The Midnight Trail

Another concert remembrance from 20 years ago, this time regarding everyone's favorite German electronic act.

Tangerine Dream
September 7, 1988, at Radio City Music Hall.

Going away to college greatly expanded the boundaries of my musical taste beyond the steady diet of rock & roll I'd grown up on in the suburbs. I was already a fan of the world of music, but I had no idea just how expansive that world was until I began bumping up against people whose tastes were distinctly different from my own. It was at college that I really began to delve into jazz, rap, folk, punk, and--most significantly--electronica and ambient. My entrance into these last two categories, which now dominate my musical preferences above all the others, is due solely to my exposure to Tangerine Dream.

I can still remember the pivotal event in late 1986/early 1987 that set me down the path. My friend John and I were in the basement of the dormitory, playing a game of some sort, waiting for our laundry. John had brought down his portable cassette player. John was a big fan of instrumental music, and had even made his own mixed tape of non-vocal bits from such acts as Van Halen and Prince. His girlfriend back home, who knew that he liked that sort of stuff, had recorded Phaedra on one side of a cassette and Tangram on the other, and that's what we were listening to.

As the cassette played, I became more and more fascinated with what I was hearing. I had not heard anything like it in the entirety of my young life, and the more I heard, the greater my interest became. Over the course of the next few months, I raided the local records shops for as many cut-out albums as I could find, and managed to pick up the vast majority of their catalog.

I remember that Tyger was the first album of theirs I bought upon its release--on CD, no less! While devouring the liner notes of the album as I listened to it for the first time (a mixed bag, by the way, on account of the vocals), I noticed an address for an international fan club. One membership fee later, I was fan #320 in the band's first official club in its history. In the days before the instant availability of the 'net, the occasional fan club newsletters were an informational lifeline. It was through that vehicle that I learned about the the band's next two albums (Live Miles and Optical Race), and that there would be a US tour behind the latter! Bliss!

The membership also paid dividends in other ways. A couple days before the show, I get a call up in my room that there's a visitor waiting for me in the lobby of my dorm. Confused, I go down to find a guy who had travelled to NYC from the Netherlands (IIRC) to see the show, had kept my address from the club listing, and wanted to know if I wanted to grab a beer? Wacky. While we were at the bar, he made me a proposition: he was going to be taping the show, so if I bought him a couple brews he'd send me a copy. Done...and done. Over those drinks, I got to hear some of the history of the band from someone whose knowledge far surpassed my own, got some info on past members whose music was worth checking out, and got just a taste of how dedicated some TD fans could be.

What am I forgetting? Oh yeah, the concert!

By the late 80s, TD had largely forgone the long improvisations that had made their 70s concerts legendary. I neither knew this (their boots were pretty tough to come by at that point) nor do I think I would have cared all that much had I known. They played a fair amount of material that hadn't yet been released along with plenty of their recent material and a smattering of "classics" that had been somewhat retooled (little did I know what a thing that would become). We had pretty decent seats, and by the time the encores came around, we hopscotched far enough up that we were within 20 rows of the stage. An absolute blast. Of course, I bought a t-shirt.

The only bummer was the after concert. As a fan club member, I was supposedly going to be able to get backstage. Due to some snafu, this didn't happen. You can be sure that I contacted the club, like only a 20-year-old who feels slighted can do. I'm sure I'd be embarrassed were I able to see it now.

And that gent from the Netherlands? He was as good as his word. A month or so after the show, I got a package with two cassettes inside. I probably still have them somewhere.

Intension and Objective

I know both of you out there have been waiting since the calendar flipped over to aught-eight for my list of the top ten albums from last year, and I hate to disappoint.

This time around, I went about my list making a bit differently. Instead of a hodge-podge of musical genres touching each other and potentially mixing together (can't have that!), I broke down my list into two discrete halves: ambient and...non-ambient.

Admittedly, this was done partially for the novelty of being able to do it. But there was also a pretty small pool of 2007 albums to choose from in House Beach Ghost, and considering the fact that ambient makes up a significant portion of my musical purchases, the ratio of ambient:everything else in my list is pretty indicative of my genre preferences.

In any event, here's the ambient half. It probably doesn't need to be said, but none of the albums listed below would be eligible for the hardcore seal of approval.

#10: Pete Namlook & Tetsu Inoue - 2350 Broadway 4







#9: Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd - After the Night Falls / Before the Day Breaks. Released separately, but I'm counting them as one entry since they're thematically linked. BTW, a Bronx cheer to Darla Records for not only releasing these as separate CDs, but for also stating in their marketing copy that these two albums "...are not ambient." Yeah, actually, they are.

#8: Steve Roach - Arc of Passion.








#7: Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline.







#6: Patrick O'Hearn - Glaciation.

Riddle Song

If you've ever seen the movie Animal House (and good lord, is there anyone under the age of 5 who hasn't?), you're probably familiar with the iconic scene where some earnest folkie is serenading some ladies on the steps of the Delta House during the toga party, when Bluto takes his guitar from his hands, smashes it to bits, then hands the remnants back to the stunned folkie with a demure "sorry."

I had always assumed, based on the few lines that actually appear in the movie, that the song had been made up by the film's writers. So imagine my surprise when, while listening to yet another one of the mini-BG's CDs, I hear those familiar words and discover, to my horror, that the pain doesn't end there. Here are the lyrics in their entirety:

I gave my love a cherry that had no stone
I gave my love a chicken that had no bone
I gave my love a story that had no end
I gave my love a baby with no crying

How can there be a cherry that has no stone?
How can there be a chicken that has no bone?
How can there be a story that has no end?
How can there be a baby with no crying?

A cherry when it's blooming it has no stone
A chicken in the shell it has no bone
The story of how I love you it has no end
A baby when it's sleeping it's not crying

So the first question that immediately popped into my head was "Why in the world would anyone want to sing this song?" I mean, those lyrics are so insipid they make Vanilla Ice sound like Mark Eitzel in comparison.

Coming rapidly on the heels of that thought, however, was this one: Even if it were possible that the song was performed by oh-so-serious young men and women in an attempt to woo whoever the hell it was they were desperately aching to boink back in the day, how can you now, 30 years after Animal House was released, perform that song in anything other than an ironic fashion?

My first, and prevaling, theory is that these folks have absolutely no idea that the song has been reduced to a half-minute joke and there's nothing ironic about their performance whatsoever. They are those earnest folkies from back in the 60s (or their descendants), and they really, truly believe in the beauty of this particular tripe.

My second, tin-foil-hat theory is that they're trying to re-introduce the song by targeting today's toddlers in the hopes that some day, maybe 20 years hence, a new breed of earnest folkies will once again woo their potential one-night-stands with those timeless words. (As they cruise on their hoverboards, wearing the latest temporary-tattoo clothing and fighting off zombies with their gravitron phasers).

One thing I do know: if I hear the beach ghostlette start cooing those lyrics while strumming on an acoustic (or plucking her recently acquired mbira--and no, I'm not kidding), I'm going to laugh at her. I've already set aside some spare cash to pay for the therapy.