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I quit getting hold of let alone reading the more recent books regarding the Velvet Underground and Stooges ('cept for that Stooge one dealing with the group as seen through a more avgarde appreciation) a long time ago, and maybe I should also quit reading these krautrock-oriented ones as well. There's just too much repetition of facts long-known in these things and who in their right brain wouldn't admit how great an album EGE BAMYASI is without having to be told a hundredth time by someone who I usually wouldn't even bother to ask the time of day. But although KRAUTROCK ERUPTION is a book on the subject that really doesn't shine any new light on things its still...well...a tome for the times that I really am gonna recommend for you fans of the outer reaches of music if only due to the front line action that the writer dishes out like bullets at all the men and boys in a Czechoslovakian village.
Wolfgang Seidel certainly has earned his krautrock credo, first as a member of Ton Steine Scherben (the MC5 of Germany according to Greg Prevost) as well as Conrad Schnitzler, a man with more than enough standing in the local musical community having been members of both Tangerine Dream and Kluster (pretty heavyweight) as well as his post Kluster group Eruption. Seidel ain't whatcha'd call someone who was in the front lines of the krautrock movement, but he was sure closer to the goings on than you or I so let's just say that I value his opinion on the subject a whole lot more than I would yours.
Being German and all you know that Seidel is going to toss a whole load of twentieth century backdrop and he sure does go on and on about the National Socialists and the postwar clime from which krautrock was birthed. OK with that even though I found a lot of that squawk too History Class. When Seidel gets into the roots of krautrock from the emerging Zodiac Club scene in West Berlin to the advent of acts such as Tangerine Dream, Can and Amon Duul my nodes certainly perk up, and yeah Seidel doesn't really shed any new hard facts about what happened but you do get some of the underlying feeling as to the whowhatwhenwherewhysandhows about these bands who wee taking various English and Amerigan musical ideals and making them their very own in strikingly different ways.
If you want the straight ahead facts try to get hold of such now out-of-print wonders like CRACK IN THE COSMIC EGG or Julian Cope's in the British Weeklies Tradition KRAUTROCK SAMPLER, but for some backdrop this 'un won't hurt one bit. It just came out so if you buy now you can avoid the collectors prices you'll have to endure even a good five years down the line. And given your luck you'll probably be DEAF by then!
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