Fifty years ago
What happened this month, half a century back.
Tangerine Dream in Nottingham and Brussels, Jarre's Last Month in the Kitchen: Fifty Years Ago This Month, November 1976
8 November in Nottingham, the 16th in Brussels. Tangerine Dream were on the road with Stratosfear while Jarre finished a record in a Paris kitchen that would arrive the following month. Schulze's concert list has nothing for this month.
In Their Own Words: Schulze in 1980
In an autumn 1980 interview Klaus Schulze declared that the eighties were electronic. He was launching Dig It, a record made on a single digital synthesizer. The same interview also lists the old gear he was taking on stage.
Fanzine Days: electronic music in a 1976 Argentine magazine
The first issue of Expreso Imaginario, launched in Buenos Aires in August 1976, listed a feature on progressive music on page 14. That page is missing from the Internet Archive scan. We read the pages that survive to see where the synthesizer turns up.
Back in the Papers: Irrlicht in the 1973 press
In late 1973 a New York weekly and a Paris monthly wrote about Klaus Schulze's first solo album, Irrlicht. New York said it was not AM radio material. Paris saw a genius of the kind that comes along once a decade.
In Their Own Words: Schulze in 1981
In a 1981 interview Klaus Schulze summed up what mattered most about his own label, IC, in a single sentence. On his official website that answer now carries a short bracketed reply from his business partner.
In Their Own Words: Schulze in 1984
In a January 1984 interview Klaus Schulze said Mirage got great reviews and sold next to nothing. The official website that carries the interview puts a note right beside that answer saying the opposite.
Fanzine Days: WAVES no. 5, 1990, and the Tour de Trance
Issue 5 of the German electronic music fanzine WAVES, 1990. A musician about to go out on his Tour de Trance says he sold almost all his gear, and the news pages of the same issue are full of records you could not buy.
In Their Own Words: Schulze in 1993
In March 1993, at the end of an interview packed with equipment talk, Klaus Schulze said he had no idea about technology. The line, and the moment it came from.
Fanzine Days: SYNTORAMA, Spain 1984
We read the four 1984 issues of SYNTORAMA, a typewritten electronic music fanzine from Rentería in the Basque Country, and how its readers got hold of Tangerine Dream, Schulze, Jarre, Vangelis and Kitaro.
Back in the Papers: how Blackdance was received in 1974
In 1974 and early 1975, British local papers and American and French magazines reviewed Klaus Schulze's Blackdance. What split them was the opera singer on side two.
In Their Own Words: Klaus Schulze, summer 1976
In a 1976 summer interview Klaus Schulze answered the charge that a synthesizer is not an instrument. One line about guitars, violins and trees, and the moment it came out of.
Fanzine Days: what WAVES told its readers in 1992
We read the four 1992 issues of WAVES, a German fanzine for electronic music. Schulze's manager on a chaotic Spanish tour, two reviews that buried Rockoon, Jarre's eclipse concert that never happened, and a reviewer unsure where to file Kitaro.
Back in the Papers: what the 1975 press heard in Timewind
In the autumn of 1975 British newspapers and two French monthlies reviewed Klaus Schulze's Timewind. The argument was whether this machine-made music was cold or warm.
Klaus Schulze in Berlin, Tangerine Dream's Stratosfear: October 1976, Fifty Years Ago
Klaus Schulze at the Metamusik Festival in West Berlin, Stratosfear in the shops, Tangerine Dream back on the road. What happened in October 1976.
Vangelis's Nemo Studios, London
The top floor of an old school building near Marble Arch, where Vangelis made almost everything from 1975 to 1987. A studio nobody else could book, and the records that came out of it.
West Berlin in the Seventies: The City This Music Grew Up In
A back room that opened only after the theatre closed, one tape recorder in a rented factory, a Moog nobody could work in a corner of a studio. The addresses and dates of the West Berlin that raised Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.
Jarre's Oxygène and Vangelis's Albedo 0.39: September 1976, Fifty Years Ago
On 15 September 1976 Jarre settled on a painting of the Earth with a skull inside for his album cover. Nine days later Vangelis released a record named after how much light the Earth reflects.
The night Tangerine Dream got banned from churches
Three thousand expected, six thousand came, and the coronation church of the kings of France got Tangerine Dream banned from Catholic buildings.