Delay 1968

Delay 1968, or just Delay (as the SACD version is titled), is a compilation album of mostly previously unissued early recordings by German experimental rock band Can during its work with singer Malcolm Mooney, including some of the band's earliest material. The song "Thief" had previously been released officially (in a longer edit) on the United Artists compilation album Electric Rock in 1970;[4] it was later covered live by Radiohead.[5]

Delay 1968
Compilation album by Can
Released	1981
Recorded	1968–1969
Genre	Krautrock, psychedelic rock
Length	35:48
Label	Spoon Records
Producer	Can
Can chronology
Can (1979) Delay 1968 (1981) Rite Time (1989)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[2]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[3]

Holger Czukay has said that Delay 1968 was originally intended to be the band's first album and would have been titled Prepared to Meet Thy PNOOM ("Pnoom" being the name of the album's second track—a 27-second saxophone instrumental, recorded as part of their Ethnological Forgery Series). When no record company would release the record, Can set out to make a somewhat more accessible album, which became their 1969 debut Monster Movie.[6] Parts of Delay 1968 circulated in bootleg form for several years under the title Unopened, and included other tracks recorded during the same sessions that would later surface in various forms on other albums.[7]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Czukay, Karoli, Liebezeit, Schmidt, Mooney.

Side one

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Butterfly"	8:20
2.	"Pnoom"	0:26
3.	"Nineteen Century Man"	4:26
4.	"Thief"	5:03

Side two

No.	Title	Length
5.	"Man Named Joe"	3:54
6.	"Uphill"	6:41
7.	"Little Star of Bethlehem"	7:09
Total length:		35:48

Personnel

• Holger Czukay – bass
• Michael Karoli – guitar
• Jaki Liebezeit – drums, percussion, saxophone
• Irmin Schmidt – keyboards
• Malcolm Mooney – vocals

Notes

1. Delay 1968 at AllMusic
2. Larkin, Colin (2011). "Can". Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th ed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 0857125958.
3. Nathan Brackett; Christian David Hoard (2004). The new Rolling Stone album guide. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-7432-0169-8.
4. http://www.discogs.com/Various-Electric-Rock/master/476969
5. At Ease Radiohead Archived 2010-01-07 at the Wayback Machine
6. Holger Czukay's Short History of the Can
7. Semprebon, Rolf. "Unopened Can". AllMusic. Retrieved 10 January 2011.