Cosmic Dreams At Play – A comprehensive guide to German progressive rock of the 1970’s

updated and revised version

by Dag Erik Asbjornsen

First I’d like to thank Strange Vertigo Edizioni for providing a copy of the book for reviewing.

In this review I will describe what the book contains and how does it presents its information; I’ll pick several bands and compare their entries in the book versus what info can be found online; finally I will also address some issues that came to my mind while reading the book and how does this format still holds on in our internet age and my personal impressions of the book overall.  

Dag Erik Asbjornsen has written this book about German progressive rock in the 1970’s in which he documents the experimental and progressive from West Germany.

The book starts with a very short introduction in which he gives a brief overview of the beginning of this wave of bands that appeared in Germany towards the end of the 1960’s ad early 1970’s; he mentions the well known and important groups and their influences; he then moves on to explain the purpose of this book: “to provide comprehensive information about the German rock scene of the 1970’s” and also about “some artists of the 1980’s” whom he considers tp have a merit entry.

A short background about the book:

Strange Vertigo publishing house bought the worldwide copyrights from Borderline Books which is the former publisher of the book. Vertigo then asked Dag Erik Asbjornsen to revise and update his book which was published in 1995. The result is a 320 page big format book in black and white glaze published in 2008.

The book focuses on German prog/experimental bands, regardless of style or so-called genre. Whether it’s electronic, psychedelic, space or any other form of rock, it’s mentioned in there.

The main part of the book is devoted to the bands in the form of an alphabetic index where each band has a short bio, lineup and discography (if available). Occasionally there are pictures of album covers or of the musicians. Depending on how much is known about the band and how productive it was, the length and depth of the bio changes appropriately.

At the end of the book comes a “Summary of collectable labels” providing succinct info on the various labels that either operated or still operate their catalog and in the case of the Brain label, the catalog includes a short description of each release.

An index of all bands and artists included in the book comes at the very end.

The book is arranged in an easy to read and friendly way. The writing is personal given from the experience, knowledge and impression of the author making it feel as if you were a guest at his house while he goes over his collection, explaining to you with patience about each and every band to the best of his abilities.

You could ask yourselves, why get a book about 70’s German prog music when there’s so much info on the internet? Can it really substitute or at least compete the wealth of info that’s there? How wide a scope can a book have compared to what seems like limitless space that a website can provide to contain all this info?

You can ask more of these sorts of questions obviously, and the answers would change from person to person depending on your dispositions and liking.

From my point of view I can say, as an avid book reader, that I do appreciate a lot when a book of this subject is release, since it brings together in one binding most (if not all) of the necessary info that I need and want to know about that particular subject.

To see if this book can indeed stand on its own as a source of information for German prog I decided to pick 2 known, 5 lesser known (internationally, not necessarily in Germany) and 5 unknown bands (again, internationally speaking) described in the book and look for info on the net and compare the two to see which one offers a better, more elaborate and accurate info. That is not to say that if the book will not be as good as the net, that it is not worthwhile reading, but that as a book aspiring to be a “comprehensive guide”, it is not fully achieving its task.

The six bands are:

A)    Can, Guru Guru

B)     Lucifer’s Friend, Emtidi, Wallenstein, Out Of Focus, Birth Control

C)    Strinx, Medusa, Cannock, , Changing Images, Night Sun

The Can entry in the book is definitely a broad one, with a long bio emphasizing the importance and influence of the band, telling its long history and going over their releases with mentioning the good crop. What the net has to offer that doesn’t exist here so much is of course reviews of the albums. But that is true in general for the book in general. As for info about the band, which is the issue at hand here, When browsing the various prog websites (Prog Archives, ProgGnosis, Gnosis2000, Gibraltar Encyclopedia, Allmusic and others), I found that the book gives a much broader and better overview of the band, plus it gathers all the necessary information in one place, and does describe the releases and gives the author’s opinion on them, making this band’s entry of on the best and most complete in the book. In terms of discography, you also have all you need in the book while in the net you’ll have to make an effort to find out all the various releases that exist for each album, though websites like Allmusic, Prog Archives and Discogs.com may present a better option in this aspect, plus the fact that they are updated as more releases and reissues come out.

Guru Guru also has a detailed biography in the book, again telling about the band members, the formation of the band and their releases. The discography part also includes solo releases of the band members which is another advantage of the book. Obviously the net offers a substantial amount of info on this band and its output as well; again it comes down to what is your preferred format and what is more convenient and attractive to you. The way the book presents the material is very convenient in my opinion, accessible and informative.

It seems to me that with regards to the well known bands, there’s a very good and detailed biography and discography for each (I’ve looked at several others such as Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul II and Faust among others).

With Lucifer’s Friend I started looking at the less often mentioned bands from Germany and in this case I found more than satisfying amount and quality of info both in the book and online. Both recommend which albums to try and give a short overview of the band’s past. The book also (like the web equivalents) references to three other related bands which is a good way to expand ones knowledge and is a feature I would expect in this kind of book.

Emtidi is the second band in the tier of lesser known German bands I’ve looked at. The entry in the book focuses quite well on their releases and sound, with a detailed description of Saat, their second album. However the book lacks in the historical part as I found more data on Allmusic; it could have used more background information on the band itself.

With Wallenstein I found a good biography intertwined with a very good description of their albums styles and sounds. The web results were mixed and only a few were up to par with what the book offers (mainly the Wallenstein entry in Prog Archives written by Bob Moore). The entry here in the book is a very good one that gives you a great idea of what each album sounds like as they did change their style somewhat from release to release and so as the reader you can get a good idea of the band’s output.

The Out Of Focus entry is one in which the bias of the author is at its extreme as he says: “This is a very important group whose three albums all collectors of German rock should stock in their vaults!”. From what I’ve read in reviews and in various prog forums I know this is not a common or all too shared opinion of this band, but as a reader I take into account that the author expressed his opinion and I actually prefer that approach to know what he likes and dislikes and then accommodate myself appropriately (by the way, I love the band). Quite a long entry for the band, it describes pretty well the music, sound and mood of the albums as well as giving references to similar sounding bands. This is another example of a good entry in the book (one of many) that gives the newcomer a good idea of what to expect from this band plus some background info.

While I reckon Birth Control are not that lesser known, I’d say that they aren’t that oft-mentioned. In any case, their entry in the book is elaborate, giving a good background of the band and again detailed description of the albums contents. The lineup and discographies are well detailed along with solo releases of the band’s members. The web alternatives were not very informative as the book is (apart from Gibraltar in this case); so it appears that a well researched book is still a good alternative in some cases.

Moving on to the unknown bands, most of which release one album and dissipated, I started with Strinx of which I find almost nothing on the web. The book gives a short description of their sound on their sole album and a reference to Jean-Luc Ponty. It does give you enough of an incentive to look for it by saying that the album is “offering a great time for all of you who love the electric violin”.

Medusa is the second band in this category I’ve looked at. I didn’t find anything online in the prog websites I’ve looked at (Prog Archives, ProgGnosis, Gibraltar), except for ratings in Gnosis2000. The book itself also doesn’t have any information on the band, providing a one-liner note saying “their album contained aggressive hard-rock” (which begs the question if it belongs in here in this case) with no mention of lineup but with mentioning their only album and year of release.

The search for Cannock on the web revealed the same results as for Medua. The book, however, gives a short description of their two releases, lineup and discography. It actually comes highly recommended by the author and shows that this book is definitely a good way to discover the lesser and unknown bands which are deserving of that (assuming this band is indeed worth it).

On to Changing Images (which appear to be active much later than the 70’s), there is a short description of the band’s music in the book with references to who they sound like (and this actually ignited my interest, so another band to hunt down). There is a short blurb to be found no Gibraltar and an empty entry at ProgGonsis as well. However, I have to say that if it weren’t for the book I would probably not have come across this band.

The last band I compared was Night Sun about which there’s a decent entry in the book that gives a good idea of their sound on their sole album. The web results didn’t reveal much more information, but I did find several reviews and a short biography (on Prog Archives) which affirmed what I read in the book (another album to look for in my case).

So it seems that the book does have what to offer to those looking to gain knowledge and info about the German prog-rock scene (and a bit beyond that), in particular with regards to bands which were not that famous or popular (but still worth discovering).

The section dedicated to the labels is also of value. Aside from giving a short but valuable background to most of them, it gives their full release catalog.

You could also ask yourselves, can a book serve to keep discographies up to date? Well, obviously no if new reissues and/or re-masters keep coming out unless there are further prints being made, but as for what releases are available so far it does a good job of letting the reader know what are the available versions (even bootlegs), what format are they in, and which label released them (along with the catalog number). In this aspect it is a very helpful book if one wants to track down a specific release. But, as I mentioned above for Can websites like Allmusic, Prog Archives and Discogs.com are to me a better option since they present in a friendly way what are the various issues out so far and they update their database as more issues are released.

Two points I’d like to make:

a) The book seems to be covering a broader range of bands than most prog websites; I read several biographies talking about bands playing hard-rock, pop-rock etc that do not sound by the description as something that would interest prog-rock fans (Blizzard, Bulldog, Cacumen and Sparifankal are some examples).

b) The book seems to focus more on the music the bands made than on the members and the history of the bands (though it is not neglected completely as there are many such detailed entries).

In summary:

            The great thing about this book is that it’s readily available in my house; whenever I want info on a particular band, I just open the index, look up the page number of that band, open the page and just read the info that’s there. It is a great resource book, but for reviews, you’ll still have to look online most of the times. I want to bring a note I’ve made above again here; by reading this book you will get introduced to many bands you would not have come across otherwise (unless you get a recommendation from someone, which is not very likely). In this aspect the book does a great job at introducing the reader to music he may well have not gotten around to know.

fusionfreak wrote: True it's a very good one

Glad to read such a nice piece of information.

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