KOSMISCHE LEGENDS CAN BEGIN A NEW LIVE ALBUM SERIES! FIRST STOP, STUTTGART, 1975
“JAKI HATED editing,” said keyboardist Irmin Schmidt of Can’s late drummer Jaki Liebezeit. “He didn’t take part. It’s against his aesthetic, against his feeling. Cutting into the flow to him is awful amputation. He just wanted to play.”
This is the strange tension at the heart of Can, the improvising superpower who, from 1968 to 1979, created such classic albums as
Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi by editing the jams they recorded at ritually charged studios in Cologne. The all-improvised live performances by Schmidt, Liebezeit, bassist Holger Czukay and guitarist Michael Karoli, plus vocalists Damo Suzuki and Malcolm Mooney, were a different matter. These legendary happenings could run for three hours, though so far official live releases have tended to cherry pick from shows rather than go for the full experience.
Can junkies will rejoice that this is about to change. A new album series will present entire, unedited, peak performances in all their evolving, telepathic majesty. The first instalment is a wired, grooving 1975 Stuttgart date by the core quartet. Spiced with fragments of familiar Can pieces, including Vitamin C and Dizzy Dizzy, it navigates, in-the-moment, from moments of relative calm into the thunderous wig-outs they dubbed ‘Godzillas’.
“This was after Damo went, and we found out that just we four could do maybe the best concerts we ever did,” Schmidt tells MOJO. “This was nothing against Damo, of course, but all of a sudden we were what you hear, an instrumental group. Actually, when I went through all these tapes, it’s not by chance that I was choosing from ’75. I think that was about the time when, live, we were really at our best. Some of the best concerts, the recordings were so bad we couldn’t use them, but yeah, I think this was a really good time with us four.”
As with the others, the Stuttgart recording started life as a bootleg, many gathered by Can expert, archivist and favoured taper Andrew Hall (it’s a recognised part of group lore that they had back luck when trying to record live shows themselves). With performances vetted and selected by Schmidt alongside long-time Can engineer René Tinner, advances in digital restoration techniques improved the sound hugely, while mastering came courtesy of Andreas Torkler and Dieter Denzer of the Music-Base studio in Bielefeld. Three more releases are planned, with the option of more. Additionally, Schmidt previously told MOJO how, “There are some radio and television recordings we did in England, France and Germany [which might be released], that might be called Can On Air.”
Schmidt adds that, in keeping with Can’s ever-forward philosophy, the release does not fill him with nostalgia. “I am everything else, but I am not nostalgic,” he says, “and really, it doesn’t bring back special memories or feelings back. I don’t remember anything about Stuttgart, it was just a good concert! The only concerts I remember are when something very, very special happened. One of the few shows that I remember was in Bristol. It was sort of at the same time, and that was where something really special happened. One day I might find the tape from that concert.”
Can Live In Stuttgart 1975, available on double CD and triple orange vinyl, will be released by Spoon on May 28.
“That was about the time when, live, we were really at our best.” IRMIN SCHMIDT