Irmin Schmidt is interviewed in The New York Times about the new Can live series. Thanks to English fan Andrew Hall, who stuffed the recording gear down his huge pants, the German Krautrock pioneers were preserved in full improvisational flight. Schmidt explains their modus operandi:
When we went onstage, we didn’t even know beforehand what we would play. We just reacted to the atmosphere, to the acoustics, to the public, to the whole environment spontaneously, and started playing something, which we had never played befor. We didn’t talk to each other onstage at all. Everything we had to say to each other, we did with our instruments.
(...)If we played something which reminded or was near to a song, somebody just came up with it all of a sudden,” Schmidt said. “It was sometimes sort of like a game. You threw something towards the other, and he picked it up, or he didn’t use it and threw it to somebody else. When it worked it was very beautiful and inspiring, even very amusing, using parts of what you have already done, but giving it a totally new direction.
On May 28th the first of the series, Live in Stuttgart 1975, will be released as 3LP and 2CD via Spoon Records and distributed via Mute. Bext up is show recorded in Brighton in 1975 as well. Schmidt hopes that the Rockpalast show that was filmed by WDR in 1970 will also be part of the series.
