Can

For the winter Rocky has left the sunny climes of Swedish pop music for the Germanic freak scene of krautrock. Lately, Can's Tago Mago has been getting a lot of airplay, even if it's the ear-bleeding CD version. (If any readers come across any Can vinyl, drop me a line.) Sometimes one has to sacrifice to hear great music. And this album is a stone-cold masterpiece despite the suspect vocals of Damo Suzuki. The story goes the original vocalist of the band Malcom Mooney suffered a nervous breakdown in the middle of performance, repeatedly chanting "upstairs, downstairs!" during one of Can's trademark grooves. No problem. The band replaced the African American Malcom Mooney with the Japanese Damo Suzuki. Then Damo left the band after recording a couple of classic albums, returning to Japan to become a Jehovah's Witness.

All I can say is: the world is a surprising and amazing place when it has room enough for this (a performance of "Paperhouse", the opening track of Tago Mago):