Yachts and Krauts and Rocks

Hello again, another Friday - and, well - another bunch of obituaries? Yeah, that's the way it goes when you start getting old. Your heroes - etc.

So - I have some actual substance coming to this humble blog soon, so I won't make this one all that long. Just check in to say goodbye to Walter Becker and Holger Czukay. Representing a couple different angles on the rock/jazz intersection, but a fine one. These are two bands I should have put in my Band of the Month series - Can is hard to fit, because they are hard to fit to that 10 favorite songs format - they are an album band, and their songs are themselves long, complicated things - they don't fit the conceit so swell. Steely Dan - is more a matter of being one of those bands like Dylan or Bowie - bands you heard all your life on the radio, so maybe didn't by as many records by; bands I took a bit for granted when I was younger, and liked more and more as I went along. Now, to write about them, I feel like I need to dig into the rest fo their catalogue, move past the hits. Not that the hits ever stop.

All right - here's the Dan, with Becker doing a long ramble in the middle of Hey Nineteen:



And live on Letterman, doing Josie - with some tasteful guitar work from Becker in the middle..



And - since I have some oddball Can stuff below - here's the Dan on American Bandstand, miming to My Old School. Fagan and Skunk Baxter are hamming it up, but Becker seems unimpressed:



And also passing this week, Holger Czukay - the second member of Can to die this year, after Jackie Leibzeit. Start with something quirky - Cool in the Pool, by himself:



And - disco era Can - miming, too, if I am not mistaken... a, uh.... something...



I have to get closer to the roots for this - here's Mother Sky: