GERMANY and THE AVANT-GARDE
nucleus of experimental music as the other German musicians starting out at the same time. Certainly by 1968, Hutter and Schneider had already begun to put their improvising experiments to some use. They formed the core of a group called Organisation whose early music was a mixture of feedback, sounds and rhythm. As music students, they could have chosen to work in any number of different fields, but they consciously chose to interpret their early improvisation within the bounds of a rock band. Group friend and journalist Paul Alessandrini: "The interesting thing is that both of them came from families of the upper middle class. Sometimes I get the feeling that they were intellectuals from the high bourgeoisie who wanted to discover another world. They have always been fascinated by discoteques and girls, and coming from the sort of social background and education they did, music was the only way. They had this German aspect, the family aspect, very starchy - and they wanted to team up with the rock world."8 This immersion into the "rock world" meant that Organisation began taking part in various performances at universities and art galleries. However, this was a world which was vastly different from the trappings of rock 'n' roll in the UK or USA. Many of the German music students considered themselves less part of any rock scene, and more like performance artists who were making a musical art statement. Ralf Hutter: "We were very lucky, at the time there were electronic music concerts, happenings, the Fluxus group etc. It was very normal, we played on the same circuit, the galleries. When we began we didn't have any engagements in the traditional music world, we were engaged in the artistic world, galleries, universities, etc." Michael Karoli of Can remembers one such multi-media event as being one of the first early connections between the two groups: "The first time I remember meeting them was in the summer of 1968. I remember Ralf being very communicative, but Florian didn't speak so much. It was the time when they were involved with their band Organisation. Malcolm Mooney had just joined us and we were to play at - 1 9 -