Kraftwerk

I barely ever listen to Electric Café but when I saw them live "Music Non Stop" was probably the highlight of the whole performance

Same (on the Minimum Maximum tour)

I don't think I've seen this anywhere else... Really nice recording from Ottawa 1975. The dude has kindly included a FLAC download in the comments, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIT3naKlyWI&

Sweet.

Brilliant, thanks for the heads up.

Just gone up on D1me too, saying it's a different date and venue -

The Garden Auditorium (The Gardens)
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
May 7th, 1975

Notes on the show:

An incredible find that only just recently came to light after sitting for some 45 years. This comes courtesy of J.T. who got it from Saul Smaizys. If that name sounds familiar, he interviewed Ralf & Florian in April of 1975 on WXRT radio in Chicago for an article he would later write from that interview. In talking with those in the Kraftwerk community, we have deduced that this show is from Vancouver. Should further details come to light, I will update. Of particular interest is the very WEIRD intro to Kometenmelodie I. Ralf & Karl have a slight improv jam on vibes & the Vako Orchestron's "Vocal Choir." Sadly this tape suffers from lots of hiss and what sounds like radio bleed-through from another station

Thanks! Listening now!

this is great. fidelity not quite as high as the Denver / Concert Classics boot but good enough and it might be a better performance -- and, this one is the complete show. probably my favorite 'Kling Klang' straight out

fun to hear them introduce 'Ruckzuck' with 'this is a song about trains' and then afterwards say 'that was the Trans Canada Express'. the jam in the middle hasn't quite turned into 'Metal On Metal' yet but it's definitely now about trains! on the late 1975 shows they'd replaced the flute entirely with Orchestron and Minimoog, and the 'Ruckzuck' flute opening played on the Orchestron string patch literally becomes the eventual studio version of T.E.E. good examples of that on Croydon & Brighton, if you never get bored of 70's KW boots

i'm having a hard time being enthusiastic about kraftwerk after hearing green gartside tell a story in an interview in which he recounts one of them saying that they hate reggae.

That turns you off from their music? Unless they explicitly said something racist, having strong opinions about music is hardly a crime.

to me that detail is funny

It's a subtle distinction, did they actually say 'hate'? What was it Moz said, that Reggae was 'vile'?

look i just said i don't want to listen to kraftwerk lately because of that. but you're right gerald mcboing-boing having opinions about music isn't a crime, thanks for pointing that out.

wonder what Kraftwerk made of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ntXAqn4B4

i think it's weird that two people are feeling the need to defend kraftwerk from racism right off the bat tbh, not liking reggae obviously doesn't mean someone's racist. i mean it's humanizing, kraftwerk are obviously amazing but they're also just people. still, not liking reggae kind of sucks.

green says one of them said "we hate reggae"

directly to him

idk it's just kind of stuck in my head but w/e. i'll always love kraftwerk and don't think the impressiveness of their project has to have anything to do with liking reggae or not.

I just read an admittedly pretty gossipy book about the Dusseldorf music scene and Kraftwerk come in for a fair amount of stick in that!

Wolfgang Flur getting kicked up the arse, more than once, by some punks was quite amusing though. He could see the funny side.

Kraftwerk probably one of the few bands that made it out of the 70s and 80s without trying a single reggae tune

is there a "failed reggae diversions" thread?

Geir left us with this, which probably counts:

White boy does reggae music

Except it's not just white guys who can't do reggae. Also this:

A reggae song by a person or band that has no business playing a reggae song

oh dear @ that first one

the second one, yes, that's what I mean

I was just interested to know if they actually used the word 'hate', is all.

People often tend to use it instead of simply 'dislike', the former obviously being much more robust.

Hall Of Mirrors would work quite well as a reggae song, thinking about it

this vancouver show rules ...

Somebody should do an album of reggae Kraftwerk covers just to piss off Ralf.

Not reggae obvs, but this album used to entertain me for hours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGnFF5w5sro

... called "Reggaeoactivity". Can totally hear "Radioland" as a reggae track.

I just read an admittedly pretty gossipy book about the Dusseldorf music scene and Kraftwerk come in for a fair amount of stick in that!

sounds interesting, what's the book?

Willing to bet it's this one:

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/31753116-electri-city

Have a copy myself, quite good.

That's it. As I say it's very gossipy but full of interesting anecdotes.

Somebody should do an album of reggae Kraftwerk covers just to piss off Ralf.

Here's a reggae Model, and there's a moderate smattering of reggae in the 8+ hours of DJ Food Kev's Kraftwerk Kovers Kollections

Not reggae obvs, but this album used to entertain me for hours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGnFF5w5sro

always liked this too but I'm still irritated it was all done with synthesizers

what why?

idk the idea of a real mariachi band doing Kraftwerk is funny to me, some German dude setting his Casio to "Spanish Trumpet" less so

I saw him perform live with a full horn section about 15 years ago. was fun

xp aw i s'pose. i like these on their own outside of the idea of this as comedy. TEE as cumbia was p inspired.

anyone watch this krautrock documentary on Nite Flight app? my friend did, it's 3 hours and is apparently super great despite being kind of amateur.

Not reggae but another cover with Caribbean roots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLEk7Xcz1B4

That cheered me right up

that song was made for steel drum, lovely

Re the "Green" interview, he'd written to them suggesting they pair up with Gregory Isaacs. To which Ralf replied that Kraftwerk didn't like Reggae. Not Ralph himself, kraftwerk as a unit. A band that have never used guest artists, and don't move into other music styles.

That's how I understood it anyway.

this whole "does kraftwerk dislike or hate reggae" issue is pretty funny

“It was meant to be a duet between Kraftwerk and Gregory Isaacs,” recalls Green. “We got a positive response from Gregory Isaacs’ management, but nothing from Kraftwerk. A few years later, I met Kraftwerk. I went to see Tito Puente with Ralf [Hutter] and Florian [Schneider]. I think I brought it up, and I remember them saying that they hated reggae.”

--

I wrote a song called "The 'Sweetest Girl'", and I went to [Rough Trade's] Geoff Travis and told him I wanted to get Gregory Isaacs to do it with Kraftwerk. I don't really know how that would have worked. We did get a response from Gregory's management saying that he would be up for it. We didn't get a response from Kraftwerk, though. I did meet [Kraftwerk's] Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider a few years later in New York at a Tito Puente gig. They were kind of vague about whether or not they knew that I had approached them, but they did say that they didn't like reggae.

we may never know.

everyone should be free to dislike anything. it's not like musicians are sage, super-human creatures - we all have limitations, many of them self-imposed, at any moment in time.

I close can't stand reggae either, because it's been ruined for me as a signifier for bored bourgeouis youth trying hard to let their hair down. although I have accrued lots of reggae albums myself, I still have this pain inside when thinking of college parties. I love dub though, and I also like whenever my favourite white musicians dabble in reggae (for example, Duran Duran with "The Reflex" live in '87).

I'm sure if KW said they can't stand country music (as many musicians have gone on record saying it) no one would have but flipped an eyelid.

I read in the recently published book 'Kraftwerk: Future Music From Germany' by Uwe Schutte that Michael Jackson was up for collaborating in the 80s but they were having none of it

Green would've been better off approaching YMO if he wanted an electronic act, they'd collaborate with pretty much anyone and everyone.