The Cosmic Jokers

Founded in 1973, The Cosmic Jokers were a German krautrock supergroup from Berlin, Germany. The recording project was the brainchild of producer and writer Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser for his Kosmische Musik label. He coordinated recording sessions in 1973 in which musicians such as Ash Ra Tempel’s Manuel Göttsching and Klaus Schulze and Wallenstein’s Jürgen Dollase and Harald Grosskopf, along with Gille Lettmannand Dieter Dierks, whose studio served as a laboratory for their improvisations. The musicians were paid a small fee and offered drugs in exchange for performing improvisational performances in the studio. However, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser did not ask the musicians for their permission to use the tapes and images from these sessions. Five albums were released in 1974 – The Cosmic Jokers, Galactic Supermarket, Planeten Sit-In, Sci Fi Party (a label comp), and the remix compilation album Gilles Zeitschiff – without the permission of the musicians involved. They musicians themselves didn’t know of the albums’ existence until they stumbled across them in record stores. In 1975, Klaus Schulze was the first of the musicians to prosecute Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, which put an immediate end to the activities of the “group” and of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser’s career. Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser had no choice but to hastily flee Germany.

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