I've listened to a lot of their stuff over the years, but the period that's stuck with me the most is the early eighties period from Exit to Le Parc. White Eagle, Exit, Logos and Poland (Hyperborea is ok, not as good) are my avourites. 

The latter two are live albums but for some reason don't seem to feature the band playing 'the hits', as it were. They are long unique pieces. I've never heard another band do this. Does anyone know why this is? 

I know that Livemiles (from their subsquent period) is cobbled together from songs in the live set into two live pieces. Is that the case with Poland and Logos, because they are both great albums

Why they do it, or why others don't do it?

Tangerine Dream have a long tradition of playing unique material live. See also Encore, Ricochet and many bootlegs flying around (later often released by the band in a regular way). Much of it was improvised, but not everything. Logos was largely composed, I believe. They would also often start with some material live that then went into studio compositions (much of Tangram was played live in preliminary versions before the album came out; chances are they did this also with other material). They'd occasionally play material live that had already appeared on a studio album but at least until I lost interest in them around 1986 this was the exception rather than the rule. As a (then) fan of the band I would not go to their concerts to listen to the studio material let alone hits but would rather be excited about what new fruits of their creativity to expect. So to me it always made a lot of sense and I tend to be rather disappointed if bands are too keen live to just reproduce their studio material, how successful and good it may have been. Of course the price of this was that occasionally some things were drawn out for longer than would "artistically" have made sense - that's probably inevitable if you invent that much new music all the time (see also Buckethead).

Other bands did this too, at least to some extent, in the end 60s and early 70s at least. Much of Can's live recordings sounds nowhere near their studio material. But in fact you're right that most would source most of their live material from the studio albums, if throwing in the odd improvisation or yet unreleased material (or sometimes strongly changing their original material).

I know that Livemiles (from their subsquent period) is cobbled together from songs in the live set into two live pieces. Is that the case with Poland and Logos, because they are both great albums

I saw them live on the tour that led to Logos, and as far as I remember the album is quite true to how they played it, although it was obviously longer live.

The history of it is that in those days, synthesizers were not very good at remembering anything and a lot of the material had to be restarted/redone, to get going to come anywhere close to the original, and it wasn't until later, that they were able to get a handle on using some parts recorded so they did not have to re-start inventing the wheel on one piece or another.

One other concern, and it is in the TD book ... the weather ... and in some cases, it was a real pain and caused issues because some things sounded different when cold than they did when it was warm outside. And the Poland concert? A total nightmare, and a miracle that it came off and its recording is as good as it is, but it tells you something about the folks that played.

I think that by the time they toured STRATOSFEAR in the USA, they had a much better control of things and were able to do some of the earlier stuff, like Phaedra ... which, my guess is/was that it was impossible to do correctly/rightly before that.

And, btw, this was the main reason why so many of the early days bootlegs were so valuable ... every thing was different and it sounded great, even if the bootleg was recorded from inside your pants! The band, later, made sure that many of these old concerts were released to prevent the continuation of the bootlegs, and they largely succeeded in doing that.

The book, by EF is ... almost exclusively, about their experience playing live ... and let me tell you ... in those early days, Christopher Franke did not have a good time getting things done, in time, so the show could start, and many times he was still fixing things and the show had already started ... a very scary bit for any band out there! Somehow, TD made it all work, and you and I can't tell the difference ... and if that is not the mark of very special people and players, I don't know what is ... go ahead and kiss a stupid cardboard star!

Lewian wrote: ... Other bands did this too, at least to some extent, in the end 60s and early 70s at least. Much of Can's live recordings sounds nowhere near their studio material. But in fact you're right that most would source most of their live material from the studio albums, if throwing in the odd improvisation or yet unreleased material (or sometimes strongly changing their original material).

On a different post

I wanted to separate CAN from TD. Unlike CAN, Tangerine Dream made it a point to go live and worked really hard to make sure that their material was do'able on the stage. CAN, I'm not sure had as hard a time doing this, or ever bothered to consider doing this ... in reality they already were a "live" band, which, as the TAGO MAGO showed, were a whole bunch of studio bits taken "live" and not composed, and then just kinda glued together to make an album ... and Holger even stated that it came out of about 20 hours of material ... so there was more that could have been heard, and some of it might have been released in various other recordings.

CAN was interesting during EGE BAMYASI, but I really think that after that, a year let's say, the whole thing dried up and DAMO is hardly used in FUTURE DAYS, when compared to the earlier album, which suggests that the material DAMO came up with was getting repetitive and was not going to improve ... which is what happened with some writers (Peter Handke in particular) when the word plays lost its charm after two productions ... where's the "character?" (there is none!) ... where's the "play?" (there is none) ... and you finally say ... these guys are just screwing around and we're paying for it! PH, to his credit, had written other things and went on to WIM WENDERS and a lot of other works. But for a band like CAN, the whole appeal of "busking" came to an abrupt end ... DAMO might not have improved, as he would have been expected to do, by either creating more lyrics, or even listening to other ways that his "style" had been done, like Flora Purim, and a lot of African folks.

The end result, was that CAN was no longer a live band ... which really was what their work was really all about in the first place ... but they lost their "source". Still created great stuff, but not as dynamic as TAGO MAGO, for example, or EGE BAMYASI ... were!

Psychedelic Paul wrote: ^^ To separate the Tangerine from the Can, you just turn the Can upside down and strain the Tangerine through a sieve.

what a crappy post that contributes nothing to the discussion! you must be so proud

You've just confirmed to me that you're sadly lacking a sense of humour.

 

It's good to know I can always really on you to follow me wherever I go, just like a faithful cat.

Lovely ... however I look at TD, in a very different light compared to CAN.

I think that, specially in the early days, TD was more interested in a new sound and ability that helped create the tapestries for their music ... whereas CAN, for me, was not so much about the "busking" or the "experience" as much anymore ... I think they tried with FUTURE DAYS, and then SOON OVER BABALUMA to create something really nice and special in the "tripping" side of things, and both the long cuts BEL AIR and the double CHAIN REACTION and QUANTUM PHYSICS, brought out something super nice ... but by that time, all the fans, EVEN HERE, had stopped liking anything that was a long cut ... the long parts of instrumentals, were "dumb" and "stupid" and too long ... the imagination that music can create, IE. classical music had died, by folks that were not even GOOD music listeners at all ... but they bought things and helped many companies make money and that means ... that they were better than the stupid and crappy long cuts ... and even YES suffered for it, and luckily, PF was under it all doing their own thing ... and no one noticed ECHOES was a long cut, and they made sure that things were not overly long for a while .... even if one cut that ended up in ANIMALS was a whole side ... but no one heard that anyway!

Even today, when discussing an obvious example like DREAM THEATER, the comment is that ... it's too long, and all that tells me, is that the only respect there is is for the top ten song and 3 or 4 minute song ... and I would like PA to come down on that some ... "progressive" started out being about the EXPRESSION and now this expression is being taken out ... and too many of us are so de-sensitized that we can't even say anything about it ... we've killed the music we love dearly ... for what?

At least you saw the funny side of my comment, unlike Cristy.

 

All of the initial TD live albums feature unique music, which is why they're so great.

Ricochet (1975 — a live-studio mishmash)

Encore (1978 — document of the first North American tour, with studio tweaks; Peter Baumann bows out)

Quichotte aka Pergamon (1980 — live at the Palast der Republik; debut of Johannes Schmoelling)

Logos: Live at the Dominion (1982)

Poland (1983 — live in Warsaw, a tour de force show)

Livemiles (1987 — the first half is a famously fake live concert, but it's new music)

That was definitely true. I was taught electronic music starting in 1975 on a modular Moog, and if you wanted to 'remember' a sound, you'd have blank 'patch cord charts' that would have all the plugs jacks and dials on the Moog, and you'd mark the settings on the dials with pen, and draw in which patch cords were going from which jack to where. Even then it was rarely precise. I'm less familiar with old sequencers, as I never learned on those.

By the late 70's and early 80's you had synths with presets, but they were often a small number of cheesy factory sounds that I doubt people used.

I still have a Jupiter 4 , which was one of the first polyphonic synths. It has a mind of its own. Sounds different every time you play it. Also takes it at least 10-15 minutes to get in tune after you turn it on, and that's assuming there haven't been any temperature variations.

So early on, TD were probably almost obliged to improvise to a degree whether they wanted to or not. The 77 North American tour is the first one where they actually started playing anything like set pieces. Shows from that tour have the four tracks from 'Encore' in the first half of the show, and then the second half is  improvised, differing wildly from gig to gig. I think Froese famously put on virtually a metal guitar improv when they were in Dertroit.

By the early 80's they were playing more consistently structured/composed pieces. I'm not clear when this became more or less completely set. I thought it was pretty early in the 80's but some other posts here suggest not.

1984 was when the digital change hit, and the Yamaha DX7 came out, with a big onboard memory of digital presets. But they were an absolute cow to improvise on. It was FM synthesis, which is really complicated and threw everything I'd learned out the window - but most of all the interface was just a bunch of touchpads. No knobs, no sliders - this was pretty much how it went all through the rest of the 80's and a lot of the 90's. Of course TD were using a lot of more exotic equipment than that.

They've gone back to their roots now, ironically post-Froese - and doing completely improvised stuff as part of their shows again. The three live  'Sessions' CDs they've released (that I know of) since about 2017 are worth checking out.