The short version
- On 5 October 1976 Klaus Schulze played the Metamusik Festival at the Nationalgalerie in West Berlin, with Harald Grosskopf on drums and a microphone shaped like a human head in the room.
- The same month Tangerine Dream released Stratosfear and went back on the road, starting in Hanover on the 20th. Five German dates in October alone.
- Vangelis's Albedo 0.39 entered the UK album chart at 30 on 9 October. Jean-Michel Jarre was still recording Oxygène in a Paris kitchen.
- September had been quiet. October made up for it. Two pieces to hear the month by are at the end.
West Berlin, 5 October 1976. Synthesizers stood in the glass hall of the Nationalgalerie. That year's Metamusik Festival ran there from 1 to 22 October, and tonight belonged to Klaus Schulze, with Harald Grosskopf beside him on drums. Somewhere in the hall stood a Kunstkopf, a dummy head with a microphone in each ear, taking down the sound the way a listener in a seat would hear it.
- What
- what happened around the five in October 1976, fifty years ago this month
- 1 to 22 October
- Metamusik Festival 2, Nationalgalerie, West Berlin
- 5 October
- Schulze at the festival. Harald Grosskopf on drums, a Kunstkopf recording
- October
- Tangerine Dream release Stratosfear, Virgin V 2068 (UK)
- 9 October
- Vangelis, Albedo 0.39, enters the UK album chart at 30
- 20 to 31 October
- Tangerine Dream's autumn tour. Hanover, Düsseldorf, Munich, Mainz, Mannheim
- All month
- Jarre recording Oxygène in his Paris apartment kitchen (August to November)
The night the dummy head heard
Metamusik was the creation of Walter Bachauer, an editor at the Berlin broadcaster RIAS. The first festival was in 1974, the second in 1976, and the idea was to put experimental music, popular music and music from outside the Western tradition on the same bill.
A concert essay on Schulze's official site sets the date down plainly. After the Go shows with Stomu Yamashta in London and Paris, and several months of nothing, Schulze played the Berlin Metamusik Festival with Grosskopf, and a Kunstkopf recording was made. That recording gave us "Sense".
It came out four years later, in 1980, filling the second side of the double LP ...Live..., all 31 minutes and 10 seconds of it. There is a catch. English Wikipedia notes that the sleeve places the recording at the 1976 Berlin concert, but that it may actually be a studio recording from 1977. We give you both the sleeve and the doubt. The date of the concert stands either way. On the night of 5 October 1976, Schulze was in that hall.
After a quiet summer
For Tangerine Dream, September had been empty. They recorded Stratosfear at Audio Studios in Berlin in August, and the record came out in October, Virgin V 2068 in Britain. The pieces got shorter, four of them, and a guitar and a grand piano came in. For the first time on one of their records there was a tune you could hum.
The month the record appeared, the band went back on stage. Tangerine Tree, the fan-made archive of concert recordings, has five October dates: the Stadthalle in Hanover on the 20th, the Philipshalle in Düsseldorf on the 21st, the Circus Krone in Munich on the 27th, Mainz on the 29th, and the Mozartsaal in Mannheim on the 31st. They had not played since the Berlin Philharmonie on 27 June. In November they crossed to England: Nottingham, Portsmouth, Birmingham.
A kitchen and a chart
In London a Vangelis record was climbing. Albedo 0.39, out on 24 September, entered the UK album chart at 30 on 9 October. It peaked at 18 and stayed six weeks, his first album to make the British top 20. The record itself is in the Albedo 0.39 review.
In Paris Jean-Michel Jarre had not released anything yet. From August to November he was recording Oxygène in a makeshift studio in the kitchen of an apartment near the Champs-Élysées, and October sat in the middle of it. Around then the beat in that room came from a rhythm machine with two of its buttons taped down. The kitchen is in the Oxygène review.
Kitaro's October left nothing behind. English Wikipedia says he left his band in 1976 and travelled through Asia. We found nothing that says which month. What we could not find, we leave out.
How to listen: two pieces to hear the month by
- "Stratosfear". The first piece on the record that came out that month. It opens on slow, walking synthesizer chords, and then a single line of melody unwinds. If you are humming by the time the tune comes round the second time, you have heard what this record changed.
- "Sense". Side two of ...Live..., 1980. Use headphones. If the sleeve is right, this is what the dummy head took down, and recordings like that open up when the sound goes straight into both ears.
- Play them back to back with the lights off. The first gives you the day the record came out, the second the night on stage.
Where to get it
Both records are still easy to find on CD and LP.
