Digital Gothic: A Critical Discography of Tangerine Dream (Music)

Rating:
Summary: Franke & Froese
Review: I bought this book because there are no others on the subject! It is dauntingly slim for a band 33 years old and deals fleetingly with certain areas of the band's history. That said it did answer many questions and was well enough written. It also whetted my appetite for more music. I would have liked to see a larger volume that could have taken time to go further in depth on this band's history, but for the price I am not complaining.

Rating:
Summary: Franke & Froese
Review: I still find it difficult to understand how these two blokes supposedly weren't close buddies? I was pretty astonished when I first read about this in Paul's great little book.So does that mean those times when I queued up in the cold to see my heroes after a gig and watched them sign their autographs in amazement,that all was not rosey in TD's garden? And how did Franke & Froese exchange their musical ideas so well if this was so.Great book!

Rating:
Summary: Ugh! Too bad...
Review: I was very excited to get this book in hopes it contained new insights (so little has been written in depth) into one of the great electronic bands of our times but unfortunantly he really doesn't have any. Problem for me was Paul uses WAY to many quotes from Julian Cope's hyperactive book on Kraut rock- I already have that book and think it's pretty ridiculous itsself. When Paul steps out and writes his own opinion the book starts to have meat. But it lacks real depth and insight. Too much is skimmed over and he has an annoying style of writing two versions of every chapter, one skimmed one so-so. The British writer Miles wrote an excellent book on Pink Floyd and he also wrote the program notes for the Stratosfear tour book. It's REALLY too bad he never wrote a book about T.D. But bottom line this is it for now. The book does make you want to check out some of their more lame recordings- but tread carefully overall.

Rating:
Summary: Written like a music critic
Review: Mr. Stump has written Digital Gothic like a long and tiring review of the bands work. And in 'formula' critic fashion he has something bad to say then retracts it a few paragraphs later. Though some of the insites into T.G. are interesting, they seem second, third, forth hand at best. First hand personal interviews with the band would have been nice. I suppose the biggest disappointment of all is that such a ground breaking band with such a rich history has so little written about them. This can be due to T.G.'s trade-mark 'cool' mannerisms that they adopted (and warmed a bit with age) as they became older but none the less, Mr. Stump definately did not dig very deep. Repeating himself often by simply rewording his intent and direction as if to fill the pages so the thin book wasn't 10 pages, the author simply likes to read his own writing.
Tangerine Dream has to be my favorite band in modern history but I found the book boorish.
It only deserves a rating above two due to the fact that it helps feed the fans of T.D. who have to pick at bits and scraps to indulge their interest in the facinating artists that truely desearve the title.