3 years ago

128

1. Cherokee Lane 00:00
2. Monolight 16:19
3. Coldwater Canyon 36:13
4. Desert Dream 53:40
Total running time 71:49
Details

Recording date March - April 1977
Recording engineer(s) Edgar Froese, Chris Franke, Peter Baumann
Composer(s) Edgar Froese, Chris Franke, Peter Baumann
Musician(s) Edgar Froese, Chris Franke, Peter Baumann

Notes
In spring 1977 Tangerine Dream performed two sell-out tours in the USA. They were supported by the visual effects of a Krypton gas laser by Laserium. Tickets in Los Angeles, Cleveland, Washington and New York were all sold-out within days. In October 1977 Virgin released the double-album Encore that featured four long tracks recorded during the tour. Some of the music based on themes from Ricochet, Stratosfear and Sorcerer. The titles Coldwater Canyon (including Edgar Froese's longest guitar solo on record) and Cherokee Lane originate from the roads in Coldwater Canyon near Los Angeles, where TD lived for a while during the tour.

Encore is supposed to be the definitive live TD album among fans, and it was the last record featuring Peter Baumann, for after a concert in Denver, Colorado, during the second half of their tour, he informed Edgar Froese and Chris Franke that his private obligations no longer allowed him a full-time collaboration with TD. In November 1977 Peter Baumann left TD for good and started working as a solo artist and producer. He built his own studio in Berlin, before finally leaving that city and moving to New York.

Edgar Froese about the leaving of Peter Baumann: "I told Peter Baumann to leave the band. We were in a grave situation stylistically. We wanted to go on further, creating new things and buying more equipment -- learning a lot of new stuff. With his studio he couldn't even practise with us, because his studio was taking up all his time. [...] It was a little strange during the American tour when he said: 'Right, I have to go back to Berlin for a few days to see a guy who is doing the acoustics in the studio.' [...] But anyway, we didn't split on a fight. We just told him to leave and in the end I think he felt OK with us. He's gone to America now, and in the meantime he's sold his studio and is setting up a new one in New York. It's stupid and he's done it for nothing really. He gave up what I think was a creative band and is now sitting in a room somewhere, playing some sort of music. Still, if he feels OK then that's alright." (Interview with Neumusik, January 1980)

From 30 Years Of Dreaming

At the beginning of 1977, Peter Baumann was occupied with arranging his studio in Berlin and incorporating new equipment. It was left to Froese and Franke to plan the forthcoming tour in the United States. The tour started on 29th March in Milwaukee, and ended on 26th April but was later extended with four concerts in July and August. The tour turned out to be a very big success and many concerts were sold out in only a few days. Some concerts had to be cancelled since some of the promoters went bankrupt when Emerson, Lake and Palmer called off a big tour with a 120-piece orchestra. The promoters -- and Tangerine Dream -- lost a lot of money.

A new P.A. system -- specially designed for Tangerine Dream in England -- was brought into use on that tour. It was designed by Martin Audio and was able to handle both the very deep bass and the very clear sound that a synthesizer can produce. Especially the lowest spectrum of a synthesizer sound can be very violent to a speaker system, but this new equipment could handle it and play loud -- and it was played very LOUD!

For the concerts, Tangerine Dream had chosen to use the company "The Laserium Light Show" for the visual side of the tour. It was one of the first companies to incorporate lasers in their light show, which they have been doing since 1973. Sent through different kinds of prisms and modulated otherwise, a laser can create the most unbelievable and beautiful colours, figures and forms in three dimensions. For many years, The Laserium was located at the Planetarium in London, and every day there were several shows; to the music of Pink Floyd, Jean Michel Jarre and Alan Parsons you could experience a "laserist" improvise -- and it was different from show to show.

I myself have taken the journey below the star dome in the London Planetarium quite a few times, and it has been an extraordinary experience every time. If you remember the last part of Stanley Kubrick's famous movie 2001, you will have an idea of what it was like... Sadly, the Laserium in London does not exist anymore!

Miles from the New Musical Express wrote about his experience of the Laserium at the concert in Washington D.C: "A nebulous cloud appeared on the screen behind the group. It floated, ever-changing, in an illusion of three dimensions, like an universe in creation.

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