Psych-punk duo The Lovely Eggs have alway gone their own direction – but in choosing Can as his prog heroes, drummer David Blackwell reveals that direction was partly mapped out by the krautrock pioneers.
“In the late 90s I joined a band called Roadmap, who were influenced by a lot of the krautrock stuff like Can and Neu! and that whole repetition thing. That’s where I first discovered Can. I couldn’t believe I’d not heard them before. It was like, ‘Oh, shit! This is absolutely amazing!’
In the late 90s, [Lovely Eggs singer-guitarist] Holly Ross and I were in London, and we went to see Damo Suzuki play live at the Garage. Amazingly, Michael Karoli, the guitarist from Can, was one of his sound carriers that night. I remember they played Mother Sky from Soundtracks. I love that song – we have it on our playlist when we play gigs – and that gig just blew us away. It was amazing to be in such close proximity to half of Can. Really incredible.
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Can have influenced our ability to adapt in the studio and onstage. It was incredible how Damo Suzuki could make lyrics up onstage. I was lucky enough to be a sound carrier for him in 2006. The gig was over two hours long and for me it was a dream come true! I just felt as if I was in Can for two hours.
The stuff he was doing onstage! We were doing the drone thing and I thought it sounded like a pop song – but it was something that we’d never heard before and he was creating it on the spot. You went along with what was happening.
I think Can had the ultimate freedom; maybe they weren’t tied to genre like some bands are now. They mixed things up so some songs sounded like little pop ditties and then, all of a sudden, you’ve got this heavy repetition going on. I like that, and we draw on some of that approach; some of our albums are much heavier than others.
I would recommend novices to start right at the beginning of their back catalogue with Monster Movie, which has Michael Mooney singing. It’s got Yoo Doo Right on it, which takes up a whole side of the record. That sets the whole thing up for Can onwards and the amazing albums that follow. They were incredible musicians.”
