Amon Duul - Love is Peace
Uschi Obermaier
Two acknowledged classics, very recommended. "Love is Peace" is the opener from the Duul's third album, where they trade in their lysergic drum-circle fever beats for some endless mellowed-out voyage through space and time - an infinite cosmic lullaby. When you hear "once I got a hang-up in the time machine"...."love is peace..freedom is harmony..." with disarming intensity, don't think barefoot live Dead twirling, but a shimmering excursion to a utopic counter-world. One of the top ten smoothest Krautrock jams maybe ever, the sonic drift on this one is pretty serious, make sure you keep an eye on the shoreline so you don't get swept to sea.
Decades later, American Analog Set takes the interlocking guitar lines and dreamy infinite groove and transposes it to master-planned communities and strip malls. No coincidence that the album's titled "From Our Living Room to Yours." Call it Suburban Balearic. The psychedelic long-player version of, as SY Lee says, "shouting the poetic truths of high school journal keepers." Here they sing "we left the house to see it shine...when we came back it was gone.." The long lysergic voyage has been transposed, now it's that journey to the end of the night in your parent's car with your closest friends, out on lonely highways awash in lunar glow.
Addendum: Amon Duul was also a political bug-out art commune in Germany in the 60s. They ended up being two different bands, Amon Duul I and II. For a while Amon Duul I counted as a member Uschi Obermaier, a high-profile glamour girl / rock groupie in Germany at the time (she played maracas) - a bit like the Teutonic Marianne Faithful.
Uschi Obermaier
There's a new documentary coming out of Obermaier's life, called "Eight Miles High (Das Wilde Leben)" and I wanted to post the clip but it literally has the most retarded "in a world..." voiceover ever, so screw it. Instead, here's Uschi and some other hot German Frauen making bombs in the 1969 pre-feminist cult classic Rote Sonne (Red Sun)
