The Crack In The Cosmic Egg (CDROM)

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   Speaking with Alan Freeman at Leicester's Ultima Thule record shop yesterday, and he revealed the  2nd edition of The Crack In The Cosmic Egg is in "press"  and the authors, he and his brother, are taking pre-orders. The 1st edition of Crack, belatedly found praise in the UK heavyweight press on a half page article on Krautrock, in the Guardian at the end of last month. The 2nd edition is significantly expanded from the first, and from small snippets I've seen in progress in the last 2 years, expect  it to be right up to date, and including relevant rock act from all German speaking countries - I believe German, Austrian and other jazz rock bands will be included too. Initial publicity below, but I doubt if the links work (so try this for the full page repro of info below  and links:
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/ultimathule/).

file:///A:/crackrom.mht

 html PC CD-Rom

The Crack In The Cosmic Egg - html CD-Rom - coming soon!

Work has now finished on this mammoth project, and it cuurently being manufactured. If you would like to get your copy as soon as it is issued, we are now able to take pre-orders. To realistically price this project, taking in all the work that was involved, would have meant a crazily high price. But, we are not greedy, so we decided upon pricing it the same as the original book at £20, which I'm sure you'll agree is remarkable value for something that is so mind-bogglingly huge!
Pre-orders are now being taken at the special price of £20 for the UK, £21 world-wide [currently that's about 35 Euro's or 45 US$, sorry but we cannot do anything about the $ exchange rate] payable by the usual methods as detailed on the how to order page.
Pre-orders gain some bonus extras, and a slightly cheaper price!

You can also pay me by PayPal: See PayPal option for more info. 

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Encyclopedia of Krautrock, Kosmische Musik, & other progressive, experimental & electronic musics from Germany, CD-Rom by Steven Freeman & Alan Freeman

"The Crack In The Cosmic Egg" has been hailed by the musicians as the most informative insight into German rock and related musics, endorsed by Faust's Jean-Hervé Peron, Amon Düül 2's Chris Karrer, really enthused about by Guru Guru's Mani Neumeier, and it so impressed Out Of Focus' Remigius Drechsler that he helped us launch our Krautrock label "Cosmic Egg"! The book version, first published in December 1996, has been out of print for a while now, and is now becoming quite a collectable.
We described the book version as the definitive encyclopedia of Krautrock, Kosmische Musik and all things weird and wonderful from Germany. It contained 1177 entries (Krautrock bands, soloists, etc.), 2500 albums (including musician details), plus non-LP singles, compilation contributions, as well as two 16 page picture sections, including many rare photos, 150+ LP covers. In its pages were histories, biographies, reviews, discographies, articles on major scenes, indexes, etc. Well-over 4,000 copies were sold!
Financing such a publication wasn't easy, and since then the printers we used closed down and all quotes from elsewhere were far too pricey, which meant it was not at all possible to do a new revised book print, unless someone could work as a partner or finance it for us. That invitation has been out there for a long while now with no takers. So, after sussing out how easily I could do a web-site and html CD-Rom's, I came up with the idea of doing "The Crack In The Cosmic Egg" as an expanded and revised CD-Rom version. The guts of the project were already established, and the Internet meant that revision and research would be a lot easier. I never expected how it would catapult the project in leaps and bounds, snowballing into an amazing monster reference tool!
view example page
Over ten years on from the book, and with six or more years of intensive research, the revised PC CD-Rom edition of the book is taking shape, and now is nearing completion. An interactive off-line web-site of html pages, with lots of extras, like colour photos of everything we can get our hands on, as well as rare adverts, posters, gig photos, etc. There are even some choice exclusive music samples! Everything that can be revised and updated has been, and there so many additional entries - you wouldn't believe you could fit so much on one disc! Here are some figures: the 2,068 main entries comprise of... more
ISBN 0-9529506-0-CDROM

Edited by Dick Heath - December 18 2007 at 08:19