From: "Klaus Beschorner" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ B O O T L E G E D D R E A M S =============================== Disclaimer : This version of "Bootlegged Dreams" ------------ is offered to the public for ftp distribution and private printout only. No parts of it may be modified or used for any sort of publication without my written approval. THIS FILE IS COPYRIGHT BY KLAUS BESCHORNER, MAY 1992, AND THUS PROTECTED BY GERMAN COPYRIGHT LAWS. Like most successful rock acts, Tangerine Dream has been given the dubious honour of being bootlegged. For Freshman collectors, this means that illegal recordings of the band's live concerts are sold on illegally pressed LP's. Many of these bootleg LPs have become collector's items over the years. Not only do the fans appreciate the availablity of these recordings, but each bootleg also has a story to tell. To speak in the words of the bootleg bible, the "Hat Wacks" book : "A destinction had best be made at this point between bootleg, pirate and counterfeit records. A bootleg consists of unreleased material recorded at concerts, studio outtakes and radio or TV broadcasts. A pirate album consists of released material without attempting to make the LP look like an original. A counterfeit album is an exact copy of an officially released album." It should be pointed out that some of the informa- tions I give here are contradictory to those on the bootleg covers, but in all cases I have found good evidence to do so. In general : never trust a bootleg cover... Technical progress has opened the field of Compact Disk releases to bootleggers, too. This is rather new, so unless clearly marked as CDs all the titles mentioned here have only been available on LP. In March and April of 1977, TD took the United States by storm with a very successful tour. At the same time they caught the attention of the American bootleggers. An excerpt of one of the concerts (maybe it's really Seattle April 21st) was made available on LP and sold in neutral covers with three different, photocopied inlay sheets bearing the titles "Fotzenslecker", "Netz-Lautstrke" and "Babylon's Strange". Some of them have printed labels, but on most pressings the printing is too faded to be readable. Each edition seems to have been very limited, judged by the fact that they are all considered very rare these days. A very small number was pressed on multicoloured vinyl. Three years later, after a year of negotiations, TD became the first western rock/pop band to play in East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic. They performed two shows at the Palast der Republik on January 31st, 1980. Both shows were broadcast on East Berlin radio. One part of this broadcast was officially released by East Germany's record label 'Amiga' as 'Quichotte Part I and II' in 1980. Six years later a slightly remixed version was made available world-wide as Pergamon'. Another part of the broadcast was picked up by bootleggers in West Berlin and released as "Staatsgrenze West". By now, this record has been sighted in four slightly different versions. Several thousand copies were pressed on black vinyl, a limited number of 1000 came on pink vinyl, both with a printed black and white cover. After running out of pink vinyl at the pressing factory, the last few of these 1000 copies were pressed on transparent, dark-red vinyl. Apparently the producers ran out of printed covers, too, as some copies have been sold with a photocopied inlay sheet. In 1988, another record appeared on the market, which is not really a bootleg, but a counterfeit : an illigal re-release of an officially available record. The East German 'Amiga'-record ('Quichotte Part I+II' ) was re-released in a few hundred copies on black and transparent, dark-red vinyl in Germany. The pressing quality is lousy, and the record is only interesting for it's big, foldout- poster-cover, showing a black and white photo of the band in East Berlin. Some copies include a sticker with the title "Don Quixotte". Copies on multicoloured vinyl were announced, but have not yet been spotted. Before leaving for their tour of Japan in June 1983, TD played a memorial concert for Rainer Werner Fassbinder on June 11. at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. A prolific director, writer and actor, Fassbinder had been one of the most controversial German filmmakers. The concert in Frankfurt's old Opera House lasted only about 35 minutes, and most of the material was pressed on a 10-inch, clear vinyl bootleg with the label 'Dreams- Synthesizer Special'. The record came in a clear plastic bag with a blue inlay sheet "Fassbinder Memorial Concert". As the first edition of a few hundred copies sold quickly, another 2000 were pressed in 1984, making this the most common of all TD-bootlegs, especially appreciated for it's excellent sound quality. Several hundred copies were later destroyed in a Police bust. TD toured Australia for the second time in early 1982, appearing as the main act of a Festival. Their performance at Sydney's Regent Theatre on February 22nd was broadcast on Australian radio, and an excellent tape of the show circulated among collectors. For unknown reasons, several people labeled the tape as "Melbourne 24.2.82", although the Melbourne concert was on March 1st. With this erroneous title, the tape fell into the hands of German bootleggers, and "Leprous Appearance on Wednesday" was born in 1984. It has a neutral cover, and the green photocopied inlay sheet shows invented titles for the featured tracks. Only 200 copies exist, half of them numbered from one to 100, the rest unnumbered. 1986 turned out to be the most active year of the illegal contributors to the Tangerine Dream disco- graphy, as none less than eight bootleg releases until the middle of 1987 made a heavy attack on the fan's finances. "The Emerald Beyond", labeled as an Australian production but apparently from Germany, features an excellent recording of TD's encores at Detroit's Ford Auditorium on March 31st, 1977. The frantic crowd in the 'Capital of Heavy Metal' had driven TD to an almost unique performance of 'Heavy Metal Electronics'. Only 75 copies exist, 25 of them on red vinyl, the rest on the ordinary black, all with a black and white printed cover. Just four of them were sold in 1986 at extremely high prices, as during a campaign of the German Phonographic industry against the bootleggers all the rest had been confiscated in a police bust. In 1987, they were returned to the producer and appeared on the market. Early 1992 saw a re-release of this record on the CD format under the misleading title Acoustic LSD - Live in Seattle, USA "The Emerlad Beyond", stating an edition of 500 copies. A series of three bootlegs was issued within a few months time, featuring material from TD's tours of Great Britain in the early eighties. All three have printed black and white covers, are on black vinyl and claim to be limited editions of 150 copies each. The first 40 minutes of TD's concert at Preston Guildhall, November 5th, 1980 are on "Undulation", while "Space and Spheres" has the beginning of the Newcastle City Hall concert on October 25th, 1981. Another 20 minutes of each of these concerts are on the "Space Trucking"-album. A limited edition of 5 numbered copies of "Undulation" has popped up with a colour front inlay. CD bootlegges put out "Undulation" in digital format in 1992. The title of the 500-copies-edition was Soundtrack for Fantasy, Live in Detroit, USA "Undulation". TD hadn't done any tours in Western Europe or the United States between 1982 and 1986, so the major- ity of bootlegs released was based on older material.This changed with the tour of Great Britain in early 1986, concluded with concerts in Paris and Cologne. Being beaten by Virgin Records with the quick release of 'Logos' in 1982, this year the London bootleggers came in first : "Timeless Space" features the complete show at the Hammersmith Odeon on March 3rd, 1986 on a 2-LP-record. The very nice printed colour cover was done with more love of detail than expertise. Besides a photo of the out- of-time lineup Froese/ Franke/Schmoelling, the back cover lists a fantasy TD-Fanclub adress. The P.O.- box mentioned does not even exist. "Timeless Space" is a limited edition of 300 (or a few more...) partly numbered copies. The first 50 were planned in red vinyl, but mispressed and never released. Some copies of the second LP of this set were spotted in neutral covers with colour inlay sheets under the title "The Nameless is the Origin". They are labeled as a limited edition of 50 copies from Australia, but most probably only a few copies of this home-made offspring do exist. Another concert of the Europe tour in Spring 1986 was released on "Electronic Inspiration-Live 1985". As mentioned before : never trust a bootleg cover ! The sound quality is just too bad to find out from which of the 1986 concerts this really is. It comes in a printed b/w cover and is a limited edition of a few hundred copies. TD's only concert in Germany in 1986 took place in the concert hall of Cologne's radio station WDR, the 300 tickets were given for free to the listen- ers of WDR, but die-hard fans from all over Europe found ways to get tickets and met up there. The first hour of TD's 100-minute performance was broadcast live and gratefully recieved by German bootleggers who made "Relativity" from it. It is a limited edition of 100 numbered copies, 80 of which come on black vinyl with a neutral cover and a green insert sheet with fantasy track titles. 10 copies on multicoloured vinyl have a neutral cover with a brown insert, another 10 have a full- size photo cover, photo labels and the insert printed on a transparent sheet. Both multicoloured series are numbered from one to ten ! In 1986, more than 9 years had passed since TD's last live appearance in North America (aside from three concerts in 1980). They recieved a warm welcome from their fans and from the bootleg scene on their North America tour in Summer 1986. The result was a double album of their main set at Toronto's Massey Hall on June 21st, whith one side of their super-rare 1971 single 'Ultima Thule' added as a bonus track on side four of "Undercover Dreams". It is a limited edition of 100 copies, one of the records being pressed on black structured vinyl, the other on the customary black. The black, neutral cover bears a b/w inlay sheet. All copies are numbered, the last four (No. 97-100) are a special edition with photo foldout cover and photo labels. Early 1988 saw a bootleg release that might well become known as the most chaotic of all times. TD had played on a Summer Festival in the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre in Orange (France) on August 16, 1975. A well listenable tape recording of this event circulated among collectors all over the world, and in 1988 American bootleggers finally pressed a bootleg from a very bad copy of it. The bootleg exists in two forms : a LP and a 7"- single with additional music material. There are two major releases : the 'original', titled "A Dream Unbound" with text on the labels and the 'reissue' (although both issues appeared at the same time) "Seekers of Dreams", which has no text on the labels. This applies for the LP and the 7". All of these were sold in countless variations : the LPs and singles on their own, or packages with the LP and the single packed together. For each of the LPs and singles (and their combinations in packages), at least 5 different covers are known to me. Some of them are just photocopied papers, but most of them are printed colour sheets showing fantasy and science fiction paintings. They were well available all over the United States for some time, so the edition should have been a few hundred copies each. Copies of the LP "A Dream Unbound" were released on white and red vinyl, too. 1986 and 1987 have been hard years for the serious bootleg collectors. A lot of new titles were issued every other month, several of them in Germany, where the bootleg scene has been almost dried out now after big raids of the Phonographic Industry which put several bootleggers 'out of business'. All of these issues were more or less limited editions from one to a few hundred copies. They did not, therefore, reach the level of general availa- bility of "Staatsgrenze West" or "Fassbinder Memorial". Their limited availability also subjec- ted them to much speculation and vast price differences, which is one of the reasons why I don't list approximate prices here. In 1990, a British mail order record shop offered "a strictly limited quantity of a special edition, studio quality live TD LP from their 1986 tour..." for 10 Pounds. Those lucky enough to win the "first come, first served"-race found "Parisian Dreams - Teknikon" in their postbox, an excellent, professionally remixed recording of their concert at Paris Olympia in March 1990. It comes with a simple insert cover (different colours have been seen), some copies are numbered, but no quantity is specified. The second part of this concert, filled up with encores from another show, followed a few weeks later in a similar shape as "Parisian Dreams Too - Teknikon". Thesame year saw the first bootleg sampler CD "70/90" to be released, coming from the US. A limited edition of 400 copies in twenty different, elaborate covers gave it a very japanese appearance, helping to keep the price up in the sky. The CD has several old vinyl-only singles tracks and several cuts from film soundtracks that had not been released before. TD's video album "Canyon Dreams", produced in 1987, had easily gone gold in worldwide sales and won high credits for the soundtrack. Miramar wouldn't release it on CD before late 1991, and consequently the bootleggers supplied the fans with what they wanted : a pre-release of the official CD on a bootleg LP "The Canyon Dreams". A full prited cover and multicoloured vinyl point to an edition of several hundred copies. Back on the road after four years, the 1990 tour of the United Kingdom was a mixed success. The Tangs faced packed as well as only quarterly filled venues. One of the hotter shows was held at Bristol, and an excellent recording came out in 1991 as "Bicycle Race". It has a nice, printed cover and comes on red, yellow or blue marbled vinyl. Even copies on the customary black have been spotted. April 1992 : the CD "Danger Live" catches the collectors by surprise. An hour of excellent quality music, said to be compiled from two concerts in Brussels in 1976. No tapes good enough to serve as masters for this release had been known. A very nice cover and label artwork add to the attractivity of this gemstone. No doubt, the 500 copies won't last long. Abusing the name of an organization of electronic music fans an American bootlegger offered 7"- singles with live versions of "House of the Rising Sun" and a guitar solo shortly after. That is all about the TD-bootlegs I've held in my hands. Over the years of collecting, I have heard countless rumours about other bootlegs. Some of them may well exist, although in all cases I have never heard of anyone who actually had them as a part of a collection. Two more titles can claim a good probability for their existance, as different relieable hints on them have come up to me : "US-tour 1977" (could well be a double LP from Cleveland, April 2nd, 1977) and the "Reims Cathedrale December 13, 1974"- bootleg which is said to be an edition of only 50 copies. Several bootlegs have been announced among the fans, but never been produced or distributed due to police activities, like "Exit Stage West" or "Dreams for Freedom/Snackbar Dreamer in Detroit", on other occasions rumours about upcoming official releases have been mistaken for bootlegs, like 'Live Miles'. TD already had this record on their discography in 1983, but changed the title of the new upcoming album to 'Poland' and used the title for a live album in 1988. Other recordings, like the music for the Chichester Festival in 1974 or the soundtrack for "The Keep", were due for official release, but never appeared because of legal problems among the publishing companies. So, if anyone out there has detailed informations about any bootlegs not listed in this article, let us know about them ! Also, people seem to confuse bootleg LPs with so- called "bootleg tapes" or "live-tapes", which are home-copied cassette recordings of TD concerts. Especially at British and German record fairs such tapes were frequently sold with photocopied inlay covers, often with a title given to them. There are some 'professional' bootleg cassette releases, though. The borderline between more or less private 'fan tapes' with nice photocopied covers and cassette bootlegs is somewhat arbitrary, but the following releases have professionally printed covers and/or cassette labels, or were very widely distributed. Besides all the official and illegal LP releases, TD's 1980 East Berlin gigs have also inspired a cassette bootlegger. Labeled as a limited edition of 28 copies, "Electronical Processor" comes with printed black and white cover and labels. TD's concert in support of the peace movement at the Berlin Reichstag on August 29, 1981 was released on a C90-tape with black and white inlay cover and labels as "Tangerine Dream LIVE" and an estimated amount of 1000 copies was distributed in the peace movement scene. "Soundtrack Box Vol. I" is an LP-size, printed box with a plastic inlay holding 4 cassette tapes. The music on them is taken from the video releases of films TD has made the soundtracks for. It features tracks from "The Keep", "Forbidden", "The Soldier" and "Strange Behaviour" and comes with 2 black and white inserts and a 12-page booklet. It is a limited edition of 65 copies from Germany, 15 of them are stamped as 'Promo-copies' and have an extra tape with three more tracks from "The Keep". Made in the same style, as a 'cassette box' comes the "1988 US Tour Box", featuring concert recordings from Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Detroit and Toronto, as well as a radio interview on a total of 8 tapes. Included is a reprint of a TD-biography published by the Washington Post. A "promo edition" with a photo cover and colour tape labels and covers exists, too. "The Bootleg Box" was an edition of 25 red plastic suitcases carrying 8 tapes that had been copied from LP bootlegs mentioned above. A binder with cover photocopies completes the set. "Undercover Dreams" was released in a numbered edition of 25 copies as a cassette version with a plastic-coated cover and orange labels. The track order has been changed to make it fit on a C90. Even a video cassette bootleg with a professional outfit does exist. A private videotape of the concert at Bonner Springs on June 13, 1988 already circulated among collectors for a while when a limited edition of 25 copies with full colour cover and cassette labels plus a cardboard inlay in a plastic box popped up, titled as "Kansas City". There is no doubt that increasing technical possibilities will lead to more and more bootleg tape releases. Just think about what one can do with computer publishing systems and modern colour photocopiers ! So the question will soon arise, whether to keep track with these releases or to file them under 'fan tapes'. (c) May 1992 Klaus Beschorner E-Mail : klaus@vnet.ibm.com Ulrichweg 20 W-7043 Grafenau 1 Phone : ++49-7033-45142 Germany