The Cosmic Jokers were a West German krautrock supergroup,[1] though they were never a proper ensemble per se; their music was created from sessions put together by label head Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and Gille Lettman in early 1973, without the performers' knowledge.
[1] The Cosmic Jokers performed at several acid parties to be held at the sound studio owned by Dieter Dierks, where musicians were offered drugs in exchange for recording tracks.
Participants included Manuel Göttsching and Klaus Schulze of Ash Ra Tempel, Jürgen Dollase [de] and Harald Grosskopf of Wallenstein, and Dierks.
Kaiser took the tapes from these sessions, edited and mixed them with Dierks, and released them on his label, Kosmische Musik, complete with the musicians' pictures on the LP sleeve.
Schulze was not happy with the recordings, and was so angry after the release of Gilles Zeitschiff that he sued Kaiser.