Can do, or did

WHEN I was in my teens, I never missed Top Of The Pops if I could help it.

I generally detested most of it, of course, but I still couldn't help myself. There was always the remote possibility that something halfway decent would come on, something unexpected... so I'd sit there every week fuming, sighing, rolling my eyes and praying for deliverance while Paul Nicholas or Kenny or Father Abraham strutted their appalling stuff.

I think I literally fell off of my seat on that epochal Thursday in 1976 when Can appeared on the programme. I'd been a rabid fan of these German weirdies since I was 12, when I got their album Tago Mago out of the Greenock record library because I was intrigued by the sleeve, the title and the name of the band.

I knew them therefore as wanton experimentalists with a psychotic Japanese vocalist who were quite happy to fill an entire side of vinyl with a freeform piece (Aumgn) which sounded like a particularly hair-raising exorcism - and now here they were on the telly, essaying some kind of mutated disco rhythm alongside yer Captain & Tennilles and yer Starland Vocal Bands, and furthermore giving every evidence of enjoying themselves while doing so.

If all disco music had indeed been as infectious and smart as I Want More, it might never have fallen out of favour. With its whispered, minimal vocals, churning tremelo guitar and Jaki Liebzeit's hypnotic, mechanistic drumming, it tapped into an altogether deeper and more ancient desire than the mere need to cut a rug on an illuminated dancefloor.

Can's Top Of The Pops appearance is on YouTube to this day for all to revere. Thing is, who on earth is that guitarist with the curly perm and the Gibson SG? If that's Michael Karoli, I'll eat my tea an hour earlier than usual. If anyone knows, do tell...