Six Degrees of Sauerkraut -- Part XXIII: How New Age Killed the Glimmerlight

The onslaught of New Age caught us all by surprise. Imagine, The Nothing which destroyed fantasia despite Atreyu's best efforts. Well, they had told us this had all happened before, and that it would all happen again, but we didn't believe them. We lounged by the deep blue pools in the glimmerlight, or drove our Light Cycles around on lazy Sunday afternoons, never knowing the darkness that was coming.

When, in the mid-80s, Sky Records began to advertise our musik as New Age, we knew this was the beginning of the end. Android synthesists were actually passing the Voight-Kampff test, leaving the glimmerlight, and touring with Yanni! Former replicants such as Ralf Tohde, Bernd Scholl and, to our great dismay, Dieter Schütz, were leaving us. The musik was still ghostly, mechanized, and blue, but it was packaged in a manner that we knew would dry up all the electric streams within the decade.

No one grieved the destruction more than Roedelius. He brought his synth down to the river and wrote the great lament of the glimmerlight, "Schöner Abend." This track reflected on the evening of the glimmerlight; the beautiful evening.

Soon, we would all depart for Silberland, where we would recreate the glimmerlight with the aid of Wolfgang's ghost. But Roedelius' melody is a testament to those Düsseldorf nights. Check it out by clicking on the title of this post.