A few thoughts on ‘Halluhwah’ by Can :-

When listening to this song, I can’t shake the impression of it being the ultimate disco dancing endurance test – how many dancefloor athletes could manage to get their groove on and keep it together throughout the whole 18 minute running time? Including that bit where it fades out completely for the faux-classical piano / warbling interlude? Truly, such an awesome rhythm has rarely been wedded to such persistent sonic craziness!

In fact, if we may presuppose an alternate world in which the crazier end of the ‘60s counter-culture, rather than fading into obscurity, instead grew and intensified and took over the cultural mainstream and toppled governments, and in which public drug consumption grew to heretofore ludicrous and dangerous levels…?

Well ‘Halluhwah’ would play in it’s entirety during the central sequence of that world’s ‘Saturday Night Fever’.

It would star Damo Suzuki in the John Travolta role, and he’d dance up a storm with no shirt on and shiny, golden flares. The direction would concentrate heavily on the spinning disco ball, and throw in blurring, superimposition and split screens until the reflections would form into a swirling, infinitely-faceted time tunnel of disco balls, into which dancing Damo would be dragged, and he’d never miss a beat as he cascaded down it into a mind bending mirror world where he’s come face to face with infinity and merge with his own gigantic, hive mind self before returning through the tunnel and using his new shape-shifting alien powers to drill straight into the forehead of the wasted hippy-chick version of Olivia Newton John (hang on, I’m getting confused with Grease here, aren’t I? Who has the girl in Saturday Night Fever… ah well, who cares…) and zoom through the inside of her head to the pineal gland, from which he’d pull a huge, gleaming cartoon ruby which would merge with a similar emerald which he’d pull from his own chest, uniting their spirits forever. Then he’d shoot back out again, slay the audience with some world-beating anti-gravity disco moves and then watch the world explode in the pupil of her newly opened third eye…. Lee Perry, in full nut-bar regalia, would play the DJ / compare who awards them with their dancing prize, which I’d imagine would be an ornate, flame-spewing oriental dragon crown or something.

“Wow, that was pretty cool,” the perma-stoned audience would say as they left the cinema, “but I bet that ‘Star Wars’ movie Kenneth Anger’s bringing out next summer is gonna destroy it!”