Eurock
Encyclopedia
Eurock is a worldwide music promotion company founded by Archie Patterson in 1971. The name "Eurock" is short for "European Rock" although the scope of the company quickly expanded worldwide.
There are over 2,700 bands profiled in Eurock's index.
-FM in Fresno, California, airing Wednesday nights 9:00 to 11:00 pm. It featured music by Amon Düül II
, Klaus Schulze
, Popol Vuh
, Can
, Tangerine Dream
, Magma
, Guru Guru
, Faust
, Embryo
, Ange
and many others.
When Archie Patterson moved to Oregon, the show ran an additional two years on Portland, Oregon
's KINK
-FM. Another move south led to a series of shows on Los Angeles
radio station KPFK
-FM. During one of these shows, movie director Michael Mann
contacted the host to get more information on the music played. Archie submitted several music samples to Mann who ultimately chose Tangerine Dream
to do the score for the movie Thief
.
, Amon Düül II
and Can
. Later issues covered Krautrock
, English
progressive rock
, the emerging scene in Japan
, ethnic fusions from Spain
to Finland
, French
native rock bands, South America
n fusion bands, and many others. Eurock was the first periodical to bring to light the underground rock movements
in Eastern Europe
. Eurock was also responsible for the first promotion of releases in the West
by several underground Soviet-bloc
bands, including Sven Grunberg
and Plastic People of the Universe.
Articles for the magazine were written by experts from all over the world, including many of the musicians themselves including Richard Pinhas, Klaus Schulze
, Uli Trepte
, Chris Cutler
, Harald Grosskopf, Jorge Reyes
and others.
, Gandalf
, Eddie Jobson
, Jasun Martz
, Dweller at the Theshold
and others. Most notably, THE HUNDRED POINTS by Plastic People of the Universe, a recording by the band which indirectly led to the founding of Charter 77
by Václav Havel
, eventual president of the independent Czech Republic
.
From 2000 to 2010, Archie released and promoted the music of noted Russian composer Mikhail Chekalin. Released were four CDs of Chekalin's latest music, four DVDs + a Historic Edition, LTD Special four CD + 1 DVD MP3 format set that includes a dozen archival recordings along with his two pioneering works POST POP ~ NON POP and VOCALISE EN RAPID.
music for students grades 7-12 in the Oregon public school system, then later at the private Reed College
. This material was later made available on compact disc
.
, Jasun Martz
, John Luttrelle, Richard Bone
, Doctor Wize (Dennis Weise) and Anode (Robert Carlberg). It was re-released on CD in 2008.
In 1996 Patterson produced and annotated the 5-CD compilation boxed set of progressive rock
for Rhino Records. It was called Supernatural Fairy Tales: The Progressive Rock Era.
CD-ROM
released in 2000 contains all of the articles written for Eurock Magazine (some 1,500+ pieces), over 350 band discographies, plus hundreds of photographs and several videos of the bands featured. It also contains 40 minutes of exclusive music by Heretic (Hiro Kawahara), a Japanese experimental musician. The Heretic music was issued again in 2010 as a CD entitled REQUIEM, augmented by additional historical recordings.
about Amon Düül II
. The 709-page book is fully indexed.
, podcast
and blog
on rocksbackpages.com.
There are over 2,700 bands profiled in Eurock's index.
Radio Show
The original incarnation of Eurock was a two-hour radio show on the air from 1971-1974 on KFIGKFIG
KFIG is a sports talk station in Fresno, California, United States. The station broadcasts at 1430 kHz on AM.KFIG serves as the local affiliate for ESPN Radio. It is also an affiliate of the Los Angeles Lakers, San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants and San Jose Sharks.-External links:*...
-FM in Fresno, California, airing Wednesday nights 9:00 to 11:00 pm. It featured music by Amon Düül II
Amon Düül II
-Studio Albums:-Live Albums:-Compilations:-Singles:-External links:*...
, Klaus Schulze
Klaus Schulze
Klaus Schulze is a German electronic music composer and musician. He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried. He was briefly a member of the electronic bands Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel before launching a solo career consisting of more than 60 albums released across five decades.-1970s:In...
, Popol Vuh
Popol Vuh (German band)
Popol Vuh was a German electronic avantgarde band, in the mainstream-media so called Krautrock, founded by pianist and keyboardist Florian Fricke in 1969 together with Holger Trülzsch and Frank Fiedler...
, Can
Can (band)
Can was an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first "krautrock" groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.Can constructed their music largely...
, Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...
, Magma
Magma (band)
Magma is a French progressive rock band founded in Paris in 1969 by classically trained drummer Christian Vander, who claimed as his inspiration a "vision of humanity's spiritual and ecological future" that profoundly disturbed him. In the course of their first album, the band tells the story of a...
, Guru Guru
Guru Guru
Guru Guru is a German Krautrock band formed in 1968 as The Guru Guru Groove by Mani Neumeier , Uli Trepte and Eddy Naegeli later replaced by American Jim Kennedy...
, Faust
Faust (band)
Faust are a German krautrock band. Formed in 1971 in Wümme, the group was originally composed of Werner "Zappi" Diermaier, Hans Joachim Irmler, Arnulf Meifert, Jean-Hervé Péron, Rudolf Sosna and Gunther Wüsthoff, working with record producer Uwe Nettelbeck and engineer Kurt Graupner.-History:Faust...
, Embryo
Embryo (band)
Embryo is a musical collective from Munich which has been active since 1969, although its story started in the mid-1950s in Hof where Christian Burchard and Dieter Serfas met for the first time at the age of 10...
, Ange
Ange
Ange is a French progressive rock band formed in September 1969 by the Décamps brothers, Francis and Christian .-History:...
and many others.
When Archie Patterson moved to Oregon, the show ran an additional two years on Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
's KINK
KINK
KINK, also kink.fm, is an American commercial broadcast FM radio station in Portland, Oregon. The station began broadcasting Christmas Day, 1968 as “KINK – The Underground Link”...
-FM. Another move south led to a series of shows on Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
radio station KPFK
KPFK
KPFK is a listener-sponsored radio station based in North Hollywood, California, United States, which serves the Greater Los Angeles Area, and also streams 24 hours a day via the Internet...
-FM. During one of these shows, movie director Michael Mann
Michael Mann (film director)
Michael Kenneth Mann is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. For his work, he has received nominations from international organizations and juries, including those at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Cannes and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
contacted the host to get more information on the music played. Archie submitted several music samples to Mann who ultimately chose Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...
to do the score for the movie Thief
Thief (film)
Thief is a 1981 neo-noir film written and directed by Michael Mann and based on the novel The Home Invaders by "Frank Hohimer"...
.
Magazine
In the twenty years between 1973 and 1993, 45 regular issues (and two special issues) of Eurock Magazine were published. The first issue, in March 1973, covered the music of Tangerine DreamTangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...
, Amon Düül II
Amon Düül II
-Studio Albums:-Live Albums:-Compilations:-Singles:-External links:*...
and Can
Can (band)
Can was an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first "krautrock" groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.Can constructed their music largely...
. Later issues covered Krautrock
Krautrock
Krautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scenes that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain. The term is a result of the English-speaking world's reception of the music at the time and not a reference to any one...
, English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
, the emerging scene in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, ethnic fusions from Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
to Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, French
Music of France
France has a wide variety of indigenous folk music, as well as styles played by immigrants from Africa, Latin America and Asia. In the field of classical music, France has produced a number of legendary composers, while modern pop music has seen the rise of popular French hip hop, techno/funk,...
native rock bands, South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
n fusion bands, and many others. Eurock was the first periodical to bring to light the underground rock movements
Underground music
Underground music comprises a range of different musical genres that operate outside of mainstream culture. Such music can typically share common values, such as the valuing of sincerity and intimacy; an emphasis on freedom of creative expression; an appreciation of artistic creativity...
in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. Eurock was also responsible for the first promotion of releases in the West
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
by several underground Soviet-bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
bands, including Sven Grunberg
Sven Grünberg
Sven Grünberg is an Estonian ambient and progressive rock composer and musician most known for his meditative organ and electronic works involving the concepts of Tibetan Buddhism...
and Plastic People of the Universe.
Articles for the magazine were written by experts from all over the world, including many of the musicians themselves including Richard Pinhas, Klaus Schulze
Klaus Schulze
Klaus Schulze is a German electronic music composer and musician. He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried. He was briefly a member of the electronic bands Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel before launching a solo career consisting of more than 60 albums released across five decades.-1970s:In...
, Uli Trepte
Uli Trepte
Uli Trepte was a German musician best known for his collaborations with various influential Krautrock bands in the early 1970s.-Early career:...
, Chris Cutler
Chris Cutler
Chris Cutler is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of a number of other bands, including Art Bears, News from Babel, Pere Ubu and Gong/Mothergong...
, Harald Grosskopf, Jorge Reyes
Jorge Reyes
Jorge Reyes is a Cuban-born, American author known for authoring books in several genres. He is an honor graduate of Barry University, from which he received a B.A...
and others.
Label
Between 1980 and 1998, Eurock Distribution released twenty-two cassettes, one LP and sixteen CDs of music not otherwise available, by such artists as Pascal ComeladePascal Comelade
Pascal Paul Vincent Comelade , is a French Catalan musician.Comelade born was in Montpellier, France. After living for several years in Barcelona, he made his first album, Fluences, influenced by electronic music and by the group Heldon.Subsequently, his music has become more acoustic and is...
, Gandalf
Gandalf (new age)
Gandalf is the name used by a New Age composer from Austria. He plays a wide variety of instruments including guitars, keyboards, synthesizers and sitars. He includes electronic sounds into his music. His music includes influences from music around the world...
, Eddie Jobson
Eddie Jobson
Edwin "Eddie" Jobson is an English keyboardist and violinist noted for his use of synthesizers. He has been a member of several progressive rock bands, including Curved Air, Roxy Music, U.K., and Jethro Tull. He was also part of Frank Zappa's band in 1976-77...
, Jasun Martz
Jasun Martz
Jasun Martz is an American record producer, composer, musician, fine artist, creative director and sculptor who has worked on several international hit records. He has recorded with Michael Jackson, toured with Frank Zappa and helped arrange the hit "We Built This City" by Starship.Martz has lived...
, Dweller at the Theshold
Dweller at the Threshold
Dweller at the Threshold was an electronic music band based in Portland, Oregon, USA from 1993 to 2005. The band lineup changed through the years but primarily consisted of Paul Ellis and Dave Fulton. Ellis left the band sometime after the third CD, Ouroborus, was released. 2004 saw the release of...
and others. Most notably, THE HUNDRED POINTS by Plastic People of the Universe, a recording by the band which indirectly led to the founding of Charter 77
Charter 77
Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in communist Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout. Spreading the text of the document was...
by Václav Havel
Václav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
, eventual president of the independent Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
.
From 2000 to 2010, Archie released and promoted the music of noted Russian composer Mikhail Chekalin. Released were four CDs of Chekalin's latest music, four DVDs + a Historic Edition, LTD Special four CD + 1 DVD MP3 format set that includes a dozen archival recordings along with his two pioneering works POST POP ~ NON POP and VOCALISE EN RAPID.
Lectures
Between 1982 and 1987, Archie taught a well-received course in the history of European experimental and psychedelicPsychedelic
The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
music for students grades 7-12 in the Oregon public school system, then later at the private Reed College
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...
. This material was later made available on compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
.
Album compilations
In 1982 a record album was issued by Eurock Records entitled The American Music Compilation. It featured tracks by Eddie JobsonEddie Jobson
Edwin "Eddie" Jobson is an English keyboardist and violinist noted for his use of synthesizers. He has been a member of several progressive rock bands, including Curved Air, Roxy Music, U.K., and Jethro Tull. He was also part of Frank Zappa's band in 1976-77...
, Jasun Martz
Jasun Martz
Jasun Martz is an American record producer, composer, musician, fine artist, creative director and sculptor who has worked on several international hit records. He has recorded with Michael Jackson, toured with Frank Zappa and helped arrange the hit "We Built This City" by Starship.Martz has lived...
, John Luttrelle, Richard Bone
Richard Bone
-Biography:Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Bone began his professional musical career creating soundtracks and scores for several off-Broadway companies working in experimental theater. In 1979, he released with his band Bone the single "Pirate the Islands/Headlines Have It" before joining the new-wave...
, Doctor Wize (Dennis Weise) and Anode (Robert Carlberg). It was re-released on CD in 2008.
In 1996 Patterson produced and annotated the 5-CD compilation boxed set of progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
for Rhino Records. It was called Supernatural Fairy Tales: The Progressive Rock Era.
CD-ROM
A multi-media hypertextHypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
released in 2000 contains all of the articles written for Eurock Magazine (some 1,500+ pieces), over 350 band discographies, plus hundreds of photographs and several videos of the bands featured. It also contains 40 minutes of exclusive music by Heretic (Hiro Kawahara), a Japanese experimental musician. The Heretic music was issued again in 2010 as a CD entitled REQUIEM, augmented by additional historical recordings.
Book
The Eurock Book, published in 2002, is subtitled "European Rock & the Second Culture", and contains most of the articles from Eurock Magazine plus new articles and interviews to bring it up to date. The introductory essay is an unpublished article by well-known rock journalist Lester BangsLester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, author and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock 'n' roll criticism....
about Amon Düül II
Amon Düül II
-Studio Albums:-Live Albums:-Compilations:-Singles:-External links:*...
. The 709-page book is fully indexed.
Electronic
Currently, Eurock operates as a websiteWebsite
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
, podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
and blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
on rocksbackpages.com.