Cosmic Dreams at Play - Stoned Circus radio show - Free

Dierks. They were midwives for virtually half of the German rock productions in the seventies.
Germany had no real musical capital, like London was in the UK. The largely independent rock
scenes in most of the largest cities is what makes seventies German rock so exciting.
The birth of German progressive rock
Beat music grew up in Germany. I'm sure most of you know about the Liverpool bands that
played the Hamburg night clubs. However, there were few original and inventive German beat
bands. There were no equivalents to Beatles, Kinks or Rolling Stones in Germany. The most
famous beat bands were The Rattles, German Bonds, The Lords, The Blizzards and The
Phantoms. Except for The Rattles, none of these groups had any major impact on the German
home market. They were even quite insignificant as inspirational sources for the forthcoming
German rock scene. This rather boring situation changed abruptly from 1968 to 1970 when
several German bands developed their own, distinctive musical identity as a protest against the
dominance of the Anglo-American artists. It was the awakening of a new era - one of exploring
and experimenting, both with drugs and music. The first wave of German bands included Guru
Guru, Amon Duul, Can, Tangerine Dream, Agitation Free, Embryo and Xhol Caravan. The
aforementioned bands (and many others to come) had a musical style unlike any other artist
outside of Germany at the time.
It was a conglomerate of the German national spirit and humour, free jazz, political involvement,
Timothy Leary, Sigmund Freud, Prank Zappa, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Cream
and Stockhausen. Timothy Leary, then situated in Switzerland, even made a recording with the
Berlin group Ash Ra Tempel. The German underground sound was usually experimental,
instrumental, free, exciting, weird, monotonous, psychedelic, though not necessarily all this at the
same time. The musicians were often university students. The best educated and most creative
and courageous people of their generation. They lived in communes and dreamed of a better
world under the influence of assorted drugs. Today the majority of them are probably farting
along on the daily nine to five routine commanding their subordinate employers from a mobile
telephone in their BMW or Mercedes. Sad but true!
Why didn't revolutionary German rock gain any major international
recognition ?
The German market for progressive, experimental or symphonic rock was large. Many British
artists sold better in Germany than at home. There are plenty of great British progressive artists
who never got an album released at home, but who did quite well with their German releases.
German record buyers were more anarchic and open minded than their Anglo-American
colleagues. People voted albums like Kraftwerk's debut into the Top Ten poll of 1971 albums.
The narrow-minded, overcool music journalism hadn't rooted yet, and the big record companies
didn't fully control the media. Sadly over the years much of the knowledge about the German
rock scene between 1968 and 1975 has disappeared. When international rock journalists bother
to write about German rock they usually trace the career of Kraftwerk, as this group was a major
influence on the British 'indie' synth pop scene. Or else, they might write about Can and accuse
them of being Velvet Underground clones! Detailed information about German rock in English is
quite rare. For example, in the series "History of Rock" about 10 of a total 2,500 pages mention
German music, 7 of them being devoted to Kraftwerk. Only 0,0012% of the series was devoted
to all other German bands. Do you think the world's third largest music market really had such an