listens to is the type of music they're trying to make, they're just going to make more of the same.

But if they challenge themselves and listen to something that they don't quite understand, a sound above their own level, it's scientifically proven that a human brain creates new neural pathways that can open avenues of creativity they never thought possible. I believe that's true. I recently started learning how to play drums, as you know, and my head always hurts after I practice because I think...

It's getting smarter. Yeah. My head is like forming stuff and it hurts to get smarter. I imagine it's similar to listening to something challenging. Yeah. Well, this is the rarely discussed positive side of listening to obscure music. It's the idea that filtering weird shit through, say, a rock and roll lens creates art that reverberates and changes the landscape of the genre in unpredictable ways.

And as it happens, the second band in our Krautrock series is a prime example of that on both listening to the sound above and being the sound above.

consisting of a core group of four members who had a variety of singers throughout their career, this band approached the rock genre from such varied backgrounds as modern composition, free jazz, actual rock and roll, and the avant-garde movements of the 60s. Yes, and a lot of this was intentional. Very intentional. But while they were highly influenced by the earliest examples of electronic music, they were not an electronic band like Kraftwerk.

They were themselves composers, but mostly developed songs on the spot in a practice entirely different from improvising that they called instant composition. Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a...

Let's just wing it. But no, there's a lot more to that. There is more purpose to that. Yeah, we're not just splitting hairs when we say instant composition isn't improvisation. They are two extremely different. Well, they're not that different. So this is the hair that we split, but it means something. It is important. It is very important. It is important what we're going to talk about. Well, the drummer came from the unstructured world of free jazz, but relied on repetition so much that it became his trademark.

In other words, these musicians took all their influences and threw them away, which is a big part of what Kraut Rock is all about.

In more ways than one, this band is the epitome of Krat Rock, not just because of the way they approached music, but because most of the core members had vivid memories of the end of World War II, and all of them were raised in the long shadow of the Nazis. As such, the chaos and madness of Nazism affected each member, and was therefore reflected in not only the music they made, but in how they structured the band itself.

They'd seen firsthand what happened when people were sorted into leaders and followers, and this band wanted no part of it. Instead, they operated in a beautiful sort of anarchy that thrived on the friction between four men who refused to follow anyone or anything. That's right. In entertainment, we call it push and pull. And in Germany, they call it, let's make sure we never fall into fascism again. Right.

Because it's a slippery slope. That it is indeed. This leaderless style was only further reflected in their choice of vocalists. Their first, Malcolm Mooney, was a black American painter and sculptor fleeing the Vietnam War, while the second, Damo Suzuki, was a street musician and Dadaist from Japan. Both, however, were more vocalists than traditional lead singers.

But by mixing all of these elements together, this band created some of the most influential and inventive music of the century, leaving behind comfortable, safe careers actually in the music business already in the pursuit of something new and kind of scary.

The music they made can be strange, incredibly complicated and confusing, but it can also be catchy and at times deceptively simple, even playful. So whether you're looking for some new neural pathways or the story of a band who bet everything and won, there's no better inspiration than Can. I mean, come on.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. I think Vitamin C now is the second. It now holds the number two spot for the song played the most on this show.

Because it's fucking incredible. We have played this before. It is amazing. And we're going to talk about how we get there, basically. So should I get into our sources? Let's do it. Okay, so I'm going to do... Our main source first is All Gates Open by Rob Young and Ermin Schmidt. Ermin Schmidt being the keyboardist and one of the founders of Can, of course. And then we also used the Can Box book by Hildegard Schmidt.

who's Ehrman's wife and Cannes manager. And that book was also by Wolf Kampmann. Cool name. That's all I got to say. Wolf Kampmann? Yeah. I don't know what it means, but it's scary. And Times and Sounds by Jan Reitz that we have used for our past Amandul 2 series. We're going to use it again, of course. It's a fantastic book. Jackie Levisite, The Life Theory and Practice of a Master Drummer, edited by Jono Podmore, who is Ehrman Schmidt's son-in-law.

And creative partner as well. So it's a family business. It is. Cannes is very much a family business. And of course, I will give a more complete list of sources at the end of the episode. Those are just some of the main books we used. We used a lot. God damn, we used a lot. To get through this story. This is going to be a three-part series on Cannes. Mark my words that I will not change that. Let's hope not. It's definitely three. This is definitely three. We've already planned it out. Cool.

And so, without further ado, let's get into the story of Cannes with the man who brought everyone together, keyboardist Ermin Schmidt. Yes, so Ermin Schmidt, he was born in 1937 in Berlin, which was, as we know, just two years before World War II. And so his earliest memories were of Allied bombings overhead while he hid in the cellar with his family, just witnessing this all. He, what? Tense time to live in Berlin. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You think so? As a six-year-old? He actually even witnessed a German military train just explode right in front of him after being bombed by ally fighter pilots and stuff. Yes, I know. This is a six-year-old to see. That's a very intense thing. So by 1943, Ehrman and his family evacuated to the Austrian Alps. They took a train from Berlin to Innsbruck, Austria, where they would find safety for the time being, which is ironic because that's where...

Hitler would go and find safety for the time being at times. It's so weird. That's where his getaway was? I don't know.

I know he loves the Alps. He does love the Alps, yeah. Continue, please. So, Herman's family, they're evacuating from war, guys. By the way, war. They're getting on a train. They're trying to get back to safety. And that leads to Herman's next early memory, which is of staying up all night in an overcrowded train, listening to the monotonous groove of the train hitting the tracks one after another, all while looking out the window, witnessing a war-torn Germany in shambles.

Ehrman even wrote a song about his experience in 1980. And it is tense. Let's take a listen. So that's a piece Ehrman co-wrote with the Swiss artist Bruno Sporeri. And it's called Rapido de Noir. And it's, as you can tell,

Very intense. It got really jaunty at the end, though. Well, because later he gets happy. He said it was also a happy memory. Remember, Ermin Schmidt is a very special boy. Yes, he is. They're all very... Ken is made up of very special boys. And let me tell you why. Okay, start.

Starting with Ermin. He was already aware of his acoustical environment since like he was five. So any sounds he would hear, he would turn it into music. Like he would hallucinate choir singing and orchestras playing. Special. Special.

Ermin, he was also one of those, he was big on like, you know, the music concrete kind of stuff. Music concrete. Yeah, like the sound of a car slowly driving over gravel or a river bubbling and flowing. My personal favorite is crunchy footsteps under a bridge in the dark of night.

That sounds... I love it. I love all of it. You've been hanging out under a bridge at night where people are walking around. Not enough. I have not been doing that enough because I miss it. Not since we've been together. No, but I love that noise. Okay. Anyway, so... Date night. Very special girl. So...

Once the war was over, Ehrman and his family took the train back home to Germany. But since they had lost everything because of the war, they settled in a small, dank and unheated two-room basement apartment in the city of Dartmouth in West Germany. So that's where Ehrman grew up playing piano, listening to the radio, really getting into music music, not just acoustics. You know, like he's loving this other stuff. Not just sounds. Which you can always hear.

Yeah.

One was Schubert's The Unfinished Symphony. I haven't heard it. I don't know if it's finished. I don't know. I hear it's good. I guess it might just drop off. At the end, yeah. And the second one, which made a huge and lasting impression on Ermin Schmidt, was Igor Stravinsky's The Rites of Spring. Ermin could not believe his ears. He thought, this is ugly music. I don't think I like it, but I want to understand it.

And the more he kept listening, the more fascinated he became. And then he forgot the gravel and he just got into music, especially classical music. That's going to be his thing. Yeah. And remember, Rites of Spring was also figured huge into John Cale's life as well. He said John Cale used to say that Rites of Spring was the very first rock and roll song ever written. Oh, that's right. That's right. But yeah, so Rites of Spring is extraordinarily influential on like 60s and of course, 20th century rock and roll history. It's fucking insane. Yeah.

Now, for Ehrman, it would have been easy, even sensible, to follow in his father's footsteps when it came time to choose a career. His father was an architect, which was a plum job during a time in which most of Germany was in need of reconstruction. But the problem with Ehrman following his father was that his father was an ardent follower of Adolf Hitler.

Yeah, that'll do it. That is a problem. It makes you not want to follow in the father's footsteps. See, when Ehrman was a young teen, he began to understand the part that his parents had played in Germany's destruction. And if his parents were Nazis, then maybe a lot of the authority figures in his life were also Nazis, namely his teachers. This is true. We did talk about this in the Amandul 2 series that a lot of people who kept government jobs, a lot of...

Teaching institutions kept a lot of Nazis still there in power in their institutions because they, what was it? Quote, couldn't find anyone else. Yeah, because they did the denazification, took all the Nazis out and go, oh no.

no, there were a lot of Nazis. Nobody runs anything anymore. So they just said, fuck it. We talked about it. It's like trying to take pee out of a pool. You can't. So you just try to like, just try to make it more pool. Well, Ehrman soon discovered through the help of an American Jewish man working at a local cultural center, who I'm sure loved every fucking second of this. Ehrman discovered that there were enough Nazis teaching at his school where he could write a monthly feature backed up with unimpeachable

Yes.

That's it. That's all he has. Get out of here. They just got rid of him. I'm tired of this. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah, and Ehrman was expelled and I believe that's why he didn't complete his A-levels, which is something you have to pass in Europe to qualify for university there. So,

So so Ehrman couldn't study music composition and conducting, which he had been dreaming of since he first heard Stravinsky. So he had no choice but to go to the Dartmouth Conservatory in his hometown to get a degree in teaching piano, which actually coincidentally, John Cale started out his musical career as working as a piano teacher, learning how to be a piano teacher, getting a piano teaching diploma. I'm not sure what it's called. I don't know what you call it. Certification. Certification. Yes. Yes.

So, from there, Ermin, when he got his diploma, he was able to enroll at the Folkvang Academy in Essen, where he learned about finally conducting orchestras and composition in a boot camp sort of way, thanks to one of his teachers, the famous Romanian composer, Giorgi Ligeti.

We were informed. We're working on this. Ligety. We were informed by somebody who has studied this shit that it is actually, it's pronounced Ligety. Thank you, Evie. And thank you, Evie. It's not Ligety. It's Ligety.

So Ligeti, who's Transylvanian from Romania, yes, he famously composed Atmospheres, which you can hear in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. That was the great one when he found out that his music was being played in Kubrick's movie and he called him up and said, like, why am I not getting paid, bitch? He eventually did because later in 1980 when The Shining came out, you can hear Ligeti's incredible song Lontano. Ligeti.

Come play with us, Danny. Come play atmospheric music with us, Danny. It is the new sounds of the 60s. Danny? Yes. And he did, apparently. I don't know. Yeah, Ermin Schmidt studied under that guy. Yeah, I know. It's intense.

So, Ermin, he's getting deep in his education as well as deep in the classical music world. He wins competitions and awards. One was at the prestigious Mozzareum. No, wait, sorry. Oh, the Mozzareum. Damn it. Mozzartium. The Mozart.

Composium School, Mozartium. The Mozartium. Yes, in Salzburg, as well as the National Young Artist Award for Excellence in what I believe is in being a young artist. He was excellent at it. But there was one competition that Ehrman screwed up on big time. But again, things happen for a reason. And in January of 1966, Ehrman

went to America for the first time to compete in the Metropolis Conducting Competition in New York City, headed by Leonard Bernstein. Wow. Yes. So, Erman and 33 other aspiring conductors were going to spend a couple weeks rehearsing for their big competition to play live at Carnegie Hall. This was big. Was Erman Schmidt in the movie? What? Bradley Cooper's Leonard Bernstein? Yeah. I don't know.

Don't think he made the cut. And we're going to find out why, actually. Now, while Ehrman had gone to America for a competition involving purely classical music, he still knew that New York City in 1966 was where some of the most exciting scenes in the modern art world could be found. Like everyone else who knew the score, Ehrman knew all about Andy Warhol.

So he explored Manhattan's artistic underground, starting with a showing of Chelsea Girls. This was Warhol's three-and-a-half-hour art film that chronicled the day-to-day lives of residents at the famous Chelsea Hotel. All of these people were also a part of Warhol's factory scene.

Possibly inspired to check out the setting for the film, Ehrman made his way to the Chelsea Hotel and met like minds. Members of the New York art scene who welcomed Ehrman with open arms and a lot of LSD. He did say he enjoyed their LSD a lot. Yes.

From there, Ehrman found himself in the company of the Fluxus movement, who, if you'll remember from our Velvet Underground series, rejected fine art, elitism, and exclusivity in all of its forms, even if the product is terrible. All that mattered to Fluxus was that you did something new, and that included music.

Now, one of the things that the Fluxus movement was known for was Drone, and its most well-known member and practitioner of Drone was John Cale of the Velvet Underground. Yay! We've mentioned him! He used his viola to create the continuous undercurrent of sound that gave the Velvet Underground's debut album its bedrock, specifically on this song, which I think is the number one most played song on all of No Dogs in Space. ♪

♪ Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather ♪ ♪ With flash girl child in heart ♪ ♪ Comes in bells, yes servant don't forsake him ♪ ♪ Strive dear mistress and cure his heart ♪

Now, while Ermin Schmidt ended up being a huge fan of the Velvet Underground, eventually, John Cale was not the man he connected with in New York while hanging out in the Fluxus scene. Rather, Schmidt found himself in the company of the guy who replaced John Cale. Yes, and we're talking about the theater of eternal music, not the Velvet Underground. Ha!

Doug Yule is not in this story. No, no. Unfortunately, the Doug Yule Appreciation Society has nothing else to add here. No, no. But thank you so much for tagging us in your Instagram. But yes, I think you mentioned this once before that John Cale was in the theater of Eternal Music and part of the whole Fluxus movement and everything. But then you had to leave to do this little band called Velvet Underground. True.

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so that you can focus on the important conversations and decisions of today. UnderstandCancerTogether.com Helping you navigate life with cancer, one moment at a time.

Well, the guy that replaced John Cale was Terry Riley, and he would eventually become famous in the experimental scene for creating one of the most important pieces of composition of the late 20th century. This is so good. Sorry, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. I love this shit so much. Please, please. I love it. It's the groundbreaking minimalist work in scene. Yes!

During the break, while you were listening to that song, I was sitting here in this fucking in the studio getting roasted. I got well, actually, the fuck out by Carolina for which version I played of NC. There's actually infinite amount of versions technically of NC. So he picked the Columbia version of Columbia Records when they recorded this in 1968. Did you know there are overdubs on this one? Yeah.

I know. Yeah, I know there are overdubs on this and it's the version I know. Behind closed doors, Carolina is an asshole. Yes, we know. Okay, so that's Terry Riley. That's Incy. I love this. It took me a long time to figure this out. But Terry Riley, so he's Lamont Young's old college buddy from UC Berkeley. But before he joined the Theater of Eternal Music, right, Terry was 33. He was living in San Francisco, working at a saloon where he'd play ragtime music for customers, right?

I was trying to ask, how does that go? Scott Joplin. Yeah, and he'd just bring his hat up and stuff and wail and stomp his foot and like, thank you to the ladies in the back. So yes, the money was good. He was happy. But one night, Terry was on the bus on his way to work at the saloon when suddenly...

Terry Riley heard something coming from his head. He said it sounded like trumpets from heaven. Something started ringing in his ears and he just could not shake it off. Now, was Terry Riley stoned? Yes, of course he was. Absolutely. Yes, but that's not important. Something had come to him that was unbelievably magical and he couldn't wait to write what was in his head.

But unfortunately, Terry was on his way to a six-hour shift at his piano-playing job, so he'd have to wait until he got back home late at night after work. Sure. And that's when Terry finally wrote this monumental piece in C, like the letter C for Carolina. So... I'm glad you found a way to put yourself in the in C. It's fantastic. It lasts

almost an hour. We really give you a small clip. You have to like, let's try to explain it because it's very simple but also impossible to explain. The clip we played you was from 24 minutes into the piece. Yes. So basically, Terry wrote 53 short musical phrases all in one page that are all numbered

in an order. So if you're playing in C, you start with the first one and you repeat it as many times as you like and then you go to the second and you repeat that once, twice, 20 times, whatever. But the trick is, it's not just you. There's a whole orchestra and they're

They're starting their number one musical phrase and going forward any way they want to as well. So the only rule is to make sure everyone stays kind of close to each other, like no more than three musical phrases from each other, like a train moving. Got to keep the train cars close as they move along. And it eventually builds up into a groove. It creates patterns. But most importantly, it creates a new sound. So let's hear how it starts. This is the beginning with a pulse. And then it moves forward.

© BF-WATCH TV 2021

Okay, so what's the point of this? Collective listening. Yeah. So all the musicians in this orchestra, and I think Terry says you could be around 35, but it really can be as many people as you want or as little as you want. They're all constantly focusing on each other, on themselves, on what they're doing and where they're at.

At all times. That's where you go cross-eyed. It is hard. I tried to do it on my computer the other day, and I just rage quit. Okay, so that and the fact that Terry Riley composed a piece of music that allowed the musicians to use their knowledge, their instincts, their emotions, whatever, to decide when and where they want to go. They also get to be the composer and make their contribution in that moment. So he's like giving the power to...

to the musicians. And that's very important. Very important. And the interesting thing about NC is that there are so many different variations on how it can be played when people stop, when people end, that you could play versions of NC in

Until the heat death of the universe and still never play every variation. And Damon Auburn will still be there in Africa trying to get all the Congo drummers together. Which, by the way, check that one out. That was cool. That's a cool in-sea version that he did. I'd love to see that. That sounds fucking great.

Now, when Ehrman was first introduced to minimalism, when Terry Riley got to say, hey, check out this thing that I did, he thought it was, in a word, stupid. Come on, you're German. What did you expect? He thought it was childish and banal, that its simplicity was a weakness when compared to the complexity of modern German composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen, who we'll get to later.

But Ehrman was holding on to the fallacy that something had to be complicated in order for it to be revolutionary. But after spending a night with Terry Riley, Ehrman on piano, and Terry on sax, doing basically a one-note jam session, Ehrman began to see the point of

of minimalism. In music like Terry Riley's, patterns played or sung a thousand times over eventually begin to overlay each other, and that one thing you play again and again ends up creating something new. This idea that a simple repeating pattern can be an artistic statement in and of itself would become central to the concept of canned.

But while Ehrman was having his mind blown with all these new concepts, playing a single note on a piano while Terry tooted on his sax for hours on end. I believe there were amphetamines involved. Not to say it wasn't cool to do. Ehrman had forgotten the entire reason why he'd gone to New York in the first place, the conducting competition. Oh, right. Leonard Bernstein.

Okay.

That's when he realized he'd forgotten his sheet music back at the hotel. So he muddled his way through the rehearsal without it and gave, at best, a C-plus performance. Cool, that gives me hope. Did he win? God, no. They asked him to leave. Oh, that's right.

That's right. He said, I don't think your heart's in this, bud. I think you need to just go. And after that, Ehrman began to realize that his musical destiny was not in the hallowed halls of New York's high art spaces with Leonard Bernstein, but rather in the grubby basements of Soho with people like Terry Riley. So Ehrman quit the competition. Or the competition quit him. Ha ha ha.

and spent another two and a half months ensconced in the New York City experimental scene. And by the time he returned to Germany in the spring of 1966, his notions of what could be accomplished with music had changed entirely.

Yes, because the whole conservatory academia music scene, Ehrman was from, you know, talking about Schoenberg to studying Stockhausen and conducting fancy symphonies. That's all boring compared to the downtown art scene in New York. I mean, you go downtown, you have Flux's artists cutting your hair. Pianos being demolished by hammers and they call it a concert. And Andy Warhol's weird ass...

movies like you know a penis and it's just a penis all day blowjob blowjob blowjob where you actually don't actually see you see the face it's actually wow and the Velvet Underground don't forget Velvet Underground who used high art like poetry and John Cale's viola and put it all together in a rock and roll band and that screams oh you really can do anything just make sure it doesn't suck or

And if it does, bravo. I don't know. I don't know. We're all anti-elites anyways, right? Yeah, yeah. Who gives a shit? So that's incredibly freeing for someone like Ehrman who now wants to do something entirely different from, you know, from his peers back home. So, yes, this is the trip in New York City in 1966. This is a big turning point for Ehrman's career because he's going to give up a cushy life as a conductor or classical pianist. Mm-hmm.

You've been waiting for that, haven't you? He's a pianist. And of course, Ehrman's family and friends thought he was crazy. Ehrman said his parents found it, quote, very sad. Oh, the fucking Nazis thought it was really sad? Yes, they were so sad we struggled so much to give him a good education and help pay for lessons to get into the classical music scene and now he's ditching it to be in a, what is it, a band that's going to play music that's, how do you call it, new but different but new but you don't know what it is? Okay, great. Fuck them. Fuck them.

Now, Ehrman didn't come back from New York and just torch his entire life. He spent two more years continuing with his career, but he never forgot the idea. His stumbling block was that he just didn't know anybody in the rock or beat scene in Germany at all. He just knew other classical guys. The closest he came between 1966 and 1968 was when he went to a rock concert with a friend in Berlin.

Ehrman waited for an hour for the group to start. Then finally, just one guy came out and said, the others don't come. I play alone. He then started shredding guitar all by himself. And Ehrman thought, yes, this man should be my guitarist. The problem was that this musician was already well on his way to starting his own revolutionary krautrock group.

His name was Edgar Frosa, and he would soon become the brain behind Tangerine Dream. I'm going to say it.

I like them. You could take the brave stance and say you like Tangerine Dream. Remember how it's cool not to because everyone does? Yeah. Who cares? You know what I found out today? You know what they did? They, of course, became famous later on for doing just, I mean, dozens upon dozens of soundtracks. You know what movie they did the soundtrack for? Risky Business. Tangerine Dream? Yeah. Did the soundtrack for? Risky Business. Wow. Old-fashioned rock and roll? Yeah.

Is that the right movie? Yeah, old time rock and roll. Old time rock and roll. Okay, so imagine if they did that song. If they did Ultima Tool Part 1. Now, eventually, Ehrman decided to just pull the trigger on the project, and he knew just the weirdo who would go along with it.

His name was Holger Chouquet, and his endless creativity in the studio as both Cannes' bass player and their engineer would make him an invaluable member of the group and a national German treasure. So Holger, scene opens on a gray, broken landscape of city ruins. The wind is blowing. The camera slowly zooms in on a single small rock. Suddenly, the rock is kicked.

wide shot on an incongruently exuberant polish boy the camera slowly zooms out to reveal berlin nineteen forty five in the distance a polish woman is heard calling olga and there begins the story

of Holger Chukai. We want to write this movie. We're going to start writing it. So, yes, it's great. Isn't that great? It's fantastic. Call us. Yeah, call us, please. Now, Holger was born in the Polish city of Danzig just before the Nazis invaded. But as the war was winding down in 1945, the Chukai family left after surviving six years of Nazi occupation to escape the often cruel and murderous advancing Soviet army.

Holger and his family soon found themselves on a train full of wounded soldiers bound for Berlin, but not because they were loyal to the Nazis or had any association with Germany. Quite simply, they just needed to leave Danzig as soon as possible, and the next train leaving just happened to be headed to Germany's capital.

But when they arrived in Berlin in February of 1945, just a few months before the war ended, they looked out the passenger train's window to see that the supposedly grand capital of Germany was now, again, nothing but rubble and ruin. I believe Holger said, where is it? That was a real quote. Like, where are we? We're here? Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's bad. Very.

Eventually, though, after spending some time in the wreckage of Berlin, the Chouquet family settled in a town near Frankfurt. There, Holger found the stability that allowed him to develop into the strange soul that would one day help change the landscape of 20th century popular music. That's right.

Holger said that when he and his family got to Berlin, they somehow ended up in the Russian zone. Yeah. Which they didn't want to be in. Or they just escaped Danzig to leave behind the Russians. Oh, more Russians. Russians from the other side. So they left. But before they did, Holger somehow managed to set off an explosion in an old ammunition depot. So how he pulled that off at, let's, okay, seven or eight years old. Yeah.

And then Holger and his family just quietly sneak over to the American zone. I can't even whistle that.

There we go. That's scene two. And they just kind of just jump over and they get to the American zone while no one's watching. We all never know how he pulled that off. No. But Holger Chouquet did call it an unforgettable acoustical experience. The explosion of the ammunition depot. Another special boy. Yeah. And that's one of the many reasons why we love Holger Chouquet. Because he is weird. His lifestyle, his imagination, his wardrobe choices, his magician slash street...

suspender look later in life that he has going on. Even his friend. I would describe it as Gallagher-esque. It is.

It is a bit. It is a bit. He's got a fantastic mustache. He's like, he's not a clown. No. But he is something like that for adults. Yeah. Very cool. And plays amazing music. Yeah. And his solo career is legitimately phenomenal. Yes. It's absolutely phenomenal. After Ken. Even Holger's friend, one of his good friends, Califranek, said Holger's interpretation of reality lands somewhere between Frank Zappa and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Wow. That's fucking weird. And it makes sense when you think about it, when you get to know him. So considering when and where Holger spent his first few years of his life, as we know, World War II, Germany, everything, Holger wasn't exposed to much culture music at the time. They're trying to rebuild from, you know, year zero. Yeah. So actually the only music that Holger heard at this time was church music. Right.

which fascinated him, especially organ music. As we know, it's meant to draw people in. Hot pipes. Exactly. Yeah, Holger's all about it. He knows what the fuck's going on with the hot pipes. He loves this, and I love this. This is one of my favorites. This is from Johann Sebastian Bach, right? Yes, no, he was not on Kill My Girls. This is the real deal, okay? Toccata and Fugue. This definitely drew Holger in. Check it out. It's amazing.

I mean, it is the hottest pipes to ever exist. It really is. I love it. Yes, and I know that people have heard this before. Especially if you've seen Fantasia and stuff like that. Yeah. Whatever. Anyway, so Holger. I like showing people stuff. Man, if you guys ever heard about this fucking food, it's called hot dog.

They're like so fucking good, man. It's kind of my thing. So Holger started learning a lot more about music in school as he got older. He played guitar. He practiced some piano. But Holger, he kind of fell out of it for a little while because he hated reading music. That's just too much to ask from him, you know. But as a teenager, Holger also got into his other passion, electronics.

Because he was totally into the three-valve radio things and how they worked. He even got a job after school at a TV and radio repair shop. I mean, this is the tech guy of the group, right? The gearhead. Yeah. You always got to have at least one. I think he even mentioned a story about how he once found an old Nazi radio and he messed with it so he could use it to transmit messages to his girlfriend through the feedback using Morse code. That's incredible. I know. This is a teenager. Yeah.

He's just like a 15-year-old guy, right? But also Holger still loved music too. He played guitar in a jazz band and pretty soon he had his own band, his own Holger Quintet, which is adorable. But when Holger entered his band into a local jazz festival, they were disqualified because the judges could not classify his music properly.

As jazz or even as music. That's what. Yeah, I know. That's when Holger realizes like, OK, jazz is not my language. Yeah. And electrical engineering seems hard. So maybe I should just go to school and learn music, actually learn how to do this. So at 24 years old, Holger, he moves to Berlin to study double bass or what we call here upright bass at the Berlin Music Academy.

Academy. And since he was broke, he got the cheapest apartment in Berlin, which this is fun, was in the Soviet zone near the new Berlin Wall that went up just a year before. Was it on the other side of the Berlin Wall? He had to get a special permit and everything to get to this because it was cheap, man. So that's where he had to live while he studied and practiced.

which he said the KGB hated, but that's okay because they were, quote, a bunch of assholes. That's a direct quote from him. No, he said the people who controlled that area were a bunch of assholes. But Holger, he didn't do great in class. Again, he hated reading music and doing boring stuff like learning methods of notation and whatnot. You know, Holger is probably the guy in class who raises his hand during a lecture and says, like, you know, why are we doing all this talking? Shouldn't we be just playing?

or something? Are there any dinosaurs in this conservatory? Like...

You know, no more notation. Yeah. So after what I believe was roughly two months, Holger was dismissed by his professors for being too full of his own importance. The first of many dismissals. The man just can't fit in anywhere. He's not a conventional guy. No. And right as Holger was packing his bags, he heard about a new music course in Cologne being taught by one of his favorite composers, Carlisle.

Carl Heinz Stockhausen. Mr. Stockhausen. Err Stockhausen. Herr Stockhausen. Herr Stockhausen. Play the song. Okay, that's Stockhausen. That's from 1953, and it's one of the earliest compositions of electronic music.

That's made out of like pure sign tones and with waves and timbre. And I don't know. Don't ask me to explain because I really don't know if I can. No, I don't know if I can either, but I can tell you I like it. I like I like the fun noises. Yeah. You know what? And back then, even in the 50s, it was kind of a little scary because when Holger first heard this kind of electronic music from Stockhausen, he actually heard Studio One. His first thought was that sounds like toilets flushing in outer space. Yeah.

How is that scary? Because it's strange but exciting at the same time. I never heard such frightening things as just toilets flushing into outer space. My God, it's so frightening. Yes, people laughed. People laughed when they heard it. That's what happens. Nervous laughter. Yes, that is from 1953. Come on, it's impressive. It's extraordinarily impressive for 1953. That's what they say is a lot of early electronic music. Like now it sounds just sort of like

Sound test, like it's the type of sound. It's like, you know, when you're doing the acoustical testing on your TV in your living room. It sounds like that. But back then, she was revolutionary. Yes, it's strange but exciting at the same time. And that's what Holger thought because he knew he had to learn how to manufacture strange sounds like Stockhausen did. So Holger approached Stockhausen and asked him if he could take him on as a student.

And Holger was totally honest about this. He's like, I've never gotten anything I've auditioned for. I've been kicked out of more than one music school. And I don't have any idea of what music I want to make. But can you teach me, please? So Stockhausen said, sure, why not?

Why not? Which how I read it, the moral of the story is if you're weird enough, the right people will invite you to do cool shit. So when I'm saying weird, I mean like different but knowledgeable but can bring something to the table no one else can. I agree with that 1000%. It's very important.

Now, Karlheinz Stockhausen was a musical pioneer. He was a composer and teacher who pushed the boundaries of what music could be in ways that are now so common that it wouldn't even cross your mind that someone had to do this shit somewhere for the first time.

For example, Stockhausen was the first person to ever combine a natural voice with electronic sounds on a recording, which he did for his composition, Gesang der Junglinge. In this piece, he combined multiple recordings of a 12-year-old soprano with sweeping, bubbling, electronic composition. And if one of you can guess the sample that is taken from this song, email us at nodoxinspace at gmail.com. ♪

I mean, it's difficult to get a full flavor. I like it. I love fucking Stockhausen. I own so many Stockhausen records. Telemusic, Hymnen, it's fucking incredible stuff. But yes, it is hard to just listen to 30 seconds of a Stockhausen clip and be like, oh yeah, I get that. Yeah.

I get what he's going for. It's going to take, yeah, you can get into it. It's all on YouTube and listen to it. I think it's only seven minutes long, so you've got to listen to it from top to bottom. Gesang der Junglinge? I think it's 14 minutes long. Okay, something like that. So,

So a few years before Stockhausen took on Holger as a student, Holger actually attended one of his lectures back in 1957 when Stockhausen was playing the toilet flushing song to the public. And Holger remembers the audience laughing when they first heard it because it was so strange. I mean, this is the late 50s. They don't know what they're hearing, so they're laughing because they're weird, they're out and scared. And it got even more awkward when another music professor in the audience, a guy sitting right next to Holger, raised his hand and asked Stockhausen,

Are you just showing us all these weird sounds and calling it music just to shock us and make a lot of money out of it? To which Stockhausen responded with like, nah, man, I do these experiments for musical reasons, for the art of it. I don't need money. I'm married to a rich woman. Yeah. Seriously, Doris, Doris, can you please get up? Yes. Yeah. You see, she's loaded. That's how I don't need money. This is what I'm doing.

Okay, but this song that we just heard, Gesang der Junglinger. Gesang der Junglinger. Song of the Youth. It's become a cult hit. It is his most popular song. The Beatles love this song. They put Stockhausen on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's album, I think because of this song. And Ermin Schmidt,

the keyboardist that we talked about earlier, he was also a student of Stockhausen's. Ehrman enrolled in the class because when Ehrman first heard Song of the Youth on the radio one night, he had an epiphany. It was a revelation. He's like, this opened up an entirely new universe of sound.

So he actually, that's how Ehrman and Holger met, right there in Cologne in Stockhausen's new music courses, sitting right next to each other, holding their pencils. Yeah, I mean, this is a prime example of what we call the sound above. Like, I mean, this is people looking for something that they don't quite understand and finding it and thinking, I need to understand this and I need to use this to make my own music.

Now, the sounds from Gesang der Junglinge were created at WDR Radio in Cologne in the studio for electronic music. Despite being one of the birthplaces of electronic music, this is where all electronic music comes from, places like this. The studio was quite simply an un-air-conditioned room, three floors below ground level, thick with cigarette smoke.

Here, Stockhausen and other technicians, composers, and what they called back then musical scientists. I hope they wore lab coats. Were among the first people to experiment with electronic devices just to see what was possible and how these sounds could be used as actual music.

The studio for electronic music was actually just one of many workshops across Europe doing the same thing, the most famous being the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. There, in 1963, in Britain, a woman named Delia Derbyshire produced one of the earliest pieces of electronic music that's actually recognizable. Let's hear it.

♪ ♪

♪

It's a Doctor Who theme song! That's really cool! Yeah, that was it, yeah. That was it, yeah. Delia Derbyshire. She's one of the pioneers of electronic music and created that entirely with either electronic noises or with small, like, taped...

With small, like, taped chunks of music that she would, you know, cut up. A lot of music. It's incredible stuff. They do a lot of samples, especially with Stockhausen as well. But yeah, I mean, yeah, that's 1963 electronic music. Stockhausen, however, was not interested in making music for TV and film. He was there to explore, to do things with music that had never been done, both in composition and live performance.

See, while traditional composers wrote pieces for orchestras to play live, Stockhausen wrote some of his pieces to be played on extraordinarily loud speakers placed in the four corners of a performance space, while the stage itself sat empty.

Really, without even trying, Stockhausen was putting on 60s-style happenings in 1955. Yes, really. And over the next few years, Ehrman and Holger both learned a lot in Stockhausen's music lab. You know, editing and gluing snippets, making collages with sounds, kind of like what Delia did with Doctor Who. Or the theme song, I'm saying.

But most importantly, Holger learned a valuable lesson from Stockhausen, which is to stop thinking so much and stop asking so many questions. You're always going to hit a wall when it comes to music or anything creative, really. Sometimes you just need to jump over that wall to find out where you're going to land. Yeah. Because Holger could not write anything and show anything like for a moment he was stuck. And he's like, don't get stuck. You'll never make it. Just do it.

So now get out of my class. That's what Stockhausen said. Get out of here. Get out of here. No, really, Holger. You've been here for three years. It's 1966 now. Herman is in New York. Remember, he's doing his thing. And now it's time for you, Holger, to spread your wings. Go and find your own sound, which I'm sure he told like dozens of people that. Yeah. But then Stockhausen added one last thing. It wouldn't hurt to find a rich wife. Right.

So Holger left Cologne and went to Switzerland to become a music teacher at a fancy boarding school in St. Gallen. It was an all-girls school, so Holger thought maybe some of the students' mothers might be single. But it wasn't until... But he didn't

meet anyone really. Well, actually, it wasn't until he taught a few lessons at a neighboring school where Holger met and befriended a teenage Michael Crowley who would later be, or actually very soon be, the guitarist for Cannes.

Now, out of all the musicians in the Kratrock movement, it's doubtful that any had a darker familial past than Michael Carolli. His father, a Transylvanian by birth, was an accountant for the SS, the most evil wing of the Nazis. The accountant part? The accountant department? Or the SS? The SS was the most evil wing of the Nazis. In the accountant department. Okay.

No, I would say the Einsatzgruppen was probably the most evil wing of the SS. Not the accounting wing. Okay. Yeah, Michael's father actually testified at the Nuremberg trials for the defense. I know, right? When I first read it, I was just like, oh, good. I'm glad that he was able to clear. Oh, no, wait. For them? For the Nazis? He later worked for IG Farben, who made the...

fucking gas they used at Auschwitz. Oh boy. It's a good thing Michael Carolli decided to go a different way. Yeah, Carolli's father was a Nazi's Nazi, as you'd say. Yes, your favorite band's favorite band.

His mother, however, was worked as a film editor prior to marrying Herman Carolli. And since she'd been in the arts, she made sure that Michael grew up in a home that was cultured, which is how Michael learned how to play the flute by four, the piano by six, and the violin by seven. Now, Michael Carolli was at least a decade younger than the other members of Cannes. So his coming of age occurred in the mid-60s, when the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were the most influential groups around.

Carolli, however, also discovered avant-garde jazz as a teen, possibly following a track from his preteen years when he played in a school Dixieland jazz band called the Steamboat Jazz Pirates. Oh, that's cute. It is very cute. I mean... I get it.

But when it came to the avant-garde, Caroli approached a teacher at his boarding school to see if he could integrate that style into what he was already doing on the guitar. That teacher was our man, Holger Chuket.

Now, at this point, Chuké was not well-versed in the rock and roll scene, because back then, rock music was only about 10 years old, and knowledge of rock music wasn't a given. So, to bridge the gap between the avant-garde and rock and roll, Corolli played Holger a rock song with an avant-garde edge. I am the Waltz. I am the Waltz.

Let us take the heart of the beast.

You know, I mean, the song is brilliant. Yeah. I did realize that when I was like listening to the song, like writing this part and listening to it, I texted you. I was like, God, you know, I Am The War Horse actually is a brilliant song. Yeah. The funny thing is he texted me and I was about 10 feet away. Well, I would have had to get up and go to the other room. It's so hard.

Well, with this song, Holger said that he heard the music of the past and the music of the present coming together for the first time. It was music that made the connection between what he'd studied and what he was striving towards. But after a short stint of playing together in a school rock band, Holger and Michael went their separate ways for the time being. Michael went to law school at the behest of his parents, while Holger was fired because, quote, the director didn't like my methods. Yeah.

I can't fit in anywhere. In fact, Holger had no teaching credentials. So it was a wonder he was even hired at all. Probably just by that mustache. But despite being totally uncredited, Holger soon got another job as a music teacher and again spent his nights playing in a rock band with his students, getting a feel for the genre through early Jimi Hendrix singles.

But in 1968, Holger's stagnant career was given new life when he got his letter from Ermin Schmidt, who would soon change the course of Michael Caroli's life as well. Yes. So remember, Ermin and Holger, they studied under Stockhausen together. They weren't really friends or anything like they didn't hang out. But Ermin did remember Holger, probably because Holger is really out there and would

possibly be amenable to this new kind of musical group idea. So, Ehrman wrote Holger a letter asking him if he wanted to join this new kind of music experiment. And Holger said, yeah, but I want to bring in Michael Carolli. He's like 19, but he's an electric guitar playing genius and he's totally willing to quit law school and disappoint his parents to join this band. Because remember, his parents were Nazis, so, you know, F them. Who cares what they think, right? Yeah, F those Nazis. So, now

Now they got Michael to move to Cologne. He's going to be their guitarist. Ermin is going to play keyboard. Holger settles on bass guitar because he felt he could hide himself in the bass. Basically saying he's not as confident in his playing as the others, but he has this creative mind that will come in handy when he works on engineering and mixing the music that they're going to make. It's going to be phenomenal. Yeah, mixing and playing bass at the same fucking time. Luckily, Holger had the help of David Johnson, an American flutist. Yeah.

Or flautist. In Europe, it's flautist. In Europe, it's flautist. Here, it's flutist. Well, this story takes place in Europe, so flautist. Okay, so he plays the flaut. David Johnson was another Stockhausen classmate with Ehrman and Holger. They were all together, desks together and everything. And David, he would help engineer their music and play the flute, I guess. And most importantly, David had the keys to Stockhausen's electronic lab and tape recording equipment.

which meant that they could take maybe a tape or two, drop it in their pocket. You know, something to help fund this insane new venture that they're going to get into. This is the nerdiest heist I've ever heard of. I know. The nerdiest way to like be bad. And the fun part is they denied it until like 2016. Yeah.

Stockhausen died in 2007. He went back to the serious planet that he's from or whatever. Stockhausen did claim to be an alien. That is true. Yes. And you know what? I believe him. I'm into it. I believe him. If someone tells you who they are. Him and Sun Ra. So now all Ermin needs to complete this new band is a drummer.

And this may have been the smartest move Ehrman ever made in Cannes. My God. Because Ehrman Schmidt called up a now legendary genius, a man of few words, but much drumming, half drum set, half man, I believe, the extraordinary Jackie Levisite. Hit it. ♪♪♪

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

God. He can fuck. Yeah, that's from a Cannes show in 1970. Like all the lights went off in the middle of the show. A power outage. A power outage. And so Jackie Liebeside did an eight minute drum solo. Fucking look it up. If you're a drummer, if you love drums, anything, go look it up on YouTube. Listen to the thing in its entirety. That's just like five and a half minutes to six and a half minutes. It's a fucking incredible, incredible, incredible drum solo.

So Jackie Levisite... I know. We got to calm down for a minute and then we'll be right back. Got to calm down from that fucking drum solo. So Jackie Levisite, one of the most talented drummers of the 20th century, was born into poverty just south of the city of Dresden in 1938. None of these guys missed World War II. This was seven years before the city was firebombed into oblivion by the Allies. Jackie Levisite,

Jackie actually remembered the firebombing of Dresden clearly, recalling the day that the Allied planes flew overhead towards the one city that everyone thought was safe, because Dresden was made up mostly of civilians and therefore had no military purpose. But speaking of civilians, Jackie's father was not a soldier in the war. Instead, he was a music teacher at the local school. But from what Jackie was told, his father, who was a violinist, a keyboardist, and an accordion player...

He may have been one of the musicians who played music that was forbidden by the Nazis. And the Nazis took that decree deadly seriously. And that might be why Jackie's father left home one day in 1943 and just never came back.

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You don't wake up dreaming of McDonald's fries. You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns. McDonald's breakfast comes first. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

Now, a couple of years after his father disappeared, the Germans lost, the Soviets rolled in, and they occupied the area of Germany where Jackie and his mother lived. Deciding, much like Holger's family, that being surrounded by Soviets was just plain fucking dangerous, Jackie's mother took him to West Germany just before the border closed, covering his eyes any time they happened upon the dead body of a fellow German on the roadside.

Eventually, they made it to the heart of Western Germany and rebuilt their lives. There, Jackie had the privilege that Ermin Schmidt didn't have. Jackie could proudly follow in his father's footsteps and devote himself to music entirely. And he kept that accordion his entire life. Yeah, his father's accordion. Yeah.

But when Jackie moved to a new school with a trumpet in tow, because every single member of CAN can play like six instruments. It's incredible. And everyone speaks three languages. It's Europe. It's Europe, guys. Jackie found that his school orchestra was full up on trumpeteers. They were, however... Trumpeters? Trumpeters? I think it's trumpeters. Trumpeters. Yes. They were, however, in dire need of a drummer, like everyone always is. So Jackie shrugged and said, well, I'll just do that then.

And that is how he took the first step on his path to greatness by just saying, all right. Doesn't seem so hard. So, yeah, by 1959, when Jackie Levis, he was 21 years old. He moved to Cologne to study more drumming at the here we go. Music Hochschule, which is a music school in Cologne. Thank you. It was the first year the school was offering courses on jazz since the early 30s because you know who?

Bandit in Germany way back when. Yeah. But thanks to the new seminars they were offering, lots of jazz musicians from all over the country were coming to Cologne to study there and play gigs together. So a scene was growing, which Jackie could benefit from. Jackie started playing in a group called the Jazz Cookers with Olaf Kubler. I know it's Jazz Cookers.

But with Olaf Kubler, do you remember him? Yeah. He was the manager of Amendol 2 until he's just like, you guys are too hard to wrangle. It'd just be so much easier to take care of like a den of bears, really. So he played with him, who played sax, and Manfred Schuff, a high school friend of Jackie's who grew up to be a legendary jazz trumpet player in his own right as well. Trumpeteer. Trumpeter. We're the trumpeteers. You know, I mean...

All right. So, Jackie and, you know, all his friends, Manfred and all them, they were students. And so, they were usually broke, sharing tiny apartments and playing in small venues or saloons in exchange for goulash and beer. I love that. I fucking love goulash. It's so good. So, but then in 1963, while on a trip to Ibiza...

Jackie was offered a gig in Barcelona, which turned into a seven-month engagement where Jackie had to play every night of the week due to Spanish laws. You had to play every single day if you want to stay there with that music working permit. The monks did the same thing, right? But while working as a drummer of the house band at the Jamboree Club, Jackie found himself playing with impressive touring musicians like Don Cherry and Chet Baker, who were making the rounds on the European jazz circuit.

I know, it was amazing. He even shared an apartment with John Cherry at one point. No shit. Yeah, I know, the stories. Okay, okay, wow.

Now, when Jackie wasn't playing with jazz legends, he discovered that Barcelona was the perfect place to expand his musical horizons. He watched flamenco dancers at the Jamboree, he listened to North African radio, and he discovered Afro-Cuban jazz. For an example of Afro-Cuban jazz, here's my favorite Afro-Cuban jazz artist. He's one of the originators of the genre, the legendary Machito, featuring Charlie Parker on sax. ♪

Yeah, when this fucking John Coltrane comes in, it's incredible. What? He just shows up? Yeah. He drops a sandwich and just starts playing?

amazing that's so fucking cool i mean it's it's incredible just john coltrane hey yeah that's the afro-cuban jazz suite it's fucking incredible but jackie didn't stop there with his musical discoveries he discovered music from india turkey iran anything that would someday hesitantly and to some people offensively be called world music we really can't think of another like term for no one can think of it

But with this new knowledge, Jackie Liebeszeit returned to Cologne in 1964 to discover that the jazz scene had shifted. His friends and fellow jazz musicians informed him that the new scene was free jazz.

Come on, man. We're breaking down the old standards, the Boeing conventions. Now it's atonal collective improvisation, man. It's totally unlistenable. We're breaking down all the rules, man, except we also have so many rules. Don't repeat notes because they're all equal. Don't play the same thing twice. And whatever you do, do not keep a steady beat. Yes, come join us for our jazz odyssey. Unlistenable.

Yeah. Now, for the rest of you wondering what free jazz is. Because I Googled it. Carolina found a good YouTube comment that might help explain it. Free jazz is like when everyone has their GPS up with different directions, but they're all going to the same place. To me, that's generous.

For an example, here's a snippet of Jackie Liebesite playing free jazz in the Manfred Schaaf Quintet in 1966. This is a song called Minds off the album Voices. What in the Lenny Tristano is this?

Hey, Lenny Tristano carried a fucking tune. I love Lenny Tristano. I mean, it's more like what the Don Cherry is that. Okay. It's a bit of everything. It's a lot. Yeah, it's ironic that he stayed with Don Cherry in Barcelona because Don Cherry, of course, became one of the fucking legends of free jazz. But man, I've tried with the Don Cherry. I've tried with Don Ellis' free jazz stuff. It's just...

I can get the electronic stuff. Like for some reason, Stockhouse and making a bunch of beeps and boops. I fucking love free jazz. It's stressful. Yeah, it's really stressful music to listen to. So, yes. Yeah, it is. It is the bear episode. It is the episode of the bear. It's the Christmas episode of the bear. So around this time, Jackie had been playing free jazz for about two years and was starting to get tired.

He was thinking, I'm into so many other kinds of music. Why am I limiting myself to this? And then one night, just after another free jazz odyssey night, what?

An unfamiliar man came up to Jackie and he just said in a grave voice, just staring him straight in the eyes. He said, you must play monotonous. Wait, I didn't say it right. You must play monotonous. Monotonous. Monotonous. Monotonous. You must play monotonous. Sorry. He said in a grave voice, you must play monotonous.

But the actual quote is monotonous. You must play it. You must play it monotonous. And then the guy was gone, right? And Jackie said...

But then he started to think about it. And it started to make sense. He was thinking, repeating things monotonously, getting into a groove. Maybe there's something there to use a new word for. And then Jackie, leave it as that. He gets a call just out of the blue. Ermin Schmidt, who Jackie knew only as an acquaintance, actually. They worked together for a day on a song for like what low budget movie once kind of thing. Ermin was calling Jackie because he had an important question.

So Ermin's like, okay, Jackie, I'm putting together this musical group that's unlike anything else. It's going to have a lot of elements to it. And we need a drummer, kind of like Max Roach, like a Max Roach type, but not you. But someone who can help keep a rhythm and continuous beat going, you know, not you though. But like a drummer with the elegance of a cool Elvin Jones. Again, I'm not describing you, but do you happen to know any jazz drummers? Not free jazz, just jazz drummers that you could send my way for this new band.

And Jackie said, yes, I know the perfect person for that. And the very next day, who shows up at Erman's doorstep but Jackie, leave his eye, just pushing his way in, say, I'm your guy, I'm done with free jazz. Erman, of course, was a little pissed at first because he really didn't know if Jackie was the right guy, but it didn't take long for him to realize Jackie was the perfect guy.

guy for this project. Without Jackie Liebeside, Cannes would not be Cannes at all. There would be no Joy Division. No. There would be no Buzzcocks. There's just so many. So many. Yeah. Jackie Liebeside, I mean, he's just, his influence cannot be overstated in any way. Like, his influence on hip-hop, his influence on everything is just, this guy, I mean, you'll hear. You'll get, we'll hear. Well, you've heard it. He's fantastic. But you'll hear what Jackie does in the future. For sure.

Now, if all went according to plan, this group of musicians that Ehrman had put together would form a single organism that was not only capable of producing something new, but doing so in a new way. This group of musicians, who weren't even friends at first, would be purposefully leaderless.

Things had finally come together for Ehrman in the most important year in Germany's counterculture, 1968. But the band that would become Cannes wouldn't take cues from the communes who got bogged down in dogma or just talked about political change without actually doing anything.

Kahn would take the spirit of 68 and apply it to their own little corner of the world, what you're supposed to do, putting their ideals into practice, creating a leaderless democracy that quite simply got shit done on a constant basis. This, of course, created arguments, conflicts, friction, but it would be those challenges that would make Kahn one of the greatest argumentators.

of the kraut rock groups exactly this is the new but different thing ermin was thinking about all along ermin who's classically trained but you know looking into african and asian music as well as experimental rock like the velvet underground and then he has his classmate holger who he studied with under stockhausen and learned about composing music with sounds not just notes remember it's a soundscape it's an experience take your musical intuition and apply it

And then there's Michael Carolli, who didn't have much experience, but he was wildly gifted on the electric guitar and he could show them Hendrix riffs all day long. And then when Ermin first met Michael, they formed a close lifelong friendship. It's really, really beautiful. And Jackie Leibazite, who freaked Michael out when he first met Jackie because Jackie looks like an unhinged murderer. But really, Jackie is a quiet guy and he has a bit of a resting bitch face. A little bit. Yes, but he's a genius drummer and he can play jazz

but he's also into other different styles and rhythms of music from other places around the world too. So together with all of this and the help of David Johnson, the engineer and flautist, they started something called instant composition. Yeah. Now the best way to explain instant composition is to think of Cam like a soccer team. This team has but one purpose, which is to play a song. But like a soccer game, you never know exactly how a goal is going to be scored until the ball hits the back of the net. But,

But like a game winning play, a can song, with few exceptions, still has structure. This process of spontaneous creation resulting in a composition with a clear form was, according to Ehrman, what can was really all about. And that's what separates it from, say, free jazz or improvisation.

There's a goal here. They're trying to put something together that actually has structure. Yeah, I mean, they're jamming together with a purpose to write something. And everyone's contributing at the same time. Joy Division did this when they first started writing songs. They were big fans of Ken. I don't know if they knew about this or they just happened to do the same thing.

And also just like Terry Riley's In C. Remember that whole thing? Yeah, sure, he wrote the musical phrases and he gave a few directives, but Terry handed over much of the control of the composition to the musicians playing In C. Please make that your ringtone. It's really good. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Maybe not.

So that means everyone's composing and at the same time collectively listening to one another to keep it going. Man, it is hard. And with that in mind, Ehrman told everyone to just go for it. Let's play and figure it out. So here's a clip of Cannes' very first show and most likely one of the or the first time they ever played together. This was recorded June 1968, a piece that would later be released as Prehistoric Future. Remember, don't overthink it.

Just groove to it. Instant compositioning. Collective listening. Anything can happen. Go! Go!

Yes, can you hear the amazing acoustics in that place? I believe they call it beautiful anarchy. Yes, the flute definitely played a much larger role in Cannes' early days. Than we suspected, yes. No, well, you might say, like, yeah, right, that's cool. Consider that within just a few years, Cannes' practice of instant composition... Is it cool, though? I think it's super cool. I think it sounds like a march song.

It's chaos. Yeah, it's chaos. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, that's the thing is that everything has to start somewhere. Every concept has to start somewhere. It has to start with, especially with stuff like this, it has to start as a mess. But eventually, instant composition would result in canned songs like this one. ♪♪♪

That is better. Came a long fucking way. It's about three years between Prehistoric Future and that track off of Tago Mago, Hallelujah. Wow.

Now, Cannes' first gig was, as you heard, absolute fucking chaos. But it wasn't held at a concert hall. Instead, it was a happening of sorts. A show at an art gallery that, off the strength of this performance, would become their first artistic home. Yes. Their first show was at a real-life castle called Norvinish. Yes. It's about a half-hour drive southwest of Cologne with no traffic. I checked on Google Maps. So, Ehrman, he got the...

band a gig there because he was friends with the guy who was renting the entire castle. So Erman's friend was a super wealthy art collector guy who he pretty much wanted to be a patron of the arts. You know, he had artists and sculptors and painters who would live and work there. So when he sees something weird and cool, he invites them to use the space. So Erman and the band, they were offered a space in this

15th century German castle to create and produce this music on the strength of that first show. I know. Well, you should listen. I mean, that was minute 25 on that show out of a 35-minute show. It builds. It builds. Yes. So the guy's

Ermin, Holger, Michael, David, and Jackie, they all got to work on setting up their room because this is not a practice space. This is a recording studio. They're going to record everything they play, even if it takes 10, 11, 12 hours. And most days it does. So they brought in two Revox tape machines, three microphones, and their own instruments.

That was it. That's all they could afford. It took 10 minutes to move it. The carpet took longer to install. Seriously. But that was it. They were all set up. They were ready. They had their people. And it's time to play. Yeah. Now that they had a place where they could truly stretch their legs, Ermin's concept could finally be realized.

It was a free collective with rock instruments played at a rock volume, but it was not a rock band, or at least it wasn't a rock band at first. They were a group of incredible musicians with a good idea, rare at any time, but they were missing the key element that would push them into the rock realm.

The man who would orient Cannes and set them on the road to legendary status was a black painter and sculptor from New York who just arrived in Germany. His name was Malcolm Mooney, and it was his manic improvisation that would propel the band to the next level. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

And it's with the introduction of Malcolm Mooney, Cannes' soundtrack work, and the band's debut album that we'll return next week for Cannes Part 2. Yes, out of three!

Really? Yes, it's going to be three. Okay. Okay. So real quick, we got No Dogs t-shirts for sale. The classic, the rabid dog, the galactic pup versions, both in women's and men's sizes. Please check them out at where? Lastpodcastmerch.com. That's right. And we're also on Instagram as No Dogs Pod. You can follow us there for updates and fun stuff that we're doing behind the scenes. It's

It's pretty fun. Yeah. There's a lot of cool shit over on our Instagram. Yes. Yes. We're, we're, I mean, you know, if you want to check it out. Yeah, of course. And also thank you to Patrick Fisher, our research assistant and associate producer of the no dogs, crout rock jamatsas series. We couldn't have done this without him. I'm serious. Yeah. Thank you. And at,

A big thank you to Kelsey Netzer for helping us out during this whole process of getting this episode out. And thank you to Rob Oki for recording and later editing this masterpiece. Thank you, Rob. Yes. Should I go through our sources? Before you do, don't forget, everybody, that we have a live stream that we now do once a month. That's right. Yeah. It's going to be the first Monday of every month at 6 p.m.

p.m. PST, 9 p.m. ESD. You can go to twitch.tv slash LPN TV to watch it live and interact with us. We do a vinyl haul. We show some cool music videos. But if you can't make it when the show airs, you can also catch it later on YouTube. And thanks to everybody out there who's been showing up to watch that over the last few months while we've been getting this series together. Thank you very much. We appreciate each and every one of you. It's been really a lot of fun. So much fun. Okay. So our sources...

And there are many, but for this episode, mainly our main source, of course, All Gates Open by Rob Young and Ermin Schmidt. The Can Box Book by Hildegard Schmidt and Wolf Kampmann. It's really, really good. And it's in three languages. It's crazy. Future Sounds by Christoph Dalek. That is German.

So Patrick had to translate that one for us. Thank you so much, Patrick. Times and Sounds by Jan Reitz that we have used as we talked about and we will use again. Jackie Leibesite, The Life Theory and Practice of a Master Drummer edited by Jono Podmore. The Can Book by Pascal Bussey and Andy Hall. And this incredibly helpful Crout Rock sampler PDF on MU.com.

dash O-N dot org, I think. I don't know. It's not the Julian Cope krautrock sampler, which is very cool in its own right, but it's a bit outdated. Just Google it if you want to check it out. BBC documentary Tones, Drones, and Arpeggios, The Magic of Minimalism, presented by Charles Hazelwood, directed by Benjamin Whaley. That's a fun one. It's a two-parter. If you're interested in learning more about experimental music, that documentary is really fucking good. Yes. Charles, he does a great job at breaking it all down and making you feel less stupid.

And, of course, endless interviews I found online by blogs, magazines, YouTube. Too many to list. Just know that we came. We showed up studied. Yes. We did. Every time. And we're going to keep going. So who's our band of the week? Our band of the week. Oh, this band is fucking great. They're out of Cincinnati. They are a crowd rock influenced band called General Backstreet.

You can check them out at generalbaxter.bandcamp.com for their latest album, Synaptic Static. It's really fucking cool. And the song that we're going to play today is...

Xenon, X-E-N-O-N. You can find them at, as I said, generalbaxter.bandcamp.com. You could also listen to them on Spotify, but I would always recommend every band that we talk about here going to their band camp, buying the digital album, throwing them a little bit of cash, supporting musicians out there. It's harder than ever to make a living doing music

So please support these musicians as much as you can by giving to the band camp, buying their merch and going out to their live shows. Thank you so much. Everybody who is taking this journey with us. Thanks. Everybody who's been patient with this series, uh, patient with us getting this series out. It's going to be common with regular. Yes.

All right, everybody. Goodbye. Goodbye. I can't turn off the music. I gotta wait until I hear the music. I'm always nervous about it.

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