Tangerine Dream Top 10 - #3 Horizon (piano version)

Horizon and the concerts in Poland

When listening to the awesome live album Poland from 1983, it is surprising to learn that TD’s tour around this country was a near disaster. The project of a winter trip to eastern Europe was proposed to the group by a representative of an English agency that Edgar hadn’t met before. Having discussed the matter with various contacts within the business, Edgar finally persuaded himself and his colleagues to accept the offer, to bring something new to a people who were slaves under an inhuman political system.

It was an extremely cold winter, with temperatures often dropping below minus 15 degrees. The hotels were substandard with hardly any heating and it seemed almost impossible to get a decent meal. Several members of the band and the crew caught the flu. Because of the low temperatures in the concert venues, lack of reliable power supply and the country’s inferior technical infrastructure in general, the synths and the other equipment did not work properly. Several of the concerts had to be disrupted due to technical breakdowns. In order to be able to play at all, without stiffening their fingers from cold, they had to wear gloves, or rather, as there were no gloves for sale, they had to create their own, from cut-off woollen socks (except for Chris, who had brought proper gloves with him, which Edgar and Johannes jealously noted).

The concert in Warsaw (from where the album was recorded) was held in the hockey stadium, which was covered in cardboard sheets so that the spectators wouldn’t need to sit directly on the ice. But with the temperature rise caused by the 10 000 concert goers, the ice started melting, whereby some people ended up sitting in ponds of cold water. Despite of this inconvenience, the audience was very enthusiastic, both in Warsaw and elsewhere (Poznań, Łódź, Opole). In a disillusioned country with a regime that would normally decide what you should listen to, TD’s music provided people with a welcome break from the gray everyday life.

The journalist Karl Dallas, described as somewhat eccentric, who accompanied the band to document the tour for the English magazine “Sounds”, said it was the strangest experience he ever had. As for Edgar, it was “a mixture of suffering and memorable experiences within a different reality. No tour (..) has left an impression at all comparable to those 12 days in Poland, between the snow and a thousand black crows”.

Source:
“Tangerine Dream Force Majeure”, autobiography by Edgar Froese.
© Eastgate Music & Arts 2015.

Sheet music: https://www.dropbox.com/s/aos7582trnz...