An Introduction to Krautrock / Amon Düül II Pt II

After Faye Fruits Yoga, I'm never going back So fruity, so thick, so gorgeous from the pack It's called Faye Fruits Yoga It's a smooth and fruity snack Gimme, gimme that fire Passion fruit or strawberry flavour My way, and taste the coconut Gimme that fire Go down to the shops for this fruity snack After Faye Fruits Yoga There's no going back Switch to Plastnet's award-winning fourth fibre from just £22.99 a month Our sweet deal gets you fast and reliable broadband with no activation fee with speeds up to 900 megabits Ooh, feels like a sugar rush Four fibre that's full of value That's a plus Offer ends 6th of May 24 months, 26.99 from the 31st of March, 2027 30.99 from the 31st of March, 2028 New customers only, 62% UK availability Terms apply It's full of motion, rhythm, at-risk, in-depth Dreadlings of rock and roll, spaz And we dance and we jump to the music wheel No dogs in space No dogs in space No dogs in space No dogs in space We're rolling Okay, so... So it... It be... No... I'm not ready, I'm not ready So it be... So it... So we start? So it begins So it begins So it begins, ladies and gentlemen No dogs in space, the show is beginning I know, I know a lot of podcasts can do ten minutes of, you know banter in the beginning of stuff But I've got... Let's just start I got nothing It's not that they can do it, they choose to do it I don't think they can help by doing it But here at No Dogs in Space We get right to the fucking business Welcome to the show, I'm Marcus Parks I'm Carolina Adalgo Let's get on to Amandoul 2, part two So when we last left Amandoul 2 in September of 1968 They'd split off from the music commune For reasons both practical and ideological As Chris Carr put it There were three revolutions happening at this time Musical, sexual and political The Amandoul commune, he said Were originally a part of the musical revolution But as the community grew The politics began to take over And the original creative spirit was getting submerged He went on to say that the last straw Was when it was quote unquote decided That everyone in the commune was a musician Including the children, irrespective of the results That always happens when your little brother Has to be included and stuff No, you hand them the controller that's not plugged in And you pretend like they're a part of it You don't give them a guitar The bongo drummers are not plugged in But they're still very loud I know But this was irrespective of the results Children, anyone, doesn't matter Everyone's got to be in it Eventually some of the serious musicians in the commune Essentially decided that they wanted to be In a band of talented musicians More than they wanted to live by strict dictates Because as keyboard player Falk you Rogner put it The group was always running at the speed Of its slowest member In Amandoul's case The slowest member was probably the toddler Who had to be repeatedly saved From falling off the stage during commune shows They're like, I played with Klaus Dinger And I have to deal with this toddler Sorry toddler, you were just slowing us down And so four of the commune's serious musicians Split from the Amandoul commune And became Amandoul 2 Those four musicians however Soon became five when drummer Pete Leopold Ran away from the Hansa Studio sessions After the leader of commune 1 Stole his girlfriend as we covered at the end of the last episode Allegedly, that's what we're guessing The problem is that the newly formed Amandoul 2 Already had a drummer Deeter surface But instead of firing Deeter or turning away Peter Amandoul 2 decided that since their music Already had a sort of tribal hangover From their time in the commune What with the unreasonable amount of bongo players They would keep both drummers and double their drum power In addition, Amandoul 2 added a member Who had been on the periphery of the Amandoul commune for years A man who would eventually become One of the driving creative forces of the group His name was John Vine Zero Yes, John Vine Zero I finally learned how to say it today He's the rock and roll guy of the group Because he's been playing guitar since he was 14 years old Back when he was like in the Mercy Beat sound He was in a band called the Mercy Gents Kind of like Beatles-ish kind of thing But when he got a little older He started getting more into the mothers of invention Frank Zappa, that whole alternative lifestyle Very judgmental Yes, what? Frank Zappa It's supposed to be about love, baby He was a little too smart for his own good Zappa was a little too judgmental for his own good Perhaps But you know what? I like his style God love him I still like his style And John Vine Zero, he loved his style too Which led to him sneaking out of his boarding school To visit the Amandoul commune in Munich Back when there was no Amandoul one or two It was just Amandoul You see, John's the youngest member of the group He knew them from being friends Or I think he might have been roommates With Falk Yuz, younger brother They all went to boarding school together, right? Yeah But by the time John Vine Zero was about 18, 19 He decided to hell with school And he moved in with the commune And he also brought a lot of cool kick-ass riffs To the Amandoul two repertoire, as we will see And even he actually continues the legacy of Amandoul two I think he still runs the official Amandoul two website And he does interviews still to this day And apparently he looks like Larry David Now that he's an older man And a bit of a crabby one, by the way He's very crabby And the thing is about reading his interviews You can see the evolution of his crabbiness Over the years But a fantastic musician nonetheless And back in 1969, John Vine Zero was a blonde, good-looking rock and roller Who didn't say much But he could play Which is why the band especially needed him for what's about to come next Now the band's two-drummer approach Along with the addition of John Vine Zero Soon made Amandoul two one of the most innovative, vicious And hypnotic live bands in Munich This reputation was earned through a six-month weekly residency In the cellar of a venue called the PN Club Driven by the pounding rhythm of two drummers Amandoul two's steaming basement gigs became legendary even in their own time So packed with anywhere between five and six hundred people each week That the audience could hardly move or even dance But with the success of these shows A goal had been achieved See when it came to blindly groping around for an identity all their own The German kids began after World War II by playing free jazz Then when the 60s came they moved on to aping the beat and R&B groups from America and the UK Yeah because they were listening to Radio Luxembourg and all that you know British forces radio That kind of stuff We'll watch Head Wig and the Angry Inch They'll explain everything But now there was a band that was doing something new In an entirely journal Now that's admittedly weird the whole performance is That odd music inevitably drew an odd crowd And that crowd began to physically contribute to the overall ambience of weirdness that filled the room each night Case in point was a bald Russian fan named Anatole Who would dance in front of the stage in a way that guitarist Chris Carr Classified with a blanket term of extreme Although the extreme example Chris gave was not necessarily what I'd call dancing What was it called? Sexual performance Okay, all right As the story goes Chris once saw Anatole the Russian at the front of the stage with a naked old woman Shoving a Vaseline covered finger in and out of the old lady's butt to the rhythm of the music while ringing a little bell Wow, okay. That's a nice detail. Is it his finger? Yes No, it is definitely his finger. It's not a dismembered finger that he found. Yeah, okay. Got it. Okay. Well, you know, it's all consensual and it's uh, you're right Russian dancing The audience participation aside The PN club shows brought almondule 2 to the attention of both the record industry And other musicians who wanted to join this strange new German experiment Yes, they added another member who wasn't German So, I mean because they wanted to be international but German but not remember that they're full of contradictions, right? So they added a British bassist named Dave Anderson To the roster, right? He met almondule 2 at the PN club while he was rooting for a British band called Kippington Lodge I believe Nick Lowe was uh in that. Oh, yes Kippington Lodge had a summer residency in Munich. I think maybe in the PN club too But when the British band went back home, Dave Anderson stayed and became almondule 2's bassist For a couple years at least he played on the first two albums the best albums. I think in my opinion But then uh, Dave Anderson apparently they fell into some sort of problems and uh in 1971 he left to join another legendary psychedelic band Hawkwood Oh Oh Hey Yep, Dave Anderson lasted one album with Hawkwind And who replaced Dave Anderson? In Hawkwind? Uh-huh. Let me let me kill meister. Yes And then the following year that's when uh, Stephen Moore's from joy division saw them live with his family Who got dressed like they were going to church listen to the joy division series for that story And where we also play master of the universe because it's because it's best song from the album I'm sorry. You have to hear it twice. Okay. So uh back to almondule 2 at the PN club and all that business Another musician who'd hang at the PN club was an older gentleman named Olaf Kubler And when I say older, I mean 33 years old. I know when you say older gentlemen, you make them sound like a pedophile No, no, this is not a guy in a robe And a cigar and I don't know but no Sunglasses. Yeah Okay, he's like at least 10 years older Remember compared to almondule 2 who were about 21 to 26 years old at this time And that's kind of how it was back then remember don't trust anyone over 30 So Olaf Kubler was a well-known jazz musician who knew chris carer and deeter surface From when they used to play at a jazz club called domicile before almondule even was a thing Right. So Olaf already knew these guys and he was also a session musician He played saxophone so he knew his way around a recording studio Which proved to be very helpful because Olaf noticed almondule 2 getting quite a following at the PN club So he figured we need to get you guys a record deal pronto So Olaf recorded a demo with almondule 2 and with that demo Olaf got them signed to united artists with the condition that Olaf would assume the responsibility of financing the record and if it was good enough then united artists would take them on Yes, it was quite a gamble And so it was all up to Olaf to organize all this and remember he's 10 years older than everyone He has it together enough to get everyone to sign contracts Which wasn't easy and to organize them into a recording studio also Not easy. No, okay. It's like kind of like a mother dog trying to pull all her puppies in one basket Except these are stoned mustachioed individuals individuals that are also used to the commune life and it's like, you know, like does time exist man It is one of those things where like they would all meet for like a show or a recording and they're like You know, we're missing three of you and they're like really? Oh, yeah, you're right. Well, can we just do it? No Oh, shit like that kind of thing. They didn't realize they all needed to come time doesn't exist But schedules do oh, there you go. Yes. That that was Olaf. Unfortunately tearing his hair out the whole time So because remember the band they were tripping on acid when they heard about the deal with united artists John bine zero the newest guitarist He was tripping so hard at a record store with drummer Peter Leopold John said that the walls in the record store building were collapsing which freaked him out. So he's like, let's just go back home Let's go home to the commune and herching and when John and Peter got to their herching home It was a villa by the lake. John saw the house was made of flowers So there must be something good in here Let's go inside and then he stepped inside the house flower thing And there was Olaf with the paperwork and saying you guys got a record deal and he's like, I knew it the flowers told me so And from what I read from the united artist side an executive named Andrew Lauder said upon hearing almond dual two's record First his first thought was what the hell is this? All fuck it. Let's just release it. We don't have enough stuff coming out of germany. Anyway, it's kind of how uh The woman and legally blonde got into harvard. Okay. All right So anyway, I'm just trying to make it easy for all of us to understand This is the second time that you've used legally blonde to explain how a band gets signed I've only seen that movie one and I remember everything about it Now as we mentioned last episode almond dual one had already been signed to metronome records following the esson song festival almond dual one to make it Absolutely clear where the people still in the original commune Soon after being signed almond dual one had taken over haunsa studios and recorded 10 hours of material 41 minutes of which were lifted out and sweetened up as much as could be Considering how most of the people in the room didn't know how to play their instruments But just after almond dual two entered the studio to record their debut in 1969 almond dual one released those 41 minutes as their mess of a debut album psychedelic underground It's a cool title. It's a very cool You You know, I don't hate it I don't it's about being on acid while being on acid I mean just fix your subwoofer and then you're fine It's great. That song is called in garden sandosa. Yeah in the garden of sandosa It's uh, it's named after sandos the pharmaceutical company In uh, Switzerland where lsd was first made where albert hoffman had that fateful, uh bicycle trip and it's it's an homage Yeah, and it it's an homage. Yeah, and we only played about 30 seconds to that because it's pretty much just that for seven minutes and 48 seconds But it's worth it. It's good. The album is definitely worth listening to if anything as an artifact of the times And psychedelic underground isn't really the best example of kraut rock But this album is considered by some to be the first kraut rock album or at least Kraut rock adjacent album and it does inadvertently display some of the methods that would later define the movement specifically as you just heard almond dual one leaned heavily in some tracks on the idea of repetition Which would become a cornerstone of far more talented bands like can and noy But on the other hand, I think repetition and this is me coming, you know from a musicians an amateur musicians perspective I think repetition was mostly used in psychedelic underground because of the limited talents of the majority of the members Well, yeah, that that's what I heard too. I heard that they kept going on and on because they didn't know where to go next Like the whole where do we go now? Like axa rose? Where do we go now? Where do we go now? There's a reason for a repetition. We're trying to figure out. Where do we go? Where do we go now? But by the time almond dual one psychedelic underground was released to surprisingly good reviews in germany almond dual two were already recording their debut album the mysterious psychedelic masterpiece phallus day akaicken Now as you can immediately hear, there is a big difference between Amandoul 1 and Amandoul 2. Although both bands took the same amount of time to record their debut albums. Both Psychedelic Underground and FALIS Day were recorded in just two days. Now Amandoul 2 came into the studio with most of their songs fully formed, which they owed to their weekly gigs at the PN Club. Yes, they were very well rehearsed. But by that same note, what became the title track to their debut record was improvised when they played it live every single time, and they brought that same approach to the studio. The result was admittedly shaky with plenty of moments where members play in different keys or fall off the rhythm, but the moments of brilliance that shine through make FALIS Day worth the challenge. I love this album. I totally do. You know, John Vines-Zero, he said of this album, not to grumble, but we didn't have the best instruments. And we didn't give a fuck. We didn't want to be polished, or sometimes it sounds so weird. So what are you going to do about it? That is a real quote. That is a quote. Yeah, but you got to do it in the German like, so what do you want to do about it? Yeah, which is cool. And I love that little tinkering. That's a vibraphone, I believe. That's Christian Burchard, I believe that's how you say his name from Embryo, did the little tinkering and stuff. So that was really cool. Yeah. And I will say, as opposed to Psychedelic Underground, Amandoul 1's record. Ballastay was not recorded on acid at all. No. No, they actually like Amandoul 2 famously only recorded one album on acid. And isn't it their worst Carnival and Babylon? We're not even going to play. They don't even like it. No, it's a terrible album. Now that song, which ran an entire side of the LP at 20 minutes and 49 seconds. And by the way, I started that clip at 18 minutes and 25 seconds. That was played live with no overdubs. So if someone had a massive goof at minute 17, the whole thing had to be started over from the beginning. As I said, though, it's best to keep in mind when you're listening to it that they let a lot of the little goof slide. It's an experience, man. It very much is. That however does not take away from the power and more importantly, the imagination of the album Ballastay as a whole, particularly when you get to the track where they actually let Renata Naupe sing lyrics as opposed to the ethereal atmospheric vocals that she utilizes on all but one song on the album, hitting an overall vibe that sits somewhere between Jefferson Airplane and a World War Two flashback. The song Henrietta Croet and Schwanz is about a woman named Henrietta who dies during the song in a horrific car crash in which the steering wheel slowly crushes her chest. The wheel and the attached steering column gives her chest the appearance of a croatin Schwanz or in English, the Frog's Tail. Frogs don't have tails. Dadpole. Oh god. No, it's important.ickenicken And I'll just do what they can do Oh Oh Oh This song's great. This song's amazing. It's actually kind of short for almond dual to standards. That's very short. It's just a hair over two minutes. Yeah. I think it was the last thing they recorded for this album. And it's very like you said, like it's it's got this thing to it. I think Renata said that she she used to sing in a church choir when she was about around like 14 years old. And when she she took the melody of the song from her first soprano song and did something with it, which is this amazing song, which is like, I see Lady Germany in this song. You know, you know how France has a Lady France. And that painting, right? The Dom Frank, right? That one. Yes. This is Lady Germany song. Yeah. Yeah. Moon Shin Deutsche. Right. I have no idea. I think I said, I just I think I just said the little girl German. Perfect. I don't know. It's been a long time. Now, as opposed to other psychedelic groups at the time, almond dual to obviously took a far darker approach in both their music and their lyrics. Quite possibly owing to the fact that they were still being haunted even subconsciously by the horrible things that had happened in their country just a couple of decades earlier. For example, listen to an excerpt from this song, Dimgutin Shoninbara afterwards. I'll tell you what's being sung and why it was sung in such a psychotic fashion. Yeah. He sang. The dance ring rose together and sang a beautiful song. So little one started screaming for her mother. I gently pierced her this my cock. Jesus. I mean, this is a far cry from anything anyone was doing anywhere in the world in rock music. It was certainly a departure from the fucking white rabbits of Jefferson airplane. This was Pink Floyd by way of serial killer Peter Curtin. But shock wasn't the point of fallow stay. This is just who these people were. They wanted to sing about dark themes and they wanted to make dark music. So that's exactly what they did. And when you go back and listen to Dimgutin Shoninbara and again, listen to Dave Anderson's bass part in that song. It's fucking exquisite. And despite its horrific lyrical content, fallow's day sold well enough to show record companies that there was a fair amount of people who wanted to hear something different from German rock other than awkward facsimiles of British and American groups. I'm looking at you, the lords. Amandu too small success, however, came at just the right time because pretty soon after the release of fallow's day, the band found itself very suddenly in need of a new home. Of course. Of course it did. They always do. Yeah. They can't clean for shit. Okay. So first, Amandu'll twos first album fallow's day comes out in 1969, right? And by early 1970, they are kicked out of their lakeside villa in Hershey'ing for being disgusting. Yes. Because they were never organized enough to pay for garbage pickup. So the garbage just piled up right outside the house. You had to use a blowtorch to light up the stove because of course the power was cut off and there were rats everywhere in the kitchen under the house everywhere. One of the Amandu'll two members even tried pouring gasoline under the house and lighting it on fire with a match to chase the rats out. But it turned into a tsunami of hundreds of rats rushing out from under the house, their fur on fire and running straight to the band. That was a bad idea. Remember rats can be vermin, but rats can also be our friend. Rats can be friends. I apologize right now to all of our rat people out there. I know we got a lot of you. Rats can be wonderful people, but Jesus Christ, that image is terrifying. They're not people. But if you have a house disgusting enough that rats boldly take up space, then you better befriend those rats. That's all I'm saying. Okay. Yeah. Willard the situation. So Amandu'll two at the leap as a John Vine zero put it, we either had to clean the kitchen or move. So we moved. Remember, these people grew up in boarding school. Most of them, except Renata, most of them grew up privileged. Yeah. So they probably didn't learn about the harsh realities of, you know, adult life, adulting, cleaning up after yourself. Yes. Pay your bills. Call the garbage company. Yes. Keeping up with a chore wheel. Finally signing up for health insurance after risking it for a few years. Hey, we've all been there. All done. But, but eventually if you're going to be a Commie and you got to get some shit together, which is very difficult. I know. Yeah. But luckily, Amandu'll twos connections got them a better place to live. They actually moved. They failed upwards because remember Commune one. Remember Rainer Langans. He stole Peter Leopold's girlfriend. Supposedly that supermodel it girl, Ushie Ube Meyer, you know, she played on Amandu'll one's album, Marancus. Yeah. Okay. We all know. Yeah. So Rainer and Ushie, they left Commune one when Commune one dissolved basically in late 1969 and Rainer and Ushie decided fuck politics. Our friends are turning into left wing terrorists and it's weird. We're going to start an art Commune, a pop media creative collective and we're going to call it the High Fish Commune. And they did it with a few others who luckily had the means because I remember a lot of these young people are coming from money. So they were able to move into this giant and beautiful Gothic estate manner that was built in the 12th century. About 45 minutes outside of Munich. This place was called Cronwinkel and this place is a big part of Amandu'll two's lore. Yeah, it's where they make their best album. One of the most iconic psychedelic albums of all time yeti and Cronwinkel is also kind of weirdly cursed with what some people call the Munich incident, which involved Rainer Langans, Ushie Ube Meyer and Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac. Hit it! Great song. By the way, it's Reiner. I was corrected during the break. That's OK. That's OK. It's fine. It's only fine. We have a huge list of German pronunciations that we asked our assistant Kelsey Netzer. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kelsey. For helping us figure this shit out, because I'm romance language girl. OK, so anyway, Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac, he wrote that song in 9th. The founder of Fleetwood Mac, by the way. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say that. OK. He wrote that song in 1968 when he was in Fleetwood Mac. OK, I guess I wasn't going to say it. But it's important. This is before Lindsey Buckingham, before Stevie Nicks, before the Americans came in. This is back when Fleetwood Mac fucking rocked. Right. Wow. OK. They did. OK, yeah. Those first couple albums, they, but when Peter Green was in the band, Fleetwood Mac was fucking sick. I didn't know this about you. You took a stand so boldly like that. I like it. It turns me on. Anyway. Thank you. But when Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac soon after this Munich incident, it was because of personality clashes with his bandmates and artistic differences and them being tired from endless touring. But the guys in Fleetwood Mac insist Peter Green left because of the Munich incident of 1970. So very quickly, Fleetwood Mac, who are British, by the way. I did not know that. I really did not know that. The Americans joined later. Yes, they are super British. They were on tour in Europe. And when they landed in Munich, Reiner Langenz and Ushi Ubemeier were there at the airport to greet the band. Well, really to greet Peter Green in particular. They were huge fans and they wanted to invite him to their mansion in Cronwinkle for an after party, after the gig. Yeah. So Peter Green shows up to Cronwinkle with his road manager, Dennis, after the show. And as soon as they walk in, they take some acid. Dennis, he still insists that they were drugged by drinking a glass of wine laced with LSD. But Peter says he was offered a tab of acid and he just kind of like tuned in, turned on and dropped out. Yeah. Just had a great time. And he was down to get psychedelic with these weird ass Germans. Complete strangers, by the way, to him. But he didn't care. He spent the whole night in the basement of Cronwinkle jamming to psychedelic music with these Germans. And according to Peter Green, it was great. The whole night was great. He said, that's the most spiritual music I've ever recorded in my life, which means there's a tape. And no, I can't find it. I cannot find it. Apparently he gave it to his widow and no one knows. No one knows where it is. Well, I know from experience, like making music when you're on drugs and recording music when you're on drugs. You think it's the coolest thing that you've ever fucking recorded. And then you go back and listen to it. And you have no idea why you thought it was any good in the first place. It's about the fucking moment, man. Actually, according to one of his biographies, someone did say they heard it and they said it's scary at times. So you're probably right. So Peter Green, he left the band. He founded, you see, I knew I was going to say it. He left the band. He founded Fleetwood Mac only six weeks after the Munich incident. And he went home to England to start his own artist commune, which didn't materialize, fortunately. But he was still down to make psychedelic music. He didn't want to make any more commercial music. He wanted to get experimental, which is what he did when he tried to go solo. But from what the rest of Fleetwood Mac said, that party at Cronwinkle in Munich changed Peter for the worse. Peter was never the same after taking LSD that night. And since then, he had a really bad drug habit, which led to rehab, psychiatric institutions, and at one point being diagnosed schizophrenic. It was mentally ill for the rest of his life. It was the end of the game for Peter. Yeah, I mean, well, you know, if you are at risk for schizophrenia, stay away from acid. If you have any schizophrenia in your family, stay away from acid, health, stay away from weed, because it can really kick off like certain episodes. It can kick off the mental illness if it's laying dormant. So be careful out there. It could happen. I mean, we still don't know what the brain does, but just in case. Just in case. Maybe, yeah, maybe you should. And Peter Green did put out a psychedelic album after he left Fleetwood Mac. His first album after that was a psychedelic album. And it was kind of an attempt to like recapture that moment. And it's okay. It's like, I think if you're really, really into psychedelic music, you appreciate it a little bit more. But as a casual listener, it sounds like someone trying to recapture a psychedelic moment. Yeah, I think Pitchfork gave it a D. That felt really bad for Peter Green for that. You even read Pitchfork. They rate by number. Okay. I looked at the Wikipedia page. That would be a 3.2. Okay. I don't know who it was. Okay, just go on the Wikipedia page. All right. I don't know. I made up a thing. Okay. I'll never lie to you again. Anyway, it was the end of the game for Peter. Yeah. Also, you talk like you don't read Pitchfork, which is a good thing. Yeah, thank you. Okay. So, but this led to a lot of speculation of what happened that fateful night in March of 1970 in Cronwinkle. Some think the High Fish Commune, remember, Reiner and Uschi, that they were a cult that tried to take Peter's essence and money, particularly. Others think the LSD messed up his mind permanently. And some just think the Cronwinkle is haunted by the ghosts of the elderly who lived there before the Commune because it was once a nursing home. Oh, God. I know. So that's all weird. But this worked out great for Amanduul 2 because the Cronwinkle was rented out to them real cheap. And Amanduul 2 were like, oh, it's got a rock and roll curse to it. Elderly ghost at these prices. Who gives a shit? Yeti! Yes. I think the band moved in just a few weeks or maybe a couple months after the Munich incident because the place was perfect. It was a three story mansion with 26 rooms and 26 cats, by the way, cats everywhere. No more rats and no more setting rats on fire, guys. Thank God. Plus the Cronwinkle had a huge rehearsal room, no neighbors to bother them and all the time in the world to make, in my opinion, their best. Oh, yeah. Now, after the band moved into Cronwinkle 12, drummer Dieter Surface left the group and moved to Berlin, where it was rumored that he was going to ill-advisedly start a group called Amanduul 3. I'm so glad he did it. Oh, God. But the subtraction of one member from the group only helped to focus Amanduul 2 on their next album, a groundbreaking double LP that Lester Bangs called one of the finest recordings of psychedelic music in all of human history. Continuing in the same dark world music tinge tone as Valis Dey, Amanduul 2's follow-up took the concept of the band to the next level, combining their own mystical instincts with heavy rock, heavy as fuck, to make a record that sounds like the good part of a bad acid trick. That record is yet. Yeah. That was a song written in a haunted former nursing home that was probably full of Nazis. What? Brand new sentence. Brand new sentence. Recorded in four days, as opposed to Fallis Dey's two, Yeti has in the year since become one of Kraut Rock's most influential albums, inspiring everyone from Slayer to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, in addition to every stone or metal band in existence. Hey, galloping coroners from Hungary, giving them a huge shout out. Check them out. They're amazing. They're fucking great. Besides the instrumentation, though, Yeti's lyrics are incredibly metal and they go far beyond stepping into the skin of a murderous pedophile. On the album's opener, Burning Sister, Amanduul 2 tells of the execution of the narrator's sister. They brought my sister to trial, cutting her face from her smile on the holy waterfront, so people stand there waiting to see her blonde hair lighted, to see her blood drip on the floor. And I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Yes, we've been blessing this from our backyard for the past month and it's been great. We're really glad we did. But when it comes to influential tracks, there are none on Yeti that have had more of an impact than a song that was tacked on at the end simply to fill aside on one of the LPs after the band decided in the studio to record a double album. Since Fallast Day had been recorded on such a shoestring budget, the band was excited to have a little more money on their next record because that meant they could use one of them fancy new 16 track recorders. But after Amandoul 2 recorded all their prepared material, the engineer told the band that he hadn't recorded anything on the 16 track recorder because he didn't need 16 tracks to get the job done because that's how good I am. And so after getting extremely angry at the particularly German arrogance of this engineer, Amandoul 2 decided to hell with it. Let's record 40 more minutes of improvised material just so we can use the 16 track recorder. This however created a new problem. They now needed five more minutes of material to truly make it a double LP. So the band took a riff that guitarist John Vine Zero had been humming throughout the Yeti sessions and they A.D. Iced it as the band put it. Amandoul Iced it. Falk Rogner then wrote the lyrics and gave them to Renata Noup to sing. Renata then took the instrumental track that had already been recorded and listened to it dozens upon dozens of times until she found a melody. After finding it, she entered the studio and told the band, I've got it. I want to sing it now immediately. And after everything was set up for recording, Renata sang in one take. Yes, oh my God. Sorry. And she nailed Archangel's Thunderbird. This is awesome. I'm going to say a fucking tasty Kraut Rock beat. You're going to be hearing that beat a lot over the next few episodes. Absolutely. So Renata, she said the guys in Amandoul 2 lost their fucking minds when she nailed that in one take. And this to her was a personal triumph because she had to fight so much for her place in this group. But with that song and also it becoming their next single and their biggest song even today, it's Amandoul 2's most recognizable song. The Breeders did a great cover of it because I'm sure Kim Deal is a Renata fan like all of us are. I love her. Renata, she's quoted as saying, it's not easy to live with six men all the time. Heavy guys who don't really know how to talk to women. I mean, look at the stuff we make. When Renata, she started singing. It's true. It's very true. Yes. She's very honest. Yes, she is. She's really fun. She's a wonderful interview. Yes. And when Renata started singing with Amandoul, remember she was only 19. And she said back then she was very shy, very sensitive and afraid of everything. But she wanted it bad enough to be a lead singer in a band. So she just worked on her self-confidence and just fucking did it. Because what you said earlier that she was only doing the ooze and oz, that was just because she wanted to be a part of it. So she used her voice as an instrument. She really didn't know where to go with this. But after playing and living with Amandoul too, and by the time they're recording Arch Angel's Thunderbird, she's like, fuck it, I'm going to be a singer, the lead singer. No falsetto singing. I'm going to sing powerful right from the stomach. And she did. It was awesome. Except she was fired for the next album. But then she came back. And she's back, baby. And she did all the reunion shows. And I will wear a t-shirt with her face on it anytime. Yeah, she's an incredible singer. Incredible. Now, perhaps just as iconic as the songs from Yeti was the album cover, which depicts a sort of hippie grim reaper, dourly about to side something out of existence amidst a psychedelic haze that looks like a fog of blood. As it turns out, the cover has a story all its own that is appropriately grim and indeed steeped in death. The man depicted on the cover of Yeti was one of the original members of the Amandoul commune, a guy named Wolfgang Krischke, who also worked as Amandoul II's live sound guy. Tragically, Wolfgang had fallen in love with a girl from a respectable family, so-called respectable. But her parents had forbidden the relationship because Wolfgang was a long hair. Now, as we'll get to here in a second, being a long hair in Germany at this point in their history meant that you could possibly be a bona fide terrorist. Yes, we've been hinting at this for the last episode of that. But Wolfgang, like all the rest in the Amandoul commune, was nothing like the revolutionaries in Germany who tried to use bombs and guns to solve disagreements. Wolfgang was a romantic, so he retreated to his parents' house in the middle of winter and dropped acid to deal with his heartbreak. Soon, Wolfgang found himself wandering out to the woods, and that's where he fell asleep in died of exposure. And when they found him, his body was frozen stiff, half eaten by wild animals. Two months later, Wolfgang Krischke's image was on the cover of Yeti, standing in for the classic German figure of Der Schnitte, aka The Harvester, who weeps the lives of German folk young and old, and has had song-song of his deadly duty since the 17th century. Wolfgang Krischke, who designed the Yeti cover, and I think all the Amandoul two album covers, he said he wanted to put Krischke on the cover of Yeti to pay tribute to his friend, but also because Krischke always had a hard time finding his place within the group. I mean, Krischke, he was part of Amandoul one. He sided with the commune during the split and played on the psychedelic underground album. I think he did drums and piano, but Krischke was also buddies with everyone in Amandoul two. But he was also that friend who was always around, but never quite in it. You know that friend, the one in your friend group that you've known for like 10 years, really don't know much about them. So Falk Rogner made sure to give Krischke a good place in the band's lore. He's now part of their logo, and that album cover has been called one of the most iconic album covers of all time. It's the cover of Julian Cope's Crout Rock Sampler, and when you think of Crout Rock, you think of the Yeti cover. Wolfgang Krischke has a place in experimental rock and roll history, and I'm happy for that. I am too. I mean, I mean, I mean, he's one of the most metal people in existence. Like that is one of the most metal images in all of music history. I have a T-shirt of it. Yeah. Now Yeti was released to rave reviews internationally. One French review basically called them the aggressive pink Floyd, while Lester Bangs, writing in UK's Melody Maker, stated that Amandoul two was the first German group whose music can be regarded as a contribution to international pop culture. Now, Amandoul two wanted to contribute to international pop culture. It was actually one of their main goals. But despite Amandoul two's efforts to make an international record, this is a large contradiction. Yeti is decidedly teutonic. Even singing in English, we're not enough sounds like a pagan German Valkyrie of old. In addition, the first four songs are actually a movement that harkens back to Germany's classical music history. And the lyrics have all the elements of Germany's dark folk tradition, because after all, Grimm's fairy tales is German. And probably though, considering how so many people in Germany were so deeply ensconced in American and British culture and music, Yeti found an audience. Soon after its release, Amandoul two were quite suddenly the biggest underground band in their country. Their popularity was such that Amandoul two was one of the first German bands to be featured on a Saturday afternoon German television show called Beat Club. They appeared in 1970. I think Beat Club started in 1967 1968 at the latest. Now as you could probably tell from its name, Beat Club focused on Anglo-American pop and rock acts. They have an amazing YouTube channel, but it's mostly American and British bands. Weren't the monks on there? Yeah, the monks were absolutely on there. Yeah, the monks did two appearances on there like Hendricks is on there. Like Sabbath does an incredible version of paranoid on there. But Amandoul two delivered it Deutsche Hart during their appearance and performing a six minute long fan favorite track called Between the Eyes. So cool. You know, the cool thing about doing this experimental music series is that it really prevents like the whole situation of like sitting with the buddy of yours and putting on a record and you know, it's an experimental record and there's some parts that are really cool. It prevents us from having to be like, wait, wait, wait, you just go wait till this part is the part that you just got to wait. This is the really cool party. Oh, there's the really cool part right there. We just play the cool part. Yeah, that'd be easier. You guys can go see, you know, hear it for yourself the whole time. Yeah, hear the whole thing for yourself if you want. Yeah, because seriously, experimental records are meant to be enjoyed either alone or in silence with another person. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah. After Faye Fruits Yogurt, I'm never going back so fruity, so thick, so gorgeous from the package called Faye Fruits Yogurt. It's a smooth and fruity snack. Gimme, gimme that Faye. Passion fruit or strawberry flavor my way and taste the coconut. Gimme that Faye. Go down to the shops for this fruity snack after Faye Fruits Yogurt. There's no going back. Switch to Plastnet's award winning full fiber from just $22.99 a month. Our sweet deal gets you fast and reliable broadband with no activation fee with speeds up to 900 megabits. Oh, feels like a sugar rush. Full fiber that's full of value. That's a plus. Offer ends 6th of May. 24 months, $26.99 from the 31st of March, $20.27. $30.99 from the 31st of March, $20.28. New customers only 62% UK availability. Time's apply. Now, if you were a long-haired American or British act, you could pop in and play a quick beat club spot, maybe do a small tour and be on your way back to your own country where at worst a diner might refuse to serve you because you look like a hippie. In Germany though, if you looked like Amanduul 2 and you were German, you could very well find yourself branded as a bona fide terrorist even if you were just in it to make groovy dark music. Yeah, I mean Amanduul 2, they were profiled a time or two. There was this one time in 1971 where Amanduul 2, they were in their van coming back from a show and then suddenly they heard police sirens like, wait, wait, wait, the German police sirens are... Eee-ah, eee-ah. Which is not very much cops, you know, but whatever. They hear that, they were pulled over and a bunch of cops surrounded their van with machine guns. They're just yelling, get out of the car. Well, you know, everyone get out of the car. Well everyone, including Chris Carr, just shoot their arms right up and Chris yelling, I am reaching into my pocket. You get my papers. Slowly. That kind of thing. Like, okay, okay. And eventually after the police checked them out and the van got the okay to leave, Chris Carr, he asked them like, why did you pull us over? And the cop said, we're pulling over any unwashed cars that are on the road late at night because it could be fodder, minehawk. Yes. So first of all, you're telling me my car is dirty. And second of all, this is funny because from what I know from reading Butterminehoff and watching the movie, Butterminehoff only stole really nice washed cars. Very, very nice. Mercedes, BMWs, you know. Alfa Romeo's. Yeah, an occasional renault, but not a hippie van. No. So, you know, again, the cops were on the wrong trail for a long time. Clueless. All right. So, and also by the way, watch the Butterminehoff complex. It's intense, but explains exactly what we're about to say. And it's an incredible movie. Yes, it is. It's very European. Let's just put it that way. So who are the Butterminehoff group? Well, I'm going to give you a quick rundown in hopefully two minutes. Here we go. Okay. So remember Reiner Langeins. Yeah, Commune 1. Yes. He and another Commune 1 member, Fritz Telfull, were arrested and charged with incitement to arson because they passed out leaflets glorifying a fire in a department store in Brussels that's left several hundred people dead. It was very tragic. Jesus. Yes. That fire in Brussels was a demonstration against the Vietnam War. And according to the press at that fire, a man ran into the flames shouting, I want to die for Vietnam. Fuck. So K1 printed out leaflets saying, Brussels becomes Hanoi and burn warehouse burn. Like saying, Hey, finally, we figured out a way to get people's attention on the genocide in Vietnam. They thought they were doing something good, right? Because remember K1, their anti-capitalist department store selling goods was evil to them. It's a whole, you're so caught up with these material goods, you can't even notice the oppression of others around the world like Hanoi, Vietnam. Yeah. And that's a crazy thing, man, is that like Vietnam, the Vietnam protests in America are given a lot of credit. The Vietnam protests in Europe were fucking insane. They were metal and not, not in the best way. No. And in court, Rainer and Fritz, they were clear to the charges of, you know, incitement to arson because they insisted, it's a joke. It's a joke. It's that tire. We were just having fun with it. We're a situationist. It's what we do. We get into situations. Never hang out with a situationist. This is, you'll end up in court. So a week after Rainer and Fritz were found not guilty of inciting arson, K1 got a couple of visitors who announced, Oh, we're actually going to set a couple of department stores on fire, like for real, who's with us? No one raised their hand. But those two visitors were 25 year old Andreas Bader and 28 year old Gudrun Enslin, the German Bonnie and Clyde. Yes. At least at that time. Andreas Bader, he looked like a, you know, they were hip and young, cool. He looked like a young Joaquin Phoenix. He had that going on and Gudrun had like a Nico look about her. She was really cute too. They were both hot. Yes. And very hip, you know, they're super cool. Lots of people that time looked at them like very Bonnie and Clyde that they were behind them. I think Joe Strummer from the Clash were like a bottom on half or RAF like T-shirt. Like it just felt cool to rebel against the establishment. But Reiner, he called them desperados. Yes. Because it is not cool. Well, we're going to get into it. Let's get into it. It gets really deadly. Okay. So Andreas Bader and Gudrun Enslin, they were bent on a revolution in West Germany. After the murder of 26 year old Ben O'Ones or that we, you know, we talked about in the last episode. Yeah. Gudrun. Cops shot him in the back of the head. Yes. Gudrun Enslin, who was seen sobbing and losing her mind over the Ben O'Murder declared, this fascist state means to kill us all. You can't argue with the people who made Auschwitz. They have weapons and we don't. We must arm ourselves. And them being the West German government, which was run by a conservative majority at the time. That was in 1967. Less than a year later on April 2, 1968, Andreas and Gudrun, along with two others, snuck into two department stores in Frankfurt and placed two bombs with a time fuse which set them off at midnight. The bombs went off, but luckily no one was hurt. It's very fight club of them. Yes. Oh, yes. This is actually very fight club. Yeah. The very next morning, Andreas and Gudrun were arrested and at their arson trial, they argued that they did it in protest against people's indifference to the murder of the Vietnamese. Yeah. Their whole thing was like, look at you. You're getting so upset about the burning of some clothes. How's the burning of the children? Exactly. So they were sentenced to three years in prison. But 14 months later, they were temporarily paroled under an amnesty law for political prisoners, pending appeal, of course. Well, when that appeal came just a few months later, Gudrun and Andreas were ordered to go back to prison and serve the rest of their sentence, but they didn't. Instead, they went underground. Now, this is where I believe Amundul 2 unfortunately comes in. So in the early part of 1970 by Carolina's best guess, she did some great detective work on this one. Andreas, Bader and Gudrun Inslan, arguably the most dangerous members of the Bader-Meinhof group, because the Bader-Meinhof group by this point is growing. Yes. It's not just two people. No, no, it becomes, it grows. There's three generations of it. We'll get into it. Yeah. Andreas and Gudrun were on their way back to Germany from Italy. They were still on the run from the law, so they needed somewhere friendly to crash. Now, this is back in the days when Amundul 2 were at the Hurshing commune. This is before Kronwinkel. The Hurshing wasn't as politically intense as the commune they left, but it was still a part of a network of communes. And that network was continually exploited by members of the Bader-Meinhof group when they were evading the police. Now, this story has been told a number of ways by a number of Amundul 2 members. But basically, Amundul 2 returned to Hurshing after an exhausting tour. But when Renata Noup went to her room to go to sleep, she found that a couple she didn't know was occupying her bed. Renata, of course, reacted aggressively, screaming, who the fuck is in my bed? Who the fuck do you think you are? Get the fuck out now! Love her. Eventually, the two strangers were forced downstairs and everyone went to sleep for the night. Next morning, though, the band woke up to discover that the two strangers were Andreas Bader and Gudrun Enslin, the most wanted terrorists in Germany. And that's the thing, is that when we say that they're the Bonnie and Clyde in Germany, we don't just mean like they're two people who commit crimes. These are very, very dangerous people. And the difference between them and Bonnie and Clyde is that they're highly intelligent. Bonnie and Clyde were fucking morons. And according to Chris Carrer, there at Hershing, both of them were heavily armed. Now, thankfully, though, the worst that happened that day was that Andreas Bader accidentally drove his stolen Mercedes into a nearby lake and had to be pulled out by the band. Which is adorable that they're like, okay, here, just take my arm, take my arm. Fuckin' idiots. Then before leaving, Andreas Bader stole two pairs of new pants from Peter Leopold, which Peter is still mad about to this day. He's like, quote me on this. Please put it in the book. He's like, in one of them were black velvet pants. Those are not easy to get in those days. Yes. And soon after that, Andreas and Gudrun went to Berlin to stay with Ulrika Meinhoff. She was a columnist and editor for Concret, a left-wing political magazine. She wrote articles like Hitler and You. And he was a prominent voice in the German student protest movement at the time. But then when Andreas Bader was arrested at a traffic stop and sent to prison, Ulrika Meinhoff decided to join them by helping Gudrun and others break Andreas out of prison on May 14th, 1970. That was the day that the RAF was born, the Red Army Faction, also known as the Bader-Meinhoff Group. And they were very popular, especially with the students and the activists, but not so much of almond duel, too. OK? Remember, they kicked them out when they saw them, right? Because almond duel, too, we're not about that life. Yeah. And that's what they always said. Yeah. And the Bader-Meinhoff Group is all about violent action. And it's like arguing is no longer possible. You can't argue with the people who made Auschwitz. So we're going to achieve our political means through deadly violence. Yes. And almond duel, too, again, we're like, let's just make music and said, just grab a bongo. You know, we're not doing this. How about like, you know, we kicked them out. But how are we supposed to know that one of our roadies was apparently an RAF member they found out? So OK, actually, it was the roadies girlfriend that was an RAF member. The roadie was just in love, supposedly. You see, the roadies dad was a hunter and he had an arsenal of hunting weapons, which the roadie stole from his dad's collection and gave it to his girlfriend to give to the Red Army Faction so that they could pull off a string of robberies by gunpoint to finance their costs. Bank robberies. Yes, which they did actually during that time with the June 2nd movement or two June movement. Another terrorist group. Right. So when the roadie figured out that the police were able to trace the guns back to him, he ran to almond duel, too, house and said, I'm in big trouble, man. I fucked up, bro. I fucked up. That was it. That was it. Seriously, it's like a boogie night scene. Fuck it. Where's Philip Timo Robin? OK, but at this time, they've moved out of her sheing and now they're in Cronwinkle, right? In the big manner of state, the elderly nursing home ghost place with Peter Green in it. OK, and Renata, when she heard about, you know, when the roadie came over crying and everything, Renata said, OK, this is obviously pretty serious. And let's just go to bed and in the morning we'll go to the police and hash it out with them. I mean, OK, that part won't be easy, but we're going to try. But right before dawn, the cops caught wind that the roadie was at Cronwinkle, the almond duel, too, house. They're like, huh, we knew it was you. And like a SWAT team, two dozen cops armed with machine guns, raided the whole mansion yelling, everyone get up and get out. Spread your legs. We're here for that dumb shit love struck roadie. He's coming with us. And the roadie he did. And almond duel, too, just started brewing coffee after that. Really, they're just like, never again, never again. That's what I said to Chris. This is the last time. As I was distressed from morning, we're not about that life. And not about that life. Bungos not bombs. Yes. There you go. Thank you. Another bumper sticker. Although when we were watching that BBC documentary last night about the bottom line, there was an actual bumper sticker that said, I do not belong to the bottom mine, half group, I guess, so they don't get pulled over. And you know what, almond duel, too, had good reason to be pissed off about that. Due to the bottom mine, half groups actions over two dozen people were killed throughout this whole period, which included German police officers, American soldiers and big time executives, like leading bankers and industrialists. I know at least one of them, I believe, did have a Nazi past. Yeah. He was an SS member who had used forced labor in Eastern Europe in the company that he was the CEO of when the bottom mine, half group kidnapped him, held him for a month and then murdered him. But yet a lot of innocent people went down in the midst of this, right? Because these plans were executed by way of bombings, the kidnappings, hostage taking. I mean, the bottom mine, half group were a big time urban guerrilla group, and they didn't disband until 1998. Yeah. And funny enough, because of all this terrorism, the German police received a huge budget and in turn that made their police force one of the most modern state of the art police forces in the world. You fucked up. All right. That's what always happens. It always happens. You get into left wing politics because you don't agree with the status quo. Great. But then you get radicalized into terrorism and then you lose all credibility. Yeah. Not only do you ruin your own cause, but you allow young people, students, long hairs, hippies, whatever to become a target in a more tightened police state because of your goddamn terrorism. Get your head out of your ass and realize you're not special. Just get people to vote or run for office yourself. You fucking idiot. I don't know who I'm talking to. Hopefully we're talking to somebody that's making a bomb right now. Just putting the bomb away. Now, following the release of Yeti, the Cromwinkle 12 commune began showing all the signs of decay that the harshing commune had shown before collapsing because nobody had learned any lessons whatsoever in the interim. Additionally, since Aemindul 2 were now popular, there were a lot of quote unquote friends hanging around the castle that nobody in the band knew. And the members of Aemindul 2 weren't hanging out and playing together as a natural part of their day anymore. As John Vainzeal put it, the original Aemindul idea was being lost. The band became more dependent on individual ideas the less their living situation was a true communal experience. In the words of drummer Peter Leopold, and I fucking love this quote, you can't create chaos retroactively. And since the band lost their common chaotic musical ground, no other Aemindul 2 album has the power of fallow stay or Yeti. Albums thereafter were written separately by separate members, half and half affairs that were slowly floating into more conventional rock territory. Yeah, that's because what like their next album, John Vainzeal and Chris Carrer, they divided the record in half literally like John wrote one side, Chris wrote the other, and then they played on each other's songs. And after Tanzer Lemming, which was their third album, Aemindul 2 became a rock band instead of an art performance group that they once were. Peter Leopold said the performance group part was a big part of the magic of Aemindul 2. But to some people in or around Aemindul 2, that magic was gone. Yeah. But as it goes with a band like Aemindul 2, would eventually pressure them into getting more and more commercial was more tragic and painful death. Yeah, I mean, that sounds almost like bottom line. But no, that's not what happened. Accidental death. It was on tour. John Vainzeal, he said, we were on the road for about 15 years, and there were times when the gigs were bad or dangerously wrong. The ratio was eight out of 10 gigs were bad. But two were fantastic. But one particular gig in March of 1971 was particularly tragic. Aemindul 2, they were in Cologne playing a gig at the KEKS, Kex Disco Tech, when suddenly the venue itself caught fire. It's not clear how it started, but the whole place went up in flames and the place was immediately evacuated. But unfortunately, four people died in that fire. It's horrible. But luckily, all the members of Aemindul 2 made it out okay. But unfortunately, their equipment didn't. So they lost all their instruments in the fire. But remember, the four people dying, that's worse. That's much worse. Far worse, far worse. Right now, we have to focus on the loss of the equipment, because that's what the show's about. We have to focus on the loss of the guitar that made Yeti sound awesome. Right. And also, the band, they didn't ensure any of their instruments. Actually, most of the equipment was only partially paid for. So the band had to resort to accepting a loan from their record label. And since their records weren't selling very well, I mean, they had released three albums and two singles by then, they had to continue touring until their debt was paid off. And then they could start making a living. I mean, someone in the band remarked, we're worse off now than when we started four years ago. And we're fighting all the time. Everyone just keeps to themselves like you said before. Everyone's just separate. Everyone's rooms, their doors are shut. There's not much of a community anymore. It's now like having a job. Yeah. Now, it's very much like having a job and a big debt that you got to pay off. Now, since the commune was not in any way self-sufficient, the band decided to split up their last communal experiment. After a silent call ride back from a gig in Berlin, everyone took their bags and just headed off in different directions. And they never lived together again. Worst of all, though, to pay off their debts, Amandoul too found themselves in a position where experimentation was no longer a luxury they could afford. So their subsequent records were far more conventional, even though they'd already started heading in a more Prague direction by the time they recorded their follow up to Yeti. Tons de la Limega, it's all right. It's very Prague-y. If you like Prague, you'll love it. And acoustic guitars, go for it. Regardless, though, while purposefully making relatively more commercial rock was a direct contradiction of Amandoul too's original purpose of creative experimentation, some of those more commercial albums are still pretty fucking sick. Yeah, there's some good shit there. Listen to this song. It's called Green Bubble Raincoated Man. It's fucking great. I'd say relatively commercial. It's definitely all relative. I mean, it's not songs about like murderous pedophiles anymore, but it's still, you know, it's still Amandoul too. Yes, absolutely. And this is from their album, Wolf City, their fifth album, Amandoul too. They went on to make eight, I think maybe nine more albums and a live album and several singles and, of course, solo projects from different members. Renata sang with Popol Wu at one point in 1975, which this is all quite impressive for what they originally set out to do. Or according to Falk Rogner, he said they wanted to create a blank slate with new sound structures to put the listener in touch with the universal sound and make them forget about their mundane habits. But unfortunately, the realities of life caught up to Amandoul too. It wasn't sustainable to live in a communal lifestyle without conflicts and money problems, contracts, organizing tours and basically running a business, the business we call show. Yes. The band fell into contradictions time and time again, but you know what? It still worked. Sure, like they didn't change the world, but they lived as how they wanted, even if it was just for a time. And they left behind a legacy for the rest of us to enjoy and learn from even 50 years later. And these albums, particularly Fala's Day and Yeti, they're the reason why it was worth doing in the first place. Because remember, experimenting and creating music of or any kind of art really is always worth doing. God damn right. Now back before Amandoul too sort of fizzled out with an ill-advised attempt to break through to the American market with a record called Made in Germany that their manager cheekily wanted to call Olaf and his swinging Nazis. I think he told it to a boardroom full of American executives and their cigarettes fell out of their mouths. The band did have a brush with true respectability. In 1971, Amandoul too won the German equivalent of an Oscar, an award called the Lola for a soundtrack they did for a film called San Domingo about a wealthy young man who joins a rock music hippie commune and fakes a kidnapping to extort money from his parents after a cute girl convinces him to. Here's a taste of that award-winning soundtrack. Pretty fucking cool. Very ambient. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. Am I on mic? No. It's fine. It's fine. I love it. It's very linchin. Like it puts me in the mind of like David Lynch soundtracks. I wouldn't be surprised if Lynch possibly saw San Domingo and took some inspiration from it. Probably not, but maybe. He might have. Now back in those days, the underground music scene was heavily tied to the underground German film scene that featured such visionaries as Van Vendors, Reiner Fastbender, and of course, Werner Herzog. These guys needed unconventional music to match their unconventional films and the Krautrock bands of the time fit the bill perfectly. Famously, Werner Herzog would use the band Popol Vu in some of his best non-documentary films, movies like Aguirre, Wrath of God. Saw that the other night. It's fucking incredible. The 1979 version of Nasferatu and of course, Fitzcarraldo. But according to members of Amanduul 2, who may or may not be telling the entire truth, considering how, as I just said, Popol Vu worked with Werner Herzog, the soundtrack worked dried up when one of the other early Krautrock bands undercut everyone else by charging half the fee. This band ended up doing so many soundtracks that in 1970, they released a compilation of all their contributions and simply called it soundtracks. Here's one of those songs by none other than Can. We got an angel chosen, a common number one to sleep for. He's laid another greatest step above no one knows it. The world where a rogue at mid, a highland mid, same rough grassland. A trick here is here, whenever a rogue hits a Nasferatu, as a mimic to a rip-band, where a dynamic music can come from. When I talk to you, you just send me right, you madman. Can you hear me, my friend? I'm praying for a wish to run. Why, why don't you dedicate? To follow tricks so stupid, so great afternoon? I know you will live on like a spring valley. And that is where we'll pick back up next week to continue our series in the world of experimental German music with Can. I can't wait, I can't wait. This is amazing. We're getting into it, we're finally rolling with the hits. Yeah. And in a couple weeks, well hopefully we'll have Can out soon and we'll let you know all about that. But first, let's promote our live show that's coming up. And not just ours, the whole Last Podcast Network Beach Blanket Bingo Show at the Balboa in San Diego, California on October 20, 2023. Because you're wondering, all your favorite shows are going to be there, including us. You can get tickets or you can find tickets at LastPodcastNetwork.com. That's right. It's so cool. And also, I don't know why I'm doing this, but go to a flaming lip show. You need to go, I mean, we're not, you know, they're not paying us to say this, but it is fantastic. We went and we saw them in LA at the YouTube Theater and it was just so, so, so good. Thank you to Tommy McKenzie and everyone, everyone there was fantastic. They just put on one of the most amazing shows. I've seen this here. Right now they're on tour playing the entirety of Yoshimi Battles, the Pink Robots, which is one of the most important records to me in my entire fucking life. The live show that they do with Yoshimi is absolutely incredible. They actually have giant robots, huge pink robots. And then after they do Yoshimi, they come out and play like an hour, hour and a half of just more flaming lip stuff. They play songs that you love. They play deep cuts. It's an incredible show. The visuals are incredible. Wayne Coyne is, of course, like, you know, you want to follow him to the ends of the earth, but he won't let you, because he doesn't want you to follow him. He wants you to follow the fucking message, man. Jesus, man. It was so good. Yeah, man. My love of the lips has been rekindled a thousandfold. It's, so yeah, definitely go check out the Flamin' Lips on tour right now if they're coming anywhere near you. Absolutely. And we got t-shirts. Thanks, Tommy. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're awesome. We got t-shirts for sale for, you know, no dogs in space t-shirts of women's and men's sizes on lastpodcastmerch.com. That's right. We're on Instagram as nodogspod. I'm there as Carolina Danger Hidalgo, your Marcus Parks. Yes. And we have playlists of our songs of every episode. So for this episode, you can find a playlist on YouTube, just search no dogs in space. We have our own YouTube thing there and also on Spotify. I think we got to search Marcus Parks. I think by this time you can just search no dogs in space playlist and you'll be able to find a playlist for every episode that we've ever put out. I think we're up to like 55 now, if you can fucking believe that. And we're also going to be having playlists of songs that we mentioned on our livestream that we're going to be doing every other Monday at 7pm PST, starting after Labor Day. Yes. That will be on Twitch and on YouTube. So please check that out. That out if you want to see our faces. If you want to see our faces, then absolutely check that out. And so I got to read the sources. Yeah. Okay. Here we go. This is going to take about a minute. In case anyone's interested in the sources of what it took for this pretty much this entire two-part series, we got Tanzer Lemming book by Ingeborg Schober. It's in German, unfortunately. So I mean, I had to Google Translate and then get our associate producer, Patrick Fisher, to help me out with figuring that all out. And then of course, Times and Sounds, Germany's Journey from Jazz and Pop to Crout Rock and Beyond by Jan Reitz. And then Future Days, Crout Rock and the Birth of a Revolutionary New Music by David Stubbs. The Cambridge Companion book to Crout Rock edited by Uwe Schutte, Uwe Rock, European Rock and the Second Culture by Archie Patterson. And then we saw a couple of documentaries, the BBC documentary Crout Rock, the rebirth of Germany directed by Benjamin Whaley. And then this other documentary Crout Rock 2, Romantic Warriors 4, a progressive music saga by Adele Schmidt and Jose Cegara Holder. That's actually really good. They have a lot of Renata in there. Very cool. And also don't forget about the BBC 4 documentary on the bottom minehawk that we watch. Yes. In Love with Terror directed by Ben Lewis. Don't watch it if you don't want to see a whole bunch of dead pigs. Oh my God, that part was weird, but I understand the analogy. And then as far as more history stuff, Peter Green, I read the biography, The Founder of Fleetwood Mac by Martin Selmans. Pretty interesting stuff there. And I think they just reissued it last year. Also, more history side from freedom fighters to terrorists, women and political violence by Paige Whaley Eager and Bodder Minehoff, the inside story of the RAF by Stefan Aust. It's actually reads really well. It's a book by someone who knew Ulrika Minehoff and he wrote for a Concret. So he was like, he knew them and he was actually kind of part of the story. It's insane. And it's also based on the movie, The Bodder Minehoff Complex directed by Uli Edel that we watch too. It's just fantastic. Again, highly recommended. Yes, definitely. And then tons of stuff online articles, interviews found on The Wire, Mojo and Uncut Magazine, Crout Rock and Prog Rock, message forums, message boards. I am standing on the shoulders of giant fans. Thank you, fans. And the blog by Reiner Langehens, a memoir he posted online. Just Google his name with a blog, with the word blog, and you'll find it. It is in German though. And big thank you to Emily Vota for outlining the Cambridge Companion chapters and the Future Days chapter on Amandl 2. And a huge, gigantic thank you to Patrick Fisher, Research Assistant and now Associate Producer of the Crout Rock series because he is indispensable at this point. Absolutely. No, no, no. He's giving us an edge. So thank you. And thank you to Kelsey Netser for helping us out along the way as well. Of course. And I'd say like go and watch The Bodder Minehoff Complex, go and watch the film, because I think it'll give you a nice idea as we go through this whole Crout Rock series as to what's happening in the background of every single band that we're about to talk about. Like what's just, what's going on in Germany at the time. It is a really good introduction to everything. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. It's actually what we started with when we got, when we did our semester of German experimental music. So. And of course, if you have a band, if you play music yourself, if you just fucking make noise, send us an email at nodogsandspace.com. Send us a link to your stuff. Send us your band camp, your Spotify, your YouTube, your whatever. We'll listen to it. And if we dig it, we'll play it at the end of an episode. Thanks to everybody who's been sending us stuff. We get so much shit. We're working through it little by little. Y'all are fucking amazing. But today's band is from Providence, Rhode Island. They're called Sullist that spelled S U L L E S T. The song is called all my shit at TJ's. It's off their EP fashionable mail. You can check them out on Spotify and at S U L L E S T dot band camp.com. This band's fucking great. It's good punk, good old fashioned punk rap. Yes. All right. Good bye, everybody. We'll see you next time with can. Thank you. Goodbye. No idea what direction. I feel 16 again. Now I'm going into action. Throwing me out. Freaking me. Bastard. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to last podcastnetwork.com. Switch to Plusnet's award winning full fibre from just $22.99 a month. Our sweet deal gets you fast and reliable broadband with no activation fee with speeds up to 900 megabits. Feels like a sugar rush. Full fibre that's full of value. That's a plus. 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