[The Soup Nazi]

 

I Saw God and/or Tangerine Dream

By Lester Bangs
Originally published in The Village Voice, April 18, 1977

I decided it would be a real fun idea to get fucked up on drugs and go see Tangerine Dream with Laserium. So I drank two bottles of cough syrup and subwayed up to Avery Fisher Hall for a night I’ll never forget. For one thing, emerging from the subways into this slick aesthete’s Elysium is like crawling out of a ditch into Jackie Onassis’s iris — a mind-expanding experience in itself. A woman there told me that the management had quite soured on rock clientele, and it was easy to see why: here’s this cornersteel of cultural corporations, and what staggers into it but the lumpy, zit-pocked lumpen of Madison Square Garden. And when worlds collide, someone has to take the slide.

What kind of person goes to a Tangerine Dream concert? Here’s a group with three or maybe even four synthesizers, no vocals, no rhythm section; they sound like silt seeping on the ocean floor — and this place is sold out. Freebies are rife, yet I don’t think that kid in front of me wiped out in his seat for nothing. So I ask some of the Tangs’ fans what they find in their music, and get a lot of cosmic, Todd-Rundgren mulch-mouth. I tell one guy I think they’re just a bunch of shit, a poor man’s Fripp and Eno, and he looks me over and says: ”Well, you gotta have imagination …”

Everyone is stoned. Some converse re the comparative merits of various items in the Tangs’ oeuvre — one guy declares the double album Zeit a masterpiece, another is an Alpha Centauri man. Three times as many males as females at least. A thirtyish guy sitting next to me in ratty beard and ratty sweater reminisces about 1968 forerunner Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, and tells me about the time the Tangs played the Reims cathedral in France. (”6000 people cram the ancient building with a 2000 capacity,” boast the program notes.) ”They didn’t have any bathrooms in the cathedral,” he laughs, ”so the kids pissed all over it. After it was over the high fathers, monsignors or whatever, said it was the devil and asked for an exorcism of the church.”

Alison Steele comes out, a fashion-modelish silhouette in the dimmed green light, and says that the management does not allow smoking in the theatre. As soon as she says her name, people around me scream out, “Eat shit!” and, curiously, “You’re a prune!” The microphone she spoke through will stand there unused for the rest of the evening, a thin, black line cutting into the psychemodal otherness of Laserium from where I sit.

The music begins. Three technological monoliths emitting urps and hissings and pings and swooshing in the dark, little rows of lights flickering futuristically as the three men at the keyboards, who never say a word, send out sonar blips through the congealing air. Yeah, let’s swim all the way out, through the jello into the limestone. I close my eyes and settle back into the ooze of my seat, feeling the power of the cough syrup building inside me as the marijuana fumes sift through the cracks in the air, trying to conjure up some inner-eyelid secret movie. Oh lawd, I got the blues so bad I feel just like a cask of Amontillado. Yes, there it is, the swirls under the surface of my life are reconfiguring into: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, caricatured by Ronald Searle. He dissolves like a spectre on a window shade, and is replaced by neon tubing writhing slowly into lines and forms until I think it is going to spell out a word, but no, it doesn’t quite make it. Goddamn it, I guess I’ll have to try harder. On the other hand, maybe no news is good news.

I open my eyes again. Now the Laserium, which I had forgotten all about in my druggy meanderings, has begun to arise from the deep and do its shtick on the screen above the synthesizers. First, a bunch of varicolored clots slowly sludging around each other; they could be anything from badly seeded clouds to cotton-candy cobwebs to decomposing bodies. Then two pristine laser circles appear afront the muck, one red and one blue, expanding and contracting and puckering at each other. They get larger and larger until they are gyrating and rubberbanding all over the place with a curiously restful freneticism. The synthesizers whisper to them as they bounce. The music goes on for a long time, varying in tempo and volume — Tangerine Dream is Salmane, not even Valium, on record but when they’ve got you enclosed in their cool room they can be almost bombastic at times. The music seems to ebb off rather than end.

Intermission. Many audience members seem uncertain whether it actually is intermission or if they should just pick up their stethoscopes and walk.

Back for more of the same, but more aggressive this time, if that’s a way to describe quicksand. The Laserium begins to flash more violently, exploding in dots and points and lines that needle your retinae as the synthesizers suck you off and down and the towering mirrors at the sides of the stage turn slowly, reflecting beams of white light that are palpably irritating but by and gone and by again in a flash. I close my eyes to check into home control, to see if any little twisted-wax visions might be coagulating. Nothing. Blank gray. I open them and offer myself up totally to the Laserium. Flash, flash, flash — the intensity grows until I am totally flattened; I feel like an eight-track cartridge that has just been jammed home. After that, I become slightly bored and restless, although the other bodies around me are rapt. I have seen God, and the advantage of having seen God is that you can always look away. God don’t care.

So, finally, picking up my coat and lugging my clanking cough-syrup bottles, I push my way through the slack and sprawling bodies — out, out, out into the aisle. As I am walking up it, I am struck by an odd figure doddering ahead of me, doubled over under raggedy cloth and drained hair. I don’t trust my Dextromethorphaned eyes, so I move closer until I can see her, unmistakably, almost crawling out the door … a shopping bag lady!

What’s she doing at a Tangerine Dream concert? Did someone at CBS give her a ticket, or did she find one castoff by a jaded rock critic in some 14th Street garbage can? Never mind — there will be a place for her in the wiring of this brave, new world. I myself had earlier considered giving one of my extra tickets to a wino so he could get a little sleep in a comfortable chair. Look. there’s got to be some place to send these whipped dogs so we don’t have to look at them, and where better than Avery Fisher Hall? Let them paw through the refuse of a better world, listening to the bleeps and blips and hisses and amusing their faded yes with the test patterns and static that our great communications combines have no better use for anyway. Just before I left, I turned around for one last taste of the Tangs and Laserium, and by gum, I had my first real hallucination since drinking the Romilar that afternoon: I saw a whole audience of shopping-bag ladies.

[!@#$%!]

troll vs. troll

wow that magazine looks ancient

what's a laserium?

and why did that old man look down on women and the homeless?

 

anyway i read that he od'ed on cough syrup. i guess the stuff is bad for you.

ok im putting my noise cancelling headphones back on bye bye

[The Soup Nazi]

1.- I honestly wasn't trolling, just offering what I consider a hilarious perspective from one of the greatest writers ever. And yes, the guy could be mean, he sure as shit wasn't from the "if you dig it, that's all that matters" school. Didn't you watch Almost Famous?

2.- Yeah, I typed it, that issue is 43 years old. How old are you, and does that make you "ancient"?

3.- Laserium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Dryer

4.- "Old man"?! In April '77 Lester was 28 years old.

5.- He wasn't exactly PC; he followed the Lenny Bruce path - until he did a 180º on the matter, that is, especially with a 1979 piece titled "The White Noise Supremacists".

[!@#$%!]

well i'm alive in 2021 so i'm from the present ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

and from this perspective i can't give a fuck about what some drunk guy thought was cool in nineteen clackety clack. it has zero effect on my ears. he had his own ears, that was his business.

and yeah it all reads very dino-american, sorry. ideologies from a bygone era. i have zero nostalgia for other people's lives. (but if you enjoy that trip, have at it and have a blast--please just don't demand that others do the same)

anyway i'm here for the free buffet not the free lecture

 

this table needs more samples

[!@#$%!]

now unwinding from a long week with this

 

piano here is horace silver who'd go on to form or join the jazz messengers with art blakey (not sure who did what but blakey kept the band after silver left)

[The Soup Nazi]

Wow.

[!@#$%!]

so ive been looking into the history of ambient music for a bit (obvious from td album exploration) and i found this article:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cu...-ambient-music

which led me to this (first time i even hear this band mentioned):

 

and it's fucking coooooooooooool! i love it!

where have they been all my life? i had no idea they existed... brilliant.

eta: https://www.groenland.com/en/artist/harmonia-eno76-2/

[Severian]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

so ive been looking into the history of ambient music for a bit (obvious from td album exploration) and i found this article:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cu...-ambient-music

which led me to this (first time i even hear this band mentioned):

 

and it's fucking coooooooooooool! i love it!

where have they been all my life? i had no idea they existed... brilliant.

Yeah man, Michael Rother from Neu! (and Kraftwerk!) and those guys from Cluster! Good stuff.
Especially this album.

Cluster just released a new EP, too, and it’s pretty good

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

so ive been looking into the history of ambient music for a bit (obvious from td album exploration) and i found this article:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cu...-ambient-music

which led me to this (first time i even hear this band mentioned):

 

and it's fucking coooooooooooool! i love it!

where have they been all my life? i had no idea they existed... brilliant.

eta: https://www.groenland.com/en/artist/harmonia-eno76-2/

Great album dat. Their next album Deluxe is another corker. Especially the track Wally Tally.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Severian

Cluster just released a new EP, too, and it’s pretty good

hah, just found cluster this morning looking around for names but have not listened yet. new to me also--- will check asap, thanks!

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

Their next album Deluxe is another corker.

yes! listened to it very late last night, loved it, perhaps more than first one, not sure. "deluxe" itself reminds me of autobahn a bit, and walky talky is glorious!

 

and i have it on again hahaha

(but the first album cover is the best cover ever)

--

and now back on the first album again..."watussi" is so full of surprises. i wonder how this might have sounded to people when it came out! (i hear stereolab in this track btw)

ah, it's all incredibly good...

[Savage Clone]

Harmonia are so great! Cluster is a wonderful rabbit hole. Have fun!!

[The Soup Nazi]

I was going to say before that I've been a Cluster and Harmonia fan for ages, and that one of my problems with Tangerine Dream is that the approach and feeling, if not the music itself (well, sometimes the music too), sounds closer to ELP than to the other German bands mentioned, which is why it annoys the crap out of me when all these "Kraut" acts are lumped together.

Of course, some people would have run as far away from Cluster and Harmonia as possible had I posted that.

[The Soup Nazi]

 

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Savage Clone

Harmonia are so great! Cluster is a wonderful rabbit hole. Have fun!!

listened to both cluster 71 and cluster ii. it was brilliant, and superrelaxed. maybe a little too relaxed but that's sorta the point of ambient or whatever it was they called it back then. anyway, looking forward to working my way up to their new ep.

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

one of my problems with Tangerine Dream is that the approach and feeling...

i don't know, i first heard them in their new agey incarnations etc, and while it was a peculiar sound i didn't enjoy the aesthetics of it so i never returned.

but the earlier stuff ive heard is very different--some of it is almost horror movie soundtrack stuff. and they're so prolific it's kinda hard to pin them down. so i try to listen with an open mind until the gag reflex ensues (eg right around tangram)

(i used to have this john cale cassette from the 80s that was awful. sure, it was john cale! but that one, not for me. and i love lou reed but... the raven???)

in any case the label i find shocking is not kraut anything but the "rock" part. there's nothing rock or rockist about almost anything i've heard in those early records.often there's not even a beat. i think their "kosmische" label was a better fit, although the "space music" that some of that grew into ain't exactly my favorite--pseudospiritual shit for old hippies.

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Of course, some people would have run as far away from Cluster and Harmonia as possible had I posted that.

flies, vinegar, something something?

but yeah, open invitations work well--one has to let the ears hear the music. and taste the tasties

 

not every dish there is gonna be to everyone's taste, but the principle is that there will be something for everyone in there. so please keep them coming...

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

listened to both cluster 71 and cluster ii. it was brilliant, and superrelaxed. maybe a little too relaxed but that's sorta the point of ambient or whatever it was they called it back then. anyway, looking forward to working my way up to their new ep.

Spoiler alert: if you found those relaxed... Well, nevermind - your journey continues with Zuckerzeit, Sowiesoso, Cluster & Eno and After The Heat (also with Brian, who happens to be part of Tracks And Traces: the supergroup album to end all supergroups and their bloated supergroupness).

As for "ambient", I don't think Cluster 71 and Cluster II qualify. Which takes none of their greatness from them; it's just a different style.

[greenlight]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

so ive been looking into the history of ambient music for a bit (obvious from td album exploration) and i found this article:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cu...-ambient-music

which led me to this (first time i even hear this band mentioned):

 

and it's fucking coooooooooooool! i love it!

where have they been all my life? i had no idea they existed... brilliant.

eta: https://www.groenland.com/en/artist/harmonia-eno76-2/

found out about harmonia not that long ago myself. i stumbled upon 76 album, colab. between harmonia and brian eno. cool tracks...cool band.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by greenlight

found out about harmonia not that long ago myself. i stumbled upon 76 album, colab. between harmonia and brian eno. cool tracks...cool band.

yeah!

i'm listening to this right now

 

and it's nice and pleasant and i had it on while reading a bit.

but doing a little digging i found out i own the earlier release as a cd... i bought it used ages ago and now it's buried somewhere. the back of it looks like this:

 

having the eno name on it made it less of a surprise when i got it years ago, and i spaced out the harmonia name because it's kinda common in classical music etc. but now having heard actual harmonia by themselves i understand better where it all was coming from... from them!

i have to say the earlier harmonia still blowing my mind. and later eno always great. so in a way they worked better separated than together? but it's a nice collaboration, and looks like the consequences were historically superimportant. i love this stuff, hybridizations and such.

[Skuj]

Macca III. It's actually.....good.

[choc e-Claire]

 

[Skuj]

Love - Forever Changes.