Tangerine Dream - 1974 Cathedral Reims

Tangerine Dream - 1974 Cathedral Reims

A legendary, high quality mixing board FM broadcast of Tangerine Dream from Reims Cathedral, France on Dec. 13, 1974. This upload is from the double silver disc bootleg "Live! Improvised!" Also on the bill was Nico, Cale and Eno, with Mike Oldfield, so a stellar night was had by all. Members included Froese, Franke and Baumann.
Enjoy - this is a great one.

Reims - Improvised 1 (47:27)
Reims - Improvised 2 (37:43)

Encore One (14.08) omitted
Encore Two (20.55) omitted

On 13th December, Tangerine Dream gave a spectacular concert at the cathedral in Reims in France. The atmosphere in this gothic church enlightened by candles was the perfect background for the music of Tangerine Dream. The music, which was performed by Froese, Franke and Baumann who sat almost motionless in the semi-darkness in front of their electronic altars, created a mysterious religious mood. A lot of people made a 'pilgrimage' to this event, and the cathedral with seats for approximately 2,000 people, had to make room for about 5,000 people that day! This of course did not go by unnoticed, and afterwards this old Catholic cathedral was left in a minor chaos!

Froese: "It was a terrible situation. People couldn't move, they had to piss up against the walls. You can imagine the mess by the end of the concert. What's more, we got the blame for it!" (Melody Maker, 8th October 1994)

The consequence was that the Pope Paul VI sent out a bull of ex-communication, which banned Tangerine Dream from ever performing in a Catholic church anywhere in the world in the future. This sort of ban is not something that happens to you every day and of course it created a lot of publicity at that time. Both in private and on stage the band have always been very withdrawn and they have never been surrounded by any rock-star status, so here was finally something for the public eye to dig into. The ban might be lifted now, but the event is something that often gets mentioned when someone in the media is doing a fast review of Tangerine Dream's career.

The concert was by the way broadcast on the radio and the music played is very typical of Tangerine Dream at this point -- a lot of improvisation -- based on long floating soundscapes - played in the minor tone colours. © 1999 by Kent Eskildsen