Richard Metzger is Boing Boing's current guest blogger.

"There is no group more mythical than Faust." --Julian Cope.

Along with Can and Kraftwerk, art rock terrorists Faust are the prime exemplars of German rock music or "Krautrock." Until recently I'd never seen any film footage of them playing live in their early 70s prime, but someone kind uploaded this amazing clip to YouTube.

If you've not heard Faust's music before, I recommend visiting their MySpace page and starting off with "It's A Rainy Day (Sunshine Girl)" and playing it f**ing LOUD. Faust on Myspace, Julian Cope on Faust IV, Official Faust site, Faust perform "Krautrock" in London during 2008 reunion tour

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Richard Metzger blogs at Dangerous Minds. Follow him on Twitter.

MORE: Happy Mutants • International • music • punk

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zemblance

Bigup to SENNA1 – Brainticket are the most underrated ‘Krauts’ out there (though I’m sure none of them were German, weren’t they Swiss and Italian?)

Another bigup to those who educated Teapunk – in my opinion Ananas Symphonie is about as ‘Kraut’ as music can be!

Lastly, if anyone’s interest has been piqued, two notable omissions in the ‘Damn! Faust are good but [x] is better’ category are Cluster and Popol Vuh. Just watch Herzog’s Aguirre and be astonished by the fact the music is as good as the movie (and the movie is perfect). Best soundtrack ever…
ill lich

I too saw Faust in CT in the mid-90′s during their reformed-power-trio format; exhilarating show. Thurston Moore, Gate, and Cul De Sac opened up, and none of them could touch Faust with a ten-foot-chainsaw.

Whether Shannon likes the term “krautrock” or not is moot, it is the term that is used, and has been used since day one.

Lots of legendary krautrock bands morphed into styles quite unlike their origins: Amon Duul 2 started making semi-normal song-based LPs, Ashra Tempel made electronic dance music, and Can made disco records (in fact both Ashra and Can managed to score club hits too).
zemblance

ps – John Coulthart. How’s Damon? (Mike’s son) Tell him to email cromford55 at hotmail com
John Coulthart

“Kraftwerk is not Krautrock.”

Er, I suppose you know that the great Neu! grew directly from Kraftwerk? And there’s a period of overlap between the two groups. Both Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger were with Ralf & Florian in the pre-Autobahn group, a band which sounds profoundly different to the electronic outfit they later became. The first two Kraftwerk albums are very raw and abrasive in places, as raw as Faust. For a prime slice of the Rother/Dinger Kraftwerk look for the Bremen Radio 1971 bootleg, a broadcast-quality show of four long and really fierce jams.

Or there’s Florian with Rother and Dinger on Beat Club:

http://www.mybeatclub.com/video/iLyROoafYyCz.html

That performance is Neu! in sound but Kraftwerk in name.
DiscoveryHouston

This looks like another opportunity for a new “Spinal Tap” movie!
Phikus

Teapunk: Mea culpa accepted. Please post pics after you’ve fucked off and dyed. ;D
DiscoveryHouston

I will call it “KRAUTWERKZ”. (I am German, let’s not get offended here)
Takuan

http://www.ugo.com/tv/best-sketch-comedies/images/dieter.jpg
DiscoveryHouston

Thanks for sharing your esoteric (yet useless) knowledge.
redrichie

Moar Krautrock, plz!

For Teapunk, I direct thee to this clip of Kraftwerk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgpLAPZEf7Y

Madness!

Mind you, went to see 70s Kosmiche band Harmonia last summer and they were absolutely honking. I’m sorry, but ’tis true. Probably best to leave all that stuff where it was. Also worth checking out gig listings in your local area, Can fans. Damo Suzuki tours a lot…he tends to just acquire some local musicians (who tend to be fanboys, so it’s all very reverential and they usually can’t drum half as well as Jaki Liebzeit and you almost always get some attempt at imitating Karoli’s guitar) for the gigs. Never groundbreaking…but always fun, IMHO.

For Kosmiche, also check out Cluster 71. ’tis super.
Phikus

And I was just turning my fiance on to Faust last night. They have always been one of my all time favorite bands. I am glad they got back together, albeit w/o the full membership and have been keeping it very hard-core since.

Kraftwork were indeed a part of this “German Experimentalism” period, in their first couple of albums, along with a project with mostly the same people called Tone Float. Tangerine Dream also came out of this genre. See their first couple of albums if you don’t believe yet. Other than those mentioned above, there is also the glorious Ash Ra Tempel, The Cosmic Jokers (another project of Klause Schulze), Agitation Free, and many others, if you want to scratch beneath the surface.
kitcatcher

The section from 2:10 to 3:15 sounds incredibly like “The Red and the Black” (1973-later than I originally thought) by BOC.

DFtR is actually from a later (1976) stage of BOC’s career (of evil) and rather more pop-oriented than their earlier stuff.

The Red and the Black:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8AwscYzwbE&feature=related
Shannon

I realize that “krautrock” is a widely accepted term, but as a German kid that grew up getting beat up every day when I was six by teenagers (who’d been primed by their war vet grandparents) calling me “kraut”, I wish the term wasn’t used so freely… “Kraut” is an ethnic slur, and saying “krautrock” is no different from saying “nggrmusic”.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Shannon,
  
  Please peruse the Mod Policy.
Flashman

Tobias FÃ¼nke was in Faust?!
andyw23

“And there is a great book out there somewhere that covers Krautrock”

yes. far and away the best thing ever written about krautrock is:

http://tinyurl.com/cwoqyn

but then, I would say that

Definitive Faust site:
http://www.faust-pages.com

“Whether Shannon likes the term “krautrock” or not is moot, it is the term that is used, and has been used since day one.”

precisely – ‘Krautrcok’ is a name, not a description. Actually, ultimately it’s a brand (which Cope has developed and benefitted from). Don’t take it so seriously.

re. Skinny Puppy etal. : They owe their career (deliberate choice of word) to Throbbing Gristle, who in turn owe their existence to the track ‘Mamie is Blue’ from faust’s 1972 LP ‘So Far’
thedeemartin

I wish the cameraman had zoomed in on the lead longer
DiscoveryHouston

Not to be confused with “Bratwurst”
John Coulthart

Shannon: a number of the bands of the period used the term themselves, ironically or not. The first track on Faust IV is entitled Krautrock.

That aside, I’ve never been very happy with this term being applied to some of my favourite music. “Cabbage rock”? Nein danke. The sorely-missed (by me) music/freak culture mag Strange Things Are Happening suggested in the 80s that we use the term Teutonic Rock instead; invokes a German-ness without being offensive.
Senna1

I’m more a Brainticket and Xhol Caravan fan… but Faust is quite tasty. Thanks for the video.

The torch has been carried for the past 25 years quite wonderfully by Nurse With Wound (for the exteme and who also released an album w/ Faust) and The Legendary Pink Dots (for the more “prog” influence).
Xopher

Well, either I have a wacky misconception of the range of metal songs, but “Don’t Fear the Reaper” sure doesn’t sound like one to me. Unless I’m even more off base than you and DFtR isn’t a BOC song!

Of course, the fact that they used the metal umlaut on their album covers (“Blue Ã–yster Cult”) may have contributed to their having a metal rep.
kitcatcher

I’d have guessed that the k-word was being used by the British Press(tm) derisively, but the the bands decided to cop to it or “take it back”. Ja, wir sind krauts! – so what?

Anyway, now I think I get who Blue Oyster Cult were listening to and feeding into at this time. Although I love their music it never *quite* made sense in the context of the nascent American and British “Metal” scenes of the time. I think BOC are mis-classified as metal most of the time because people don’t know what to do with them or haven’t listened to them enough.

Can anyone comment on that? I’d like to know if I’m way off base.
DiscoveryHouston

test-test can you hear me? I can’t hear you – that crap is breaking up…
Anonymous

Love Faust. Saw them play 15 years ago in CT and it was a mess, but whatever. Faust IV and Munich And Elsewhere and Faust Tapes, for starters, are all damn fine classics of out-there psychedelia. I own them on vinyl, bitches! Hell my “record face” contribution was Faust Tapes. And I’ve acid-tested their music to boot.

Very welcome post.

Love Can, too! Jaki Liebezeit is seriously one of the best groove drummers of all time. Actual drummers must check out “Vitamin C” and “Halleluwa” – unique and excellent drumming.

And there is a great book out there somewhere that covers Krautrock – German 60s/70s psychedelia – as a genre – including Amon Duul and Popul Vuh and Brainticket and Emtidi and a hundred other bands you never heard of.

And FWIW “kraut” means cabbage in particular but green vegetables and herbs in general – almost exactly the same as “kim” in Korean – as in “kim chee”. Weird.
S3BR4

Hmm interesting but I have to say they are not even close to the awesomeness of “Die Ã„rzte”. German Funpunk FTW => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gRIgW7YTC8&feature=related
Fred H

Niiiice. I love how the German’s kept psychedelic rock going in the 70′s, while America turned all mellow, hangover-rock.
teapot7

Antinous / Moderator at #5 writes:

> Shannon,
>
> Please peruse the Mod Policy.

Eh? I disagree with Shannon, but he’s being polite and logically coherent. Does he have to be cheerful as well?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  teapot7,
  
  There’s some language that we don’t use here. I removed the vowels from the first instance and unpublished the second.
Anonymous

Another cool krautrock band from this era is Neu!
John Coulthart

“And there is a great book out there somewhere that covers Krautrock”

There’s a couple: Mr Cope’s essential Krautrocksampler, now out of print and I don’t think he has plans to republish it, says it did what it set out to do. And there’s also the very thorough record guide to the whole period, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, by Steve & Alan Freeman (Audion Publications, 1996).

Oh yeah, another good term is Kosmiche or Kosmiche Musik as the Freemans have it.
DiscoveryHouston

Man, you peeps is krZy. good luck with that “faustian sh*t”. Anything after kraftwerk wuz junk but some american/canadian bands did do it better later on. I am speaking of Skinny Puppy and the birth of “industrial” music. rock on.
Anonymous

Thank you for this vid. I really enjoy watching the 70s german bands who tried to find something new, rather than copying american/english bands.

I am also german, and think ‘Krautrock’ is not an insult.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Community Manager

HereticGestalt @15:

@Antinous: So the ethnic slurs used to describe some groups are okay, and others aren’t? How was that determination made?

I made it.

This is for Shannon as well.

No ethnic slurs are okay. Some are let stand, others not. It’s complicated. Do you actually want to know the whole thing?

The three words you can’t say on Boing Boing are prohibited because allowing them to stand in a comment thread causes an immediate collapse in the thread’s quality and tone, no matter who uses them or why.

Deploring slurs is morality. Banning those three words is engineering.
timquinn

you missed NEU! One of the coolest bands of all time, Krautrock or not.

Faust is up there though, and Can. Kraftwerk fades by comparison.

NEU!, Can and Faust. Wow.

Thanks for this post.
Phikus

Cluster did a couple of albums with Brian Eno in the 70′s as well. Cluster & Eno (featuring Can bassist Holger Czukay and Asmus Tietchens on synthesizer) and After The Heat. Both are really good. Imho, Grosses Wasser is the best Cluster album.
HereticGestalt

@Antinous: So the ethnic slurs used to describe some groups are okay, and others aren’t? How was that determination made?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  HereticGestalt,
  
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/27/palin-hears-rally-at.html#comment-318090
zemblance

Aaaah.. DISCOVERYHOUSTON

You seem to be on the wrong side of the fence for this post. The music of Faust, Neu!, Can etc is entire universes beyond the schoolboy EBM schlock that is Skinny Puppy and their juvenile ilk.

Before Kraftwerk went all militantly 4/4 and decidedly unfunky and/or funky they were kosmische. I like the music they did afterwards but they were ‘best of breed’ in much the same way The Fall can be (but shouldn’t be) called ‘indie’.

You might actually like 90s era Faust – all sturm und drang without the wit and (forgive me!) the genre-hopping that illustrated their greatness.

I can see why KMFDM/Neubaten/Ministry fans respect Kraftwerk but y’all are missing a much, much bigger picture. Listen to ‘Oh Yeah’ by Can or and then try listening to Skinny cocking Puppy…
Frank W

I loved how totally witless the commentator was.
cycle23

THAT COMMENTATOR MAKES ME WANT TO F’N PUNCH MOFOS!
cycle23

Also: RETARD! (plz dsmvwl)
Takuan

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/03/20/obama.special.olympics/
Anonymous

WTF…? Say it loud, I’m a Kraut n I’m prowd!
(At least of some of this music I can still listen to without being bored of nostalgia…)
Big Ed Dunkel

Those schlocky Krautrock groups, they took the whole Seventies ObersÃ¤chsisch zeitgeist and ran with it. Packaged and sold it. Made out like bandits.
Xopher

By ‘either’, of course, I meant ‘perhaps’. Not quite sure what happened there. Bräin färt, no doubt!
flipcloud

Have watched this twice now to soak up extra time with that drummer’s glorious neck beard. He was certainly taking an important precaution against bronchial illnesses and making sure to keep his throat warm and cozy.
Anonymous

My best German friend who is extreeeemly PC found out I was listening to Can and Holger Czukay’s unbelievably awesome ON THE WAY TO THE PEAK OF NORMAL and gave me a bunch of Amon Duul CDs, with the express comment, “Oh, you like Krautrock? Try these!”
Teapunk

Kraftwerk is not Krautrock.
Most definetely not.
My hair got white just reading this, the blasphemy!

Seriously, just because they are German, it’s not Krautrock.
About the “Kraut”, I as a German always feel we have to cut everybody some slack with the insults.
afo

it’s true, Faust was the most inventive and exciting of Krautock’s “acid jam” vein (or aorta).

Unfortunately once you start listening to Magma, nothing else sounds quite so weird (except for maybe the seminal “Why don’t you eat carrots”)…
Anonymous

@shannon

“krautrock” can also be translated “weed rock” – which kinda fits the psychedelic aspect. indeed, when German krautrock aficionados consider a record “sehr krautig” (~”very weedy”) they refer to the record’s trippy dimension.

sure, the term “kraut” wasn’t the nicest. but the term “krautrock”, invented by British music press, was applied by the musicians themselves to describe their own style. as far as i know, afro-americans did not exactly apply the term “n*ggermusic” to blues, jazz or other “black” music styles. so – there’s a huge difference.

Being a German myself, I’d consider a term like “Teutonic Rock” much more offensive – since “teutonic” usually refers to German culture that reeks German-ness just for the German-ness sake – and it has a very nationalistic appeal to it. A band like Rammstein can be easily described as “teutonic”, however, I wouldn’t see “teutonic” fit to describe the aesthetics of Neu or other typical krautrock-bands.

==

As far as I know, the clip is taken from a six part TV documentary “Kraut und Rueben – Ueber die Anfaenge deutscher Rockmusik” (“Cabbage & Turnips – On the Beginnings of German Rock Music” – “Cabbage & Turnips” is the literal translation of a Geman phrase used to describe a state of shambles). In my opinion, the documentary is a bit out of focus since it tries to portray each and every aspect of early German rock (even early Scorpions, errr…) but the sheer amount of rare and valuabel archive footage from the 70s makes it a worthwile watch.
Wingo

Faust IV is one of my favorite albums of all time. I tend to sort of forget about it, then it pops up on the iPod and I go “holy shit, these guys rock!”.

Awesome.
John Coulthart

Eno is also on a Harmonia album, Harmonia 76: Tracks and Traces. Harmonia being Cluster + Michael Rother.

Discoveryhouston: what you call Industrial music was preceded by and came out of the original wave of Industrial stuff from circa 1976-82 from which the term originates; Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA, 23 Skidoo, Z’ev, etc. (See RE/Search’s Industrial Culture Handbook.) A number of those bands were influenced by all this German stuff; TG’s Genesis P Orridge has always rated Kraftwerk, the Cabs were also Kraftwerk fans who liked Can and so on. And if Trent Reznor doesn’t like Faust I’ll be very surprised.

Zemblance: I haven’t seen DB in about 10 years but this isn’t Friends Reunited, we ought to stick to the topic.
Anonymous

@Teapunk

Sure, when they had their electro pop developed, Kraftwerk didn’t fit in the Krautrock league anymore. However, ever listened to their first three records? If not, do so and consider your statement again. Kraftwerk 1, Kraftwerk 2 and Ralf & Florian are pure Kraut.
Shannon

@Antinous — Why is it OK to use racial slurs in the entry, but it’s not OK that that they be pointed out in the comments? I don’t really understand how I’ve violated the policy.
Xopher

Anonymous 24: (“Cabbage & Turnips – On the Beginnings of German Rock Music” – “Cabbage & Turnips” is the literal translation of a Geman phrase used to describe a state of shambles.

That’s fascinating! With slightly different meaning, the phrase goes back much, much further in German musical reference. There’s an old German folk song whose words mean “Cabbages and turnips have driven me away…if my mother had cooked meat I’d have stayed longer.” The tune is quoted in the penultimate variation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, as a musical joke: in this case “cabbages and turnips” stand for insubstantial nonsense (rather than a mess)—that is, the things Bach has written that don’t contain the “meat,” i.e. the main theme, which returns triumphantly in the final variation!

I’d wager that the people who produced and titled Kraut und Rüben knew the Bach reference as well, and intended both meanings: that is, German rock grew out of a void of chaos.
Shannon

I suppose if anything, the moderation policy makes clear part of the point I’m making — that ethnic slurs against Germans are completely acceptable, while they’re not tolerated against other groups.
John Coulthart

Unfortunately once you start listening to Igor WakhÃ©vitch, Magma sound like just another jazz-rock outfit singing apocalyptic science fiction scenarios in an invented language. :)

Igor recorded an album with Salvador DalÃ, by the way, check him out. And now we’re into French weirdness…Heldon/Richard Pinhas, Bernard Szajner, Etron Fou Leloublan, Art Zoyd, Urban Sax, et al.
Teapunk

Damn. Should have checked Kraftwerks early work. So I’ll hang my head in shame and color my hair, as well in shame. Thinking of dark, purple.
grimshaw

@ TEAPUNK – Just curious – what excludes Kraftwerk from the category? I thought that one common characteristic was the use of the motorik beat. In all honesty, I’d love to read your reasoning.

@ TIMQUINN – NEU! The song Hero fucking rules:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYeVvp8sdmg

Rare footage of Krautrock group "Faust" from 1971

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