The recent BBC Four documentary Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany, the most thorough examination of the genre since Julian Cope’s definitive Krautrocksampler, has finally made its way onto the Interwebs. And it’s as solid as you’d expect.
From the BBC: “Between 1968 and 1977 bands like Neu!, Can, Faust and Kraftwerk would look beyond western rock and roll to create some of the most original and uncompromising music ever heard. They shared one common goal – a forward-looking desire to transcend Germany’s gruesome past – but that didn’t stop the music press in war-obsessed Britain from calling them Krautrock.”
I really dig John Weinzierl’s (of Amon Duul II) logic early in the film, when he says “we wanted to be international,we tried very hard to not be Anglophonic and not to be German. So… space is one solution.” And it’s totally worth mentioning that Werner Hertzog shows up for a bit. Action packed.
It really was accident, or at least it wasn’t my intent to provoke a fight, but I guess that’s what happens when you poke a sleeping dragon in the eye. I did not mean to get in an online nerd fight with Anton Newcombe. I love the Brian Jonestown Massacre. I can prove it, just look at my Last.fm, they get mad play… just like me, HEY-OH!
Anyway, here’s the story of the infamous pissing contest between myself and Anton Newcombe by way of the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s MySpazzz that I’ve been promising for quite some time. It’s a good one.
I realize that I have just forfeit my ability to ever interview Anton by publishing this, but this story is just too good to keep in limbo. A caveat: I do feel kinda bad that I claimed he wasn’t doing anything before I was aware that My Bloody Underground was already in the works. However, it was never my intent to be mean, I just felt that there was a correlation between the advent of MySpace/YouTube/et al. and the sudden dropoff of BJM’s output. I still think that’s fair. Here’s the original write-up I did describing the conversation which happened almost one year ago today… Continue reading ‘The Brian Jonestown Massacre vs. The Decibel Tolls’
