Kaleidoscope and Tangerine Dream is a record that has been in the back of my mind since my very first tentative attempts at buying 60s LPs with psychedelic influences. It has not been uncommon for it to be labelled “the best psychedelic LP in the world”, which of course is not a reasonable claim. Music is probably the most subjective thing you can express a binary opinion about, which doesn’t exactly make you very credible. But having said that, Tangerine Dream is a gem in the context. A really good record.
As with everything else, there has to be a beginning. Psychedelic records were relatively easy to come across during the first half of the 90s, when CDs meant that people were, quite literally, throwing their LPs out as landfill. Some records were perhaps kept closer to the chest, partly because of their emotional value, but also because of their reputation. Tangerine Dream was surely one of those records.
Were there expensive second-hand records in 1990? Well, yes and no. If you paid 200 kronor, you could pretty much get whatever you wanted. More often than not, good second-hand LPs were available for less than fifty kronor. My personal ceiling was 200 kronor, at that price, it had to be something really special.
“Why are you bothering with all that stuff? There won’t be any record players left soon.” I heard that quite often.
So when I spotted a Fontana STL 5448, UK 1967, displayed on the wall at Sadisfaction in Haga, I thought: this one is coming home with me.
The LP was high up, on the top row, right next to the counter on the right-hand side, looking into the shop. Martin was standing behind the counter with Tore, both busy dealing with customers, and the shop was packed that Saturday. The price was 500 kronor.
500 kronor. That was a lot of money back then. But it was also something I had been looking for, and I thought: fuck it, this one isn’t going to come around again. Since I didn’t want to interrupt Martin or Tore, and because 500 kronor was a considerable amount of money at the time, not something you paid for an LP every day – I took a slimm risk that someone else might grab it. So I crossed the road to withdraw one sixth of my monthly student loan from the cash machine.
Five minutes later, at most, I was back in the shop with the cash. Cards were hardly ever used back then, and certainly not in a second-hand record shop. The space on the wall where the record had been was conspicuously empty. I scanned the shop and, to my horror, saw a man perhaps 35 years older than me, at least in my eyes, handing Martin a five-hundred-kronor note, with the LP tucked under his arm.
You get the picture. A purchase I never made, and one I can’t really regret. But I do regret not interrupting Martin and asking him to put the LP aside for me. Tangerine Dream UK 1967 remained a dream.
