Mystery Date Revealed: Czukay, Wobble, Liebezeit

05/21/08 | by sammymaudlin

MAD PROPS TO MR. MODERATOR FOR PRACTICALLY NAILING IT.

Jah Wobble (bass: early PIL), and Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit (both from Can, bass & drums respectively) released the LP Full Circle in 1982.

The Mystery Date was a track called How Much Are They which was a European club hit at the time.

Another track after the fold.

Follow up:

The following year Czukay and Wobble enlisted The Edge to release an album called Snake Charmer.

I found the Czukay/Wobble collaboration idea interesting not for just the idea of PIL meets Can but also as a collaboration between two fringe bass players.

Czukay is an interesting fellow and has had influence or at least association with an album that I hold dear.

Czukay's 1980 release album Movies has a lot in common with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Many think that Eno/Byrne appropriated the dubwise shortwave sampling concept from Movies but given that MLITBOG was ready for release in '80 and held back a year for legal reasons it is difficult to imagine that the Movies LP released in '80 could have had that kind of impact.

Here's a track from Movies that uses sampled dialog in a similar same way as MLITBOG:

Hollywood Symphony

Check out the sample at around 2:30 in. The "positively!" Sounds an awful lot like the "absolutely!" part in America Is Waiting. Likely a coincidence but interesting nonetheless.

But if you go back to his first solo album, while he was still with Can, Canaxis, you can hear the roots of MLITBOG.

Boat-Woman-Song

8 comments » •

8 comments

Comment from: sammymaudlin [Member]

AND. In Hollywood Symphony at about 9:57 in I'm pretty darn sure that sample is the great Vin Scully.

05/21/08 @ 13:08

Comment from: BigSteve [Member]

I used to have some kind of 12" from Wobble/Czukay, and it was kind of aimless too, though not as bad as the Mystery Date cut. The fretless bass is a harsh mistress.

Euro club hit? I'm picturing the dancers from Sprockets.

Lately I've been obsessed with Burnt Friedman, whom I discovered through his work with David Sylvian. The two albums he made with Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit, Secret Rhythms 1 & 2, are totally brilliant, so I'm not opposed to Can side projects on principle.

05/21/08 @ 13:31

Comment from: Mr. Moderator [Member]

Thanks for the Mad Props, Sammy. I truly had never heard that album, although I've passed on buying it many times. Thank god!

05/21/08 @ 13:56

Comment from: sammymaudlin [Member]

BigSteve: What are those 2 albums called? I'd like to check those out.

05/21/08 @ 14:00

Comment from: BigSteve [Member]

They're called Secret Rhythms. On Friedman's Nonplace label. And I'd recommend anything involving Friedman, especially the album called Heaps Dub by 'Root 70.'

05/21/08 @ 14:35

Comment from: dbuskirk [Member]

I guess I'm the only one who actually likes it (and owns it as well), aimlessness and all. It reeks of 1982, in the beginning of my discovery of rock music beyond WMMR and Rolling Stone. Slits, P.I.L. and all the other stuff guessed is stuff I love so this less evocative take on the style-of-the-moment still strokes my soft spot, the way a minor Pebbles-era single might push the buttons on some of you 60's-centered rockers. Why doesn't the bass playing bother me?

05/21/08 @ 19:42

Comment from: general slocum [Member]

I'm with Mr. Buskirk on this one. I have the Wobble/Czukay on with The Edge on it. And some of Czukay's other stuff. Boat-Woman Song is a fantastic record. And also, the bass playing is "Wobbly," but I like it.

It's like the song "The Window" on the first Flying Lizard's album. I was surprised to see it singled out as the dud of tat album on a couple of Amazon reviews, when I always singled it out as the hit. We even covered it in Big Mess once. Teetering, woozy grooves!

Mr. Clean, I also thought of Pigbag! I just digitized a song from a 1982 sampler that had them and a bunch of other No Hit Wonders on it. Nothing to write home about, but a nice place to inhabit for four and a half minutes...

05/21/08 @ 20:49

Comment from: hrrundivbakshi [Member]

I'm actually a big Czukay sympathizer, dating back to the mind-expanding track I found on the old W.O.M.A.D. sampler in the 80s. Then I went to see him "live" a year or so ago. Man, was that sad! The dude was literally pretending to "play" recorded loops on a big, fake keyboard stack, when it was plainly obvious most of what we were hearing was coming out of an earphone jack on a laptop somewhere. Maybe there was some big in-joke going on inside Czukay's head; I didn't get it.

05/22/08 @ 09:14

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