VOL.3: HAMBURG

Hamburg is culled from recordings from Henry Cow's March 1976 NDR Jazz Workshop in Hamburg, Germany, plus two songs with Robert Wyatt from concerts in Paris and Rome in May and June 1975, respectively. "Fair as the Moon", followed later by "Terrible as an Army with Banners" are based on "Beautiful as the Moon - Terrible as an Army with Banners" from In Praise of Learning (1975), and became the longest lasting "building block" the band used in live performances. "Nirvana for Rabbits" is a rework of the Frith composition "Nirvana for Mice" from Legend (1973), while "Ottawa Song" is part of a longer suite Frith composed for the Ottawa Company, the rest of which never survived, except for fragments that appeared in "Muddy Mouse" and "Muddy Mouth" on Wyatt's solo album, Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (1975). "Gloria Gloom" is from Matching Mole's second album, Matching Mole's Little Red Record (1972). "Hamburg 1-5", "Red Noise 10" and "A Heart" are improvisations by the band, the last two titled at the request of NDR. Wyatt sings on "Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road" from his solo album, Rock Bottom (1974), and on "We Did It Again", a "surprising and wackily absurdist"[2] cover of the Soft Machine song from their debut album, The Soft Machine (1968). The version of "We Did It Again" that appears on this CD is a combination of two different recordings of the same performance, one from an audience cassette recording with "a lot of audience reaction, a lot of guitar, thin-sounding drums and bass, and only a faint echo of the vocals", and one from the mixing desk with "almost no guitar, but plenty of drums, bass, and vocals".[17]