An Introduction to Krautrock / Amon Düül II Pt I

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Get the deal.ickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenicken Or we'll just call it kraut rock. We're just gonna call it kraut rock. Welcome to no ducks and space ladies and gentlemen My name is Marcus Parks. I'm Carolina doggo and welcome to a massive massive series that we've got planned We're gonna take a deep dive into kraut rock, of course We're kind of in the middle of an experimental season right now experimental ish The experimental season is in itself Experimental yes, but we're gonna be covering a ton of bands that all fall under the umbrella of Kraut rock so we're gonna be getting deep into Deutschland So let's begin Now no matter where you from what your background of music is or how old you are the music that falls under the umbrella known for Better or worse as kraut rock is just plain odd. It is from over here but but we've done a semester of this basically and It gets cool when you get into it Yeah, it's a it's an acquired taste for some and as a genre it can feel impenetrable Especially when you consider that kraut rock isn't a genre at all Really, it's more of a loose collection of German experimental bands active in the 60s and 70s Jim Ozzis put another way calling kraut rock a genre of music is like calling cheese a genre of milk That makes sense. Yeah, I'm glad it makes sense to you But with this series we want to remove the impenetrability of kraut rock and cordially invite you to join that conversation You've heard time and again at your local record store noy versus can Mooney versus Suzuki Amen dual one versus amen dual two actually the correct pronunciation is almond Okay, yeah, I'm from now on almond dual. That's the last time I'm gonna do that Okay, in fact, we want to give you enough knowledge where you can decide for yourself Whether the guy making the argument that almond dual one is better than almond dual two is being sincere or just contrarian Or maybe it was an almond dual one Overall though kraut rock really isn't about genres or styles or even scenes Kraut rock is about the kids who made the music and when something is about the kids It's almost always gonna have its roots in rebellion But Kraut Rocks rebellion is unlike any in modern music history See most musical movements are rebellions against their present and while kraut rock certainly was that it was also a rebellion Against its country's fairly recent past Specifically these kids were rebelling against the horrific legacy of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party This rebellion went far beyond mere historical context Many of the key members of the Kraut Rock movement were the children of people who had either been active Nazis or At the very least had tolerated the Third Reich That's all to say that recent German culture for these kids had been tainted and they needed a German culture all their own They needed something that not only had nothing to do with the Nazis But nothing to do with the British invasion happening at the time or what the Americans were doing in California That's right represent represent My head all day all day from the German youth's perspective They were at a cultural zero point and that's a place where things always get interesting Using little more than rock creativity the musicians of the Kraut Rock movement tapped into their own German Identities and points of view because after all Germany is a country of innovators outside of you know 1933 to 1945 but besides Germans have always had a rich culture of art literature and science But above all Germans know how to fucking make music damn straight fuck Beethoven Brahms Handel Strauss Wagner Mozart fucking Hans Zimmer. Yes Each and every one of these guys were German or Austrian and in the 20th century that Compositional innovation the began in the classical era continued to evolve See even before the Kraut Rock movement began composers in Germany like Carl Heinz stockhausen We're on the cutting edge of early electronic music and while this stuff is to say the least a challenging listen It's it's like children screaming Half of his songs are children's Preaked me out by the way. Just be careful. You know, but it's cool. It's important. Hymn is a masterpiece. I love Carl Heinz stockhouse It's nonetheless another musical milestone and then finally came the bands can Kraftwerk Faust amandoul 2 tangerine dream cluster noi incredibly influential each and every one without amandoul 2 you might not have slayer No cluster no Bowie in Berlin and most of all if you don't have Kraftwerk Then the entirety of 20th century music history changes because saying Kraftwerk is Influential to the music we know and love is like saying oxygen is influential to human life In other words despite or perhaps because of their experimental nature the bands that make up the Kraut Rock movement Are secretly some of the most important bands in modern history You You You Fireicken Yellow jokes come out of your mind It's a rainy day Sunshine girl It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine girl It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby Sunshine baby Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby It's a rainy day Sunshine baby Sunshine baby Sunshine baby Sunshine baby Sunshine baby Sunshine baby Sunshine baby Sunshine baby Sunshine baby It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home On the day that it all The system was made to solve The broken fancy room Went very far from your home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home It's our home jazz ensemble. So he told his friends from boarding school, remember Peter and Ulrich, hey forget jazz, let's figure out something new. And Peter and Ulrich Leopold, they're just fucking, they're insanely talented, just like Chris Carrer. And they were brothers. Peter was the older one of the two. He was a beast of a drummer. Can we play a snippet of Peter Leopold's drumming? Yeah, let's hear it. All right. Remember, this is a very drum heavy band. Yeah. Dude can fucking drum. Yeah. And the music's gonna get weirder. So when yeah, that's that's from an album when they started going a little more commercial. I know. Because experimental is exactly that. You'll see. So when Chris, Peter and Ulrich, they all finished boarding school, or I've also heard were expelled from it. They decided to move into the center of Munich. So Peter and Ulrich Leopold, they moved into their own apartment on Klopp Stockstraße. Pretty good. I think it. Yeah. And pretty soon, the Leopold brothers and Chris Carrer were jamming on Klopp Stockstraße, or I like to call Klopp Street. Klopp Street's better. And and also like they were jamming their plane and we're done with school. They had other boarding school friends who are also coming around like Falk you, Rogner. I call him Falk you. That's his middle name, Ulrich. Falk you. Falk you's great. He's a photographer, artist later messes around with a base with a keyboard in the band. And then there was a bongo player Christian who went by Shratt. He's he's great. I've been told that if you were alive in 1967, then you knew a bongo player. You knew six bongo players. They're like fucking cockroaches by I don't know kindergarten. I'm sure. Okay, so these friends, they're coming together. They're hanging out. And they're listening to music. They're jamming the music because they're all locked in and they're ready to do something new. The time of the beat groups was over and now it's time for the new generation to make some new art, something that's not American or British, something that uniquely defines their generation. But what is it? What will it be? What am I? That is the central theme of our series right now. I should be telling you, but that's what it is. Let's drop some acid and see if the answers come to us. Was clopstock strasa became more of a hangout spot and more drugs started getting involved. The taste of the people who made it their home began to evolve more into the realm of the psychedelic as tastes on acid are want to do. There was of course you Jefferson airplane your Floyd your Zappa, but there were two lesser known albums that had an outsized influence on the members of almond duel. And they are it takes an effort, but you're happy at the end of one was an English group called hapsash and the colored coat, which was mostly a heavy meandering mess with moments of brilliance that I'm sure were made even more brilliant on acid. It just takes a very unique appreciation to get into it. That's at least that's my opinion. I agree with that opinion because it's more of an historical artifact than anything else like hearing like, Oh, there were these dudes playing this really heavy music. It's a mess. And it's not necessarily necessary, but it's a moment in time. It is. But the record that was even more of a template for almond duel when it came to the variants of influences on their work was an album that was put together and released is almost a lark because some of the best studio musicians on earth just felt like making a psychedelic record. That was called the salib people. The salib people was basically a bunch of members of the wrecking crew, you know, the wrecking crew, the guys who backed hundreds upon hundreds of hits here in America for a Phil Spector wall sound that kind of stuff. Just any solo artist named any solo artist from like 1960 to 1980. And it's pretty much guaranteed you get a member of the wrecking crew that played on it. That was that was the kind of the base of it. You also had the drummer who composed half of Eric Clapton's Layla and murdered his mother later on during a credit. You get the guy who played the flute part on going up the country by can he you know, do that. That one, that guy was necessary. Yep. And at the helm of the whole project was musical chameleon, Ry Cougar. My dad's ears just perked up when I said Ry Cougar. Cougar is widely considered one of the greatest guitarists in history. And he's a hell of a singer songwriter to boot. And he led the salib people session just after a short stint with Captain Beefheart's magic band, the result of Cougar psychedelic experiment with sitar by way of beefheart. And this record somehow made its way into the apartment at Klopstock Strasse and change the way the future members of Amen Dual 2 thought about music. Yeah. Some cool weird shit. Yeah. California wasn't it? Sorry, by the way, that's from the album Ten Yet, 1968. In case you it's the only album they ever put out. It's on YouTube in case you're wondering. And I don't even know how to spell anything. But look it up as best you can. C-E-Y-L-E-I-B people. It's a great album. I mean, a lot of the songs are like 25 seconds long, minute and a half, minute 12, because they're just fucking around. But this had such a huge, huge influence on the members of Amen Dual 2. Now California was an impossible destination for the kids at Klopstock Strasse. So they did the next best thing and took a weekend trip to the UK to check out the scene in London. Guitarist Chris Carer, drummer Peter Leopold and a few others attended a festival at the legendary Roundhouse venue in London in 1967. While details are scant on what they actually saw that weekend outside of some free jazz and a performance by the animals, the trip opened Chris Carer's eyes to a new range of possibilities. And just briefly dipping his toe into the British scene for a weekend, Carer saw that his loose group of musicians fucking around in an apartment in Munich were far behind what the English were well into. So he returned to Germany with a new resolve to take their music to the next level. Perhaps more consequently, though, Chris had returned with a fellow German who'd been working as an au pair in London for a few years previous. Her name was Renata Naupe, and she would become an essential member of Aemond Duel 2 as a eventual lead singer. And my favorite member, by the way, she's my favorite, she's awesome, she's badass. Renata is amazing. Now, Klopp stop Strasse soon began attracting some of the brightest young artistic minds around in film, photography, and even light shows to create a full multimedia experience. But the problem was that none of them were leaving after they fucking showed up. It got crowded. It got real crowded, actually. You don't want it's like not cool anymore. Yeah, that's what happened. So at the end of 1967, the Leopold brothers and Chris Karrer moved to a larger apartment on Prince Regent in Strasse, where Hitler had supposedly once given a speech from the balcony. But with all these young open minded people hanging around in a single space, it was almost inevitable that they latch upon a way of living that flew in the face of everything Hitler stood for, while also rejecting the traditional Western family structure, rebellion against the past and the present. Like so many others in Germany at the time, the kids at Prince Regent in Strasse, right in the middle of Munich, formed a commune. Yes, Prince Regent, Prince Regent Street. Okay, there we go. So yes, when you know, the Leopold brothers, Chris Karrer and all them, they moved in together, they did this to become a commune because they were anti society, anti nuclear family, anti everything, but pro LSD. Isn't that fun? Okay, so their apartment, essential. To a certain degree. And then eventually, you know, they said like we have to leave that behind. But that's for later. Yeah. So their apartment in Prince Street was in an upper middle class bougie neighborhood, actually, where doctors and lawyers live. Because remember, these guys, Peter, Ulrich, Chris, Falk you, most of them are long haired hippies, sometimes wearing Indian robes and colorful jackets. They're eating yogurt. They don't have jobs. They're anti jobs. They share everything together. Food, weed, psychedelics, music, they play music all the time, even the children. Yes, there's a toddler to running around. Everyone is a musician. So just hand out some bongos or tambourines and we all get going. That's their life every day. That was the vibe of the house, the commune, and it sounds freaking awesome, at least at first for a weekend. But the thing is, the guys are rather the commune, they would let anyone in who was unusual, which could be fun, you know, anyone who can handle the unconventional, very data, very fluxes. Yes, like one guy, there was a British dude that stayed with them for six weeks in the same corner of the house. He didn't do anything. He didn't say anything. He just hung out in his corner, eating butter sandwiches, and everyone loved him. What a great guy. What's his name? Who cares? This is what we call a social experiment, an art commune, a drum circle gone too far. Far too far, definitely much too far for their neighbors. I mean, these guys would be walking down the street and someone would poke their head out the window and would actually say, you all belong in the fucking concentration camps. You deserve to be gassed. That's what they would hear just around in the corner. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Like I said, Nazis still around. Not all of them hiding so well. And their neighbors, they looked at this commune like they were criminals, like hoodlums, which brought them some attention. Actually, a journalist came over, he toured the place, he talked to the people in the commune. And a week later, the journalist published a story in the paper in a commune, they all huddled together to check out their featured article in the big print. And it said, this commune sucks. And if this is a future Germany, then we need Adolf back. And they're like, wow, that's yeah, like what's on page two. But that kind of rejection from the older generation, or maybe the more conformist, straight-laced, conservative groups of people, and the media, especially included, they just emboldened like the commune even more. They're like, fuck it, we're gonna do what we want. And besides, what's wrong with what we're doing? At least we're not Nazis. But what are we? Right? So a few months after the commune moved in together, they said, we need to figure out what to call ourselves. Because there's loads of communes all over Germany, all over the world, really, at this time. And they identify in their own ways, like political communes, like commune one, or commune two, not very creative with their commune names. And sex communes, they were sex communes, the ones who practice free love, baby, that kind of stuff. Rosie Rosie, that was one. It's a great name for a fuck commune. But this is a music commune, one where we want to make something new, a new musical revolution, an awakening, if I may, you may. Okay, something that's German, but not something like international music. Like a name, a name that needs something. World music. That's it. Yes. But not of this world. Space music, cosmish music. Yeah. Yes. So let's take Amen, from the Egyptian sun god, Amen, raw, and dual, a word that doesn't exist. It really doesn't exist. Sorry, I don't, it's not a Turkish word for moon goddess. They did try, they retroactively tried to say like, it is a word for Turkish moon goddess. It's not, they just fucking made it up. This is before Google. So Amen and dual. Okay, perfect. It's neither American nor English nor German. It's unique. It's pithy. It's Amen, dual. Amen, dual. So by April 1968, the commune were calling themselves, Amen, dual. And with a new name must come a new ideology. Of course. Music shall be our language. And improvisation will be how we communicate between each other. This is how we change the world, not by preaching, but by living it. We're the youth of 1968. And after the legacy our parents left us, we deserve better. So we'll make it better. We'll jumpstart a society we can be proud of. And in the way we know how solidarity brothers and sisters together, we are stronger. Never give up. Never surrender. What? Galaxy Quest? Yes. It's 1968. It's the age of Aquarius, baby. There's a cosmic vibration going through the world and the revolution is happening now and it's being carried by the music. Hey, I was born in the wrong decade. I'm loving this stuff. I'm believing I would never live in a continent. Of course, no, we couldn't live like this at all. Absolutely not. I don't like it. I don't even like when people talk to me when I'm in the bathroom. But I love this whole idea, though. Yeah. And in theory, all of this is very cool. Yeah, but and as you said earlier, for a weekend, it's very cool. Maybe even for a month, it's very, very cool. But it just tends as we'll get into later, these sorts of ideas just tend to collapse under their own weight. Now again, if you'll remember from our monk series, the Beatles had cut their teeth in the city of Hamburg, and Germany was no more immune to Beatlemania than any other Western country in the early to mid 60s. As a consequence, Germany had its own generation of beat groups inspired by the Beatles and the rest of the British invasion bands. Most popular were the lords. Oh, yeah, the lords are quite possibly the most awkward beat group of the era. I still like them for some reason. It's I mean, not this song. It's so awkward. It's fun. How do you manage to play a guitar riff awkwardly? I don't know, but it's competent yet it's awkward. The lords 500 orders a month was manageable. 5,000 is madness. Embrace intelligent order fulfillment with ShipStation, the only platform combining order management, warehouse workflows, inventory, return, analytics in one place. What used to take five separate tools, ShipStation does in one, go to ShipStation.com and use code start to try ShipStation free for 60 days. Now, as you can imagine, the kids living in an apartment commune listening to the salee people while they were being told they should be gassed in concentration camps, they didn't really vibe with bands like the lords. Likewise, the even going over to Britain, the Rolling Stones arguably the tougher of the big two British invasion bands. Their songs weren't speaking to the kids in the commune either. This was despite the fact that Mick Jagger was trying to write more revolutionary material specifically with songs like Street Fighter. Yeah, it's great. Now Street Fighter Man was actually about how England was sleeping on revolution. While so many other Western countries like France, Italy, Germany in the United States were taken it to the streets on a regular and bloody basis. I think the UK had like one protest. It was a pretty big one to be fair. When I can say it was a big one. I think thousands of people, lots of people heard, you know, yes, some people got beaten up by police on horse. One. Yeah, I mean, it was bad enough. Yeah, really what it came down to is that the beat groups that had formally represented a counterculture in Germany had become too mainstream and didn't speak to the Prince Regents and Strasse kids at all whether those groups be British or German. Therefore, the Amandoul commune did what all innovators do when the music they want to hear isn't being made. They made it themselves. That's right. So like I said earlier during my really cool Oppenheimer run, the emergency laws were approved by the government in May of 1968 and thousands of people stormed the streets to protest the emergency laws that had ironically been put in place to prevent future protests. That's fun, right? And in one of those demonstrations, Amandoul had their first public performance in the University of Munich. You mentioned this earlier in the episode, well, their first gig was relatively peaceful and serene, but powerful. It was different from what the students would normally listen to. It's not a song you'd normally hear from America or Berlin. It's not even really a song. It's completely different. And it's something the students relate to. It's Amandoul. Yeah. So after this gig, they started booking real shows and clubs and underground venues like the Blow Up Club in Munich. There they put together a music and music and light show called it's okay. It's called the Transparent Magic Show, which I think is an obvious man. I don't know. I'm not sure, but it's kind of I think they're trying to go in with like exploding plastic inevitable light and music show that Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground did. The Velvet Underground were doing that stuff in 1966, 1967. And this is Munich 1968 and Amandoul is already on top of that. And I'm sure it sounds much better in German. Yeah, probably. Let's say yes. Transparent Magic Show. That sounds like something for children. Yes. That's a good point. Okay. Yes. Amandoul, they had like colors swirling around everywhere. Kind of like the Velvet Underground same idea. Lavalamps, projectors screening porn films while another projector was showing Donald Duck cartoons on top of each other at the same time. It's an artistic choice. It's very clever. Yes. And they even had a bubble machine to add more ambiance. Although one time at their show, their bubble machine now functioned and it went into overdrive and engulfed each Amandoul band member into one giant bubble because it's spinal tap. This is always always leads to spinal tap. Always. And they also have their Niko kind of a German model named Ushi Ube Meyer. She didn't sing but she played the hell out of those maracas. Everyone was staring at her maracas. I didn't mean that. So the band they'll be here all week. Yeah, seriously. So the band they did their multimedia shows because presentation is very important. Of course. And it was a hit with the crowd. People would show up every week to watch Amandoul because it was different every time. Lots of jamming, lots of improvisation. See where this takes us. Because remember, we're communicating with the cosmic universe. That's right. Now out of the 10 to 14 people at the Amandoul commune at this time out of all those people at those shows, only about five or six knew how to actually play music. Yeah, because it's a lot like just like mess with it. You know, they hand you something and you just kind of hit it. Yeah, what it goes on. Yeah, you're not really going to be handing out like guitars to the toddler. You know, it's a lot of people with drums and six dudes who know what they're doing. It's a lot of percussion. Yeah, percussion heavy. It's a drum circle gone too far. Yes. And most of those five or six musicians who actually knew what they were doing, they have backgrounds in jazz. They'd cut their teeth on everything from the more experimental work of Miles Davis and John Coltrane to highly structured band leaders. This is actually one I think one of Amandoul two's big influences that don't really get enough credit. One of my personal favorites, a guy named Don Ellis, specifically this song from his album live at Monterey 3322122 that's the fucking time signature. Yeah, I think that's the song that's been on the list before this or this song. And now it makes sense. Right? Yeah. All right. Well, we got about five or six Don Ellis records at the house that we're going to need to listen to tonight. Okay. Well, that's good. I'm glad it's only three in the afternoon. We have time. Jazz, however, would not be the basis for Amandoul's early work. See one of the main guys in Amandoul was this he was from Vienna. They always say that he's Austrian. Yeah, always always make sure to say he's Austrian. Right? Or from Vienna. Mm hmm. And he came into the group. He came into the commune really with a fair amount of rock songs or like you know, singer songwriter tunes tracks like that. They took those originals. Amandoul took those originals and they expanded them into 30 minute improvisational explorations that were inspired mostly by the Sid Barrett era of Pink Floyd. And see, that's going to be part of the problem with this experimental rock stuff is that you know, like, yeah, you might think like, Oh, wow, that about halfway through that, you might be thinking like, Oh, wow, this song is going on for a little bit too long. And then that fucking part comes in that absolutely wonderful part comes in that doesn't make sense unless you hear the 30 seconds that came before it. And that's why choosing the music for these episodes is really fucking hard. Yes, you have to clear your afternoon. But even though Amandoul had rock roots, they did not consider themselves to be a rock band at all. For them, the band was more abstract, something closer to an auditory representation of a desire to live life in a different way. Man. Okay, we got it. The problem though, is that when it came to commune living, abstract ideas can very easily evolve into rigid rules. And like so many other communes, Amandoul became something that bordered on sinister. This is a problem with a lot of times of counterculture that the hippie ism like the whole like live their life the way you want to be free of things. And then you're eating a ham sandwich and they're like, are you gonna eat that? Yeah. And then you're like, oh, but you're ruining the whole rules thing that we're not supposed to have them. Yeah, I mean, do what thou wilt as the whole of the law eventually goes bad. Okay, it happens. Eventually, the Amandoul commune predictably began to place an oversized emphasis on sex. Free sex for all soon became mandatory sex for men. And not every man was into it. Chris Carr, for example, remembered an incident in which he admitted that he hadn't had sex in a month. This was apparently a grave offense, because some of the other men in the commune began accusing him of being either gay or impotent. So Chris quote unquote proved that he was up to the commune sexual standards by reluctantly taking a willing woman and having sex with her right there on the floor as 20 other commune members either watched or milled around in the background, just going about their day. This is Maggie's farm by way of Ariaster. Like this is fucking unsettling. It's weird. As far as singer Renata not went, she bristled against the strict rules the commune placed on spending. Anytime anyone wanted to buy anything, they had to go beg the commune's cashier for money. And if any rules of any kind were broken, the offender had to go in front of a tribunal to explain their actions. The final straw for Renata came when she and a fellow commune member took a trip to the south of France for two weeks. And when they returned, they discovered that they were scheduled to defend themselves in front of the commune tribunal, because they hadn't asked permission to leave the house. That's bullshit. Freedom my ass. Yes, it always ends up like this. You always end up trying to be the opposite of and then you're back at the anus of fascism. It happens. It's just the horrible cycle of extremism. Yep. And all this bullshit, of course, straight far away from what sort of commune Amandoll was supposed to be. This is supposed to be a music commune for the purpose of making actual music. And by making every commune member a mandatory member of the band, music became just another dictate. That also meant the music sounded fucking terrible. Okay. It's a matter of debate. Okay, let's get going. There are some good parts, but we really don't have to defend it or ostracize it. So because the commune had become more about politics than music, and because there was no way the serious musicians and Amandoll could be in a band with dozens of people who couldn't play, the group split. Ulrich Leopold and Reiner Bauer became the leaders of the original Amandoll group. While guitarist and violinist Chris Carr, singer Renata Knapp, organist Falk you, Rogner and bongo player Shrat Thila left the commune to start their own group. The problem was what to do with the name. See the group that split off, they really liked the name Amandoll, but the commune wouldn't give it up. So to avoid a legal fight that none of them could afford anyway, and to still retain the vision that they'd spent so much time developing, the split off group, the group made of actual musicians, they called themselves Amandoll 2. And that's why it's called Amandoll 2. Yeah, yeah, the members who left said they named the band Amandoll 2 to avoid confusion. But that as you can imagine backfired, because that little two at the end caused nothing but confusion for the rest of their fucking career. It took me so long to figure out the difference between Amandoll 1 and Amandoll 2 back in the days when I was just downloading shit off of the fucking internet off of SoulSeek and just getting whatever. Why is there one and why is there two? I didn't understand it. It's weird because I also sometimes have to type Amandoll uppercase I uppercase I. None of it makes sense. Okay, so that yes, that made the communal Amandoll Amandoll 1. But remember, they don't call themselves that. It's just us, the fans that call Amandoll Amandoll 1. So you know, it's not like Amandoll 2 said, okay, now you have to call yourselves Amandoll 1. And they said, okay, like it didn't happen. No, there's Amandoll and Amandoll 2. Okay, so they were done with each other, right? Except for two weeks later when they ran into each other at the 1968 S and Song Festival, which by the way, Amandoll booked before the split. But Amandoll 1 said that's our gig. You guys are the ones who left. So Amandoll 1 played and Amandoll 2 watched. That's what just had to happen. And I mean, well, because like Amandoll 2 did not want to miss this festival. By the way, the S and Song Festival is actually quite historical. It's the first music festival in Germany. And it's the first time a large audience was exposed to what would later be called Krautrock. It was a music festival, but it was also very political. It was tied to the local SPD, Germany's Socialist Party. They had speakers, underground film screenings and stuff like that. It just meant to bring awareness and of course to rock out to the music. I mean, most of the kids were just there for the music anyways. It was put together by music journalist Rolf Ulrich Kaiser, who set it up with funding from the city of Essen, who regretted it almost immediately. They always do. It was a financial failure. But a big win for us long hairs. I'm going to include myself in that for some weird reason. But it was cool. I mean, there were dozens of bands and artists on the American side. There was a Fugs Tim Buckley and Mothers of Inventions Frank Zappa's band who made a lasting impression in Germany from what I heard. Yeah. And the Krautrock bands like Guru Guru, Soul Caravan, Amendou won. And this band, which I find them quite fun, Tangerine Dream. Yeah, they're pretty good fun. I like that. Oh yeah, it's Tangerine Dream. This is what they sounded like at the Song Festival, by the way. Incredible. I mean, Tangerine Dream, their fucking set, their entire catalog is vast. It's fantastic. And what's it called? Ultimatul Part One. Okay, so we're gonna definitely have a video playlist, a YouTube video playlist, and also a Spotify playlist. Yes, we will. As we do for every single show, just search my name, Marcus Parks for Spotify and search No Dogs in Space on YouTube for that playlist. And after this episode, if you really want to check out a cool Tangerine Dream performance, look up the one that they did in a cathedral and I think like 1969, 1970, it's fucking incredible. Awesome. Okay, back to the Essence Song Festival. Remember, this is huge. Krautrock bands, they're playing in front of an audience of over 12,000 people. They're finally given for the first time a platform for just being original. Finally, the birth of German indie rock music. Yeah, it happened there in three days. So Amanduul played and I heard it was chaotic, but fun chaotic. Not everyone liked them, but the model Ushi Ubemeyer, she got favorable reviews. Remember, she's playing the Maracas and killing it, killing it. I want to be really supportive. It used to be a percussion player in a band like there's not a lot of ways to kill it at the Maracas. She managed to, okay. I mean, that's what more can you do? So it was a big event. Imagine two hands. Anyway, so it was a big event that people still talk about decades later. This is the first time that thousands of like-minded, creative individuals from Germany are all gathered together in one place, including the famous and infamous, Kamii One, Ka Ainz. One of the guys from Ka Ainz, Rainer Longhands, he loved Amanduul One's performance so much. He said in his blog slash memoir that you can look up online that it was something akin to punk. It was very punk where you don't have to know how to play an instrument to play music. Well, okay. Yes. Or sounds. They're making sounds. And Amanduul One would play themselves into a trance that was mesmerizing. And remember, everyone's on asset. So Commune One or K1, they were a political commune from Berlin who like the Amanduul commune believed in sharing everything and living in close quarters together and taking away any ounce of privacy one might have. They even removed K1 even removed the doors from their bathrooms because they thought it was like a barrier to their beliefs or some shit like that. It was it was very bourgeois to have privacy. Oh, yeah, it's bougie to shit in peace. It's also bougie to have money. So give it to me. You don't need it because you're enlightened. It's really what some people would say in communes. So according to an Amanduul One member, K1 were inspired by Mao Zedong who forced Chinese students to live in a farm community for two years. So agrarian. Very very very very. And somehow these German socialists thought great idea. I don't know. I don't I don't know why they commune one way and to each their own. To each their own. I'm trying to be as open minded as humanly possible. But the lack of privacy is really what gets to me. And not the Mao Zedong approach to commune live in. That's not what gets to you. It's the bathroom door. It is my safe space. It is my sanctuary. I understand. Okay, so also K1 they were they were actually also at the Shah protest, you know, the one where 26 year old Beno was shot. And they were also close with Rudy Ducke. You know, the guy who was also shot. So many people were shot. Rudy thought actually he considered joining K1, but ultimately decided against it because he didn't want to share his wife. I understand. We all understand that. I'm in dual one since they were a commune two, they were friends with K1 with commune one. And they would go visit them in Berlin sometimes. And I'm in dual two. They were not the biggest fans of K1. I mean, I think it was Chris Carr who said like, yeah, we hung out with them and they're cool, I guess, but these people aren't interested in art or music or anything. They're really only into their dogmatic ideas, which is boring after a while. Have you ever hung out with a libertarian? It's kind of like that. Or a communist. Yes. I mean, just anyone who's really big into their principles. And you know, because we're all full of contradictions people. Of course, that's what we all are. Yeah. And to be holding on to things really hard and preaching it can be really exhausting. No, well, it's like I said, the Manhattan Project series, the last podcast on the left, communists are really fun hangs until they get too drunk and they only talk about communism and then they get really insulting. That's by our too. It can be. It can be. Not all that all. Not all communists. Now, Amanduul I's performance at the Essence Song Talk was impressive enough to catch the attention of a producer named Peter Meisel, who ended up signing Amanduul I. With Rolf Ulrich Kaiser, Meisel co-owned the now legendary Hansa Studios. Yes, we've talked about this. We have. Hansa, of course, would be where Iggy Pop recorded parts of The Idiot and Lest for Life less than 10 years later. This would also be where Bowie would record both Low and one of his greatest singles. A song about two young lovers separated by the Berlin Wall. We're not going to do the German version. I don't know if, okay, I don't know if the German version, I don't know if he sung it at Hansa Studios in the big hall by the wall, which gives it its sound. Because that's the reason why it's so echoey is he sang heroes in this gigantic, beautiful room. And I don't know if Helden was sung in the big hall by the wall. You want to hear a little bit of it? I do. Yeah, just a little bit. All right. Regardless of he did this in Hansa or not. I feel like I understand German now. Sounds good. He sounds good. Yeah, he sounds amazing. Now, I took two years of German, like I said, and I fucking understand very little. But still, you're very good at correcting me. You're very, very good at that. So you asked me to. I did one seven years ago. So I took it to heart. So back to Hansa Studio. So I'm in dual one, they go to Hansa Studio in Berlin to record their debut album. So I'm in dual one is remember Peter and Ulrich Leopold, Rainer Bauer from Vienna, Hussi Ubemeyer, the supermodel who's also dating Peter Leopold, by the way, and a bunch more. It's a large group of people and the rest, right? And the rest. And they're almond dual. They do what they always do, which is to jam and improvise and shake those maracas and bongos and a lot of percussion. Just have at it. It's all improvisation with a bit of music here and there. Can we get a snippet? Oh, we absolutely can. I love. I actually really love this song. It sounds like a spider out on the prow. OK, now everyone knows what we're talking about. See, a spider out. But it could be. It's interesting. That's from the almond dual ones debut album, Psychedelic Underground, which is really actually perfect description of what's going on here. Yeah. So remember, Peter and Ulrich Leopold, at least they know how to play their instruments. They come from a jazz background. But soon there's going to be problems between the brothers, Peter and Ulrich, and also between Peter and the rest of the band, really. And also problems between Peter and commune one. You see the band almond one, they were staying with their buddies at commune one's house while they were in Berlin. And it was all fine and dandy until almond dual one said, OK, we got to head over to Hansa studio to record this album. And K1 said, oh, we're coming with you. And they're like, what? Yeah, we're coming with you into the studio, into the recording booth with you. And I'm going to sit on this drum kit and fuck with it because it's now being occupied. By K1, we share everything. Therefore, nobody has anything. And Peter Leopold, the drummer and owner of said drum kit said, no, that's mine. Get off my stool. And the K1 guys refused, which made Peter so pissed off. He walked out in the middle of the recording. He was done with those guys and he was done with almond dual one, two. And unfortunately, he was also done with supermodel Ushi Ube Meyer because she decided to stay with commune one. When she fell for Rainer Langhans, one of the more charismatic members of K1. So Peter and we'll talk about them next episode. Yeah, I think if Peter leaving, it probably has more to do with the commune one guy stealing his hot girlfriend than it did with the drum set incident. Yeah, well, Rainer Langhans, if you look at a picture of him, he's like very 70s hot. He's a dream boat. He looks like sideshow Bob, but like better and rounder. And they all kind of look like sideshow Bob, honestly. With the John Lennon, like round glasses and, you know, they're super cool. They're super hip. So Peter Leopold, he went home to Munich and to almond dual two with his drumsticks in his hands, saying, I lost my drums and I lost my girl. Can I join you guys instead? And by the way, you're right about political communes. Just focusing on the music is the way to go. I get it now. And they did let him in after much discussion. Now, it seems like the split between almond dual one and almond dual two would have been seen as a positive event for the more serious musicians. It had a terrible effect on guitarist Chris Carrer. He felt that his original vision of a musical commune had been lost in pointless ideologies and internal politics. And this failure resulted in a small, nervous breakdown. He retreated to his mother's house and stayed in bed for two weeks. But when he finally recovered, he returned to almond dual two triumphant and inspired by his account. He'd spent his convalescence composing entirely in his own head about 80% of the first almond dual two album. Phallus Day. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is my second favorite album.ickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenickenicken I'm not gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. Do you hear the difference between musicians who know what they're doing in the Spider Owl Song? I should have walked down the aisle to this. Although the star trek D phase 9 piano thing that is experimental. Chris Karrer, I see, well, we're gonna talk about John Whitser, like, there are just so many ideas put into one place at one time, and it is fantastic. It is, and that's where we'll pick back up next week for the continuation of our Crot Rock series with Amandoul 2 Part 2 with the recording of Fallast Day and the album that made Amandoul 2 Legends, Yeti. Oh, I'm so excited for you. You, the audience, sorry, the listener, the listener. And before I give the list of sources, I do wanna plug a set that Marcus and I are doing in September, which is now-ish, is very, very soon to that. If you're listening to this episode, when it comes out, it's in like two days. So yes, that we are doing, we're sharing the bill with James Spooner, who wrote The High Desert, really fantastic, like, I can't mention this enough, please pick up, that's a great, it's graphic novel. Graph name, you can call it comic book, graphic novel, whatever you wanna call it. Kind of thing, fantastic. And we're doing the show on September 9th. And James Spooner is also the guy who directed Afro Punk as well, the documentary. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good too. Yeah, so we'll be together at, what's the name of the place? Place is called Footsies. James and the two of us and one of the DJs are gonna be alternating sets from five to 10 p.m. on September 9th, that's Footsies in Los Angeles. The show is called Razorcake, Hearts, Drinking Beer and Listening to Records. We've gone to one before, it's a fucking great bar. It's a great place to go and listen to music. It's a happy hour DJ set. And we hope to see y'all out there. It's gonna be on September 9th, five to 10 p.m. Alternating sets, us and James Spooner. Gonna be fucking killer. And that killer. Absolutely, killer, killer. It's gonna be so great. And I do wanna also promote the taco truck that is in front of that venue. Get to it. Because the best fish tacos I've ever had. Those women know how to make some fucking fish tacos. All right, for sources, right? This is gonna be a weird list, okay? So, Tanzer Lehmann book by Ingeborg Schober. It's actually a book in German, which I translated from Google Translate and then had wonderful, wonderful research assistant, also associate producer, Patrick Fisher, help me out with the translation of that. Yeah. Okay, and- Giving us context to everything. Absolutely. And Times and Sounds, a great book. Times and Sounds, Germany's Journey from Jazz and Pop to Crout Rock and Beyond by Jan Reitz. Fantastic book. It was in German translated into English. And I can't, like, we talk about it on our stream. It's fantastic. This book I really couldn't recommend enough. Like, this is just one of those extensive, yet still entertaining music books that you dream of reading. It's like, cannot recommend Times and Sounds enough. And then there's 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 Schute. And then there's Euro Rock, European Rock and the Second Culture by Archie Patterson. And then for the History Buffs, I read Aftermath, Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945 to 1955 by Harold Johnner. Wow, the book. I think everyone should read this book. It's fantastic. And then there's The Miracle Years, a Cultural History of West Germany, 1949 to 1968, edited by Hannah Schisler. And then there's Thracad, Music and Political Activism in Cold War Germany by John Tyler Paddy at the University of Tennessee. This is a master's thesis that I found online. Very, like, it was so helpful. So thank you for getting your degree and then putting it online for me to read. And of course, I use tons of stuff online, articles, interviews, interviews I found on The Wire, Mojo and Uncut Magazine and Crout Rock and Prog Rock, message forums. It was a lot of combing through stuff, a lot of Prog Rockers. And I was like, Crout Rock's not Prog Rock. And other people were like, yes it is. And then I had to comb through that shit. I had to comb through that shit. And a blog by Rainer Langenz, a man, you know, the guy, one of the principal members of Comming One. He posted a memoir online, Google his name with blog and you'll find it. But it's also in German, by the way. And a big thank you to Emily Votov for outlining the Cambridge Companion Chapters and the Future Days chapter on Amundhul. Very, very helpful. Thank you. Thank you so much for setting up the timeline. And a huge thank you to Patrick Fisher, who is now, now we promoted him to associate producer of this Crout Rock series that we are doing now because he has been like, without him, we wouldn't be able to do this. Yeah, no, Patrick has really been invaluable to giving us context to these German translations to tell us like, oh, they're actually joking here. What's the analogy with this? What does it mean that the oven stove is not working? What the hell does that mean? The days of sniffing the dirt are over. Exactly. He has been very helpful. Thank you to him and his father for helping and translating a lot of the stuff that we've been asking for. And also promotion stuff. We're on Instagram, noDogspot. I'm on there as Carolina Dejuridogo. We got T-shirts with men's and women's sizes on lastpodmerch.com. Lastpodcastmerch.com. Lastpodcastmerch.com. I wrote that wrong. Check out the playlist of our songs for every episode on YouTube. Just Google noDogs in space and YouTube and you'll find us and Spotify. You can search that as well. And we've started doing a live stream on Twitch on the last podcast network, Twitch channel. Go to twitch.tv slash lastpodcastnetwork to find us there every other Monday at 7 PM. Pacific time. Pacific time. 7 PM Pacific time every other Monday. So check out twitch.tv slash lastpodcastnetwork to find out which Monday we're gonna be coming up next. We've already done a few. So go check it out. And you can see some of our past episodes already. And you can also find those on YouTube as well if you're not a Twitch person. Yeah, absolutely. And the fan, this is going on forever. So we should just finish. We should finish. We're done. But we also have a band of the week because as I remember now, now I remember it's been a while since we recorded. If you make noise and you're a person or it may be a social experiment collective, whatever you wanna be, a group of people, one person, and you make noise and you have it on an MP3 or whatever band camp you wanna send it to us, we would be honored to play it at the end of our episodes. Yep, no dogs in space at gmail.com is where you need to send it to. We get so many, so many fucking submissions. But sometimes it's so great. So many of you guys have great stuff that send to us. But sometimes really all it takes is meeting me outside of Gelsons. Super market, yes. This really happened like what, last month? This happened last month. I met this woman outside of the supermarket where we shop and she's a big no dogs fan and she sent me her girlfriend's band and it's fucking amazing. We're just encouraging people to bump it to us at Gelsons because we do go to Gelsons every other Monday. Yeah, that's it. Just about, yes. It's really all it takes. And I had to play it because it's fucking great. It's so good. It's so, so good. It's a band called Rocket. Their new EP is called Normal to Me. You can find them at Rocket, the band on Instagram. They're about to go out on a nationwide tour. So check them out. If you wanna see some cool live music at a venue near you, you can also of course go to their band camp and they're also available on Spotify. So here is Normal to Me by Rocket. Thank you all so much for listening. We'll be back next week with Amanduul 2 Part 2, which is part two and probably a nine part Crot Rock series. Yes, and then the beginning of Cannes. So we're gonna go into Cannes and Faust. So we'll let you know as we go along. And the craft bag. Oh yes, oh yes. Goodbye. Bye. Goodbye. I'm not worth anything. I'm not needed. I'll try. If I would be good now then you'd never come down. And it never got easy and you never learned. I'd just let it affect me until it all burned. Effect me until it all burned. Until it all burned. I wouldn't do a thing like I'd like you to be. It'll make no difference. You know this is normal to me. All the things you've always missed. You won't understand anyway. I can't understand. You won't understand. I can't understand. And I just don't regret it anymore.ickenickenickenickenickenickenicken Let this be no more for me