Can - Soup (1973)

I don't tend to post live albums on the site, leaving that to others who concentrate on live bootlegs, but I'm posting this one as it's an important recording and there doesn't seem to be a definitive version of it out there, with some just having two tracks, and others with varying song titles. The band's gig at Edinburgh's Empire Theatre on 25th August 1973 was the last with vocalist Damo Suzuki, and so was a significant concert for the band. Luckily it was recorded in very good quality, and the most authoritative notes I found suggest that some of it might have come from Holger Czukay's own recording, which he made of most of the band's live performances. There is also an audience recording, noticeably different as you can hear audience talk and applause, and the best quality version looks to be a skillfully edited combination of the two sources. Both agree that the first song is 'Soup', but the second track has a couple of titles, either 'Bel Air' or 'Stone Strike', but I tend to favour the former as you can clearly hear this in the lyrics. The third track is 'Hakucho No Uto (Swan No Song)', but while the final two pieces are from the concert, they have vocals over-dubbed on them by Michiko Nakao. It appears that Nakao was Brian Eno's partner from 1971-1974, and she struck up a relationship with Can as a result of Eno's friendship with them. Holger Czukay invited her to the Wellerwist Studio in August 1975 to overdub some studio recordings, and she also added her vocals to these two songs. Unfortunately the un-dubbed versions don't seem to exist, so this is the best that we will get. I've made a few edits and crossfades to make the recording flow smoothly, and so hopefully this is the definitive version of one of the most important documents of the band's career. I first found this on the Ace Bootlegs site, where he'd made a clever cover for it, and so I've adapted his idea for mine, which has come out really well.    

Track listing 

01 Soup
02 Bel Air
03 Hakucho No Uta (Swan No Song)
04 Hot Day in Koeln
05 I'm Your Doll