Kraftwerk

At least when Sir Paul does his Beatles medleys, his band are not miming, nor are they dressed as the Beatles.

And it's really saying something when you cash-in on your legacy more cynically than Paul McCartney does.

a) kraftwerk > beatles
b) it sounds like you've never seen them live

The Beatles, no. Kraftwerk, yes.

as these live shows are literally designed as a museum piece, I think they're somewhat immune to most traditional forms of criticism

at the end of 1998 SF show at the Warfield, after the third encore, people applauded for nearly 15 minutes, pretty much at full blast; despite nearly everyone knowing that there was no more material for them to play, that there was no fourth encore available in the sequencer, people just stood there with all the lights on and cheered, even though they knew it would have been out of character for them to reappear for one bow. I don't ever expect to see an audience response that devoted on that scale ever again.

2004 show was markedly less amazing and diluted by Soundtracks songs, and you could kind of tell Florian was not as into it. and I do hear you; this is not even close they were when they were a genuine live band from 70-81, critical things have gone missing and it's not really true Kraftwerk without Florian. but the concept being presented here is beyond the individuals, so it's very difficult for me to feel too cynical about this

& from what I've seen of the moma / 2011 3D-era youtubes so far; the visuals have really come into their own with this tour, they were good in 98, but Stefan Pfaffe deserves to be one of the four guys onstage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwTpumtTGj0&feature=relmfu

and at risk of coming off as a completely undiscriminating fanboy, but I like aspects of the Hilpert-era retools; the breakdown at 3:34 is better than the Mix or the 2004 tour version of 'Radioactivity'. and you can tell it's Ralf playing the faux-Orchestron pad on the outro. I prefer the original, but for me it's a good mix of updating while staying intrinsic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=17fTsU2wYpA

Isn't Hilpert responsible for The Mix version also?

Well when I saw them the part that got the most applause was when the robots came out. I see where you're coming from everything but recent Kraftwerk performances aren't really about the people in the band. I mean, it's not even clear what any of them actually do anymore.

If we're complimenting the new lineup, let me just point out that it really is incredible what they've done to "Musique Nonstop" and the "Tour de France Etapes", which sound way better live now than they ever did on the albums.

These full album shows feel like the end of the line for them as a live band. It's hard to see where they'll go after this. If they go back to sporadically doing greatest-hits sets afterwards I can't see the enthusiasm being very high. Although I'd definitely go if there was a (highly unlikely) mass hatchet burying and we got a tour from Hütter/Schneider/Flür/Bartos. And it would probably sound exactly the same as the sets they're playing now.

or, surprise 9th show debuting new album

what's the actual beef between ralf und florian anyway?

as far as I know, Florian just got bored with it all? (plus, he's nearing retirement age) Bartos left for the same reasons (basically, slow work ethic). I can see those two rejoining. Flur seems to have left under more dubious circumstances.

>Isn't Hilpert responsible for The Mix version also?

yes, but they keep tweaking it: in '98 they played the Mix version, in '04 they reverted to a version closer to the original studio arrangement but still with the Sellafield samples, and this '12 version adds a new dubby breakdown to the '04 take

new visuals for Metal On Metal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruWSEEWWFEw&feature=relmfu

or, surprise 9th show debuting new album

I like the idea of Kraftwerk going on the road to test out new material. Ralf: "We're just doing it to iron out the kinks lads, see how the audience responds, feel out what works and what doesn't. If we get really stuck we'll stick in a few covers. Louie Louie anyone?"

I'm sure I read somewhere that one of their robots used to hold a calculator up to its teeth, 'playing' it Hendrix style. Although I may have just imagined it.

I can testify that Florian played the calculator behind his head Hendrix style on The Mix tour in 1991.

Flur left for more or less the same reasons as Bartos: fuck all was happening. But he got pretty bitter about the subsequent redefinition of Kraftwerk=Ralf+Florian+ two grannies on bongos. His book has some interesting moments but gets pretty boring. Should have been seriously edited to omit his post-Kraftwerk career and eliminate some of the bitterness.

Gonna start by replying a bit to everything (the username everything, not, like, everything) here, and then waffle drunkenly off into space (so everything, this is not really a reply to your post, even if I use it as a launching pad):

Flur was the techhead who was largely responsible for designing and constructing their studio gear and stage equipment. Apart from facilitating the recording of these albums, the aesthetic that he created is a massive part of the band's reputation.

Yeah, there is a thing here. In the same vein, Ralf & Florian were early in seriously ~thinking~ and ~working~ with sound as an abstract scientific object (eg not necessarily tied to known instruments) for popular usage (which eg contemporary-composition people didn't at the time coz that would obv be totalitarian /adorno). It's like, early days of a technology, what do you do if you have a deep understanding of the scientific acoustical domain? Experiment a bit (which they did), release something (which they did), and plus obv also get some engineering whizkid who astound you by soldering wires to your drumsticks and covering your drums with tinfoil, thus taking it from interesting to awesome.

But the Kraftwerk conundrum/problem: Once the world went from analogue to digital, they *became* like everyone else. This was, I'm afraid, inevitable on principle, at least seen from now. Given that music/media is delivered digitally to consumers, there is -- on principle at least -- *no way* that superior analogue soundcraft can trump trivial programming skills. To be a pest: *anyone* can trivially write a computer programme to reproduce the contents of an analoguely generated but digitally distributed .wav file; even the greatest synthesizer/woodwind/tinfoilengineer can't craft machinery to reproduce any digital sound thrown at them. Yah, I'm close to being unreasonably tautological here I know, but still.

Innovation, and even more importantly creativity, was shifted into the abstract domain of algorithms rather than mechanics to manipulate sound. (I'll take for granted that stuff like "making catchy tunes" is pretty much constant through time). But given their undoubted expertise, why could not Kraftwerk stay at the forefront of this? Because computers (ie the haha means of production) became cheap. A major reason KW were at the forefront for many many years was that their shit was *fucking expensive*.

Right, back to everything:

I was never too comfortable with the post-1990 idea that Kraftwerk=Ralf, Florian and two goons in costumes but went along with it as the concerts were still good. But as decades passed by without almost nothing new creatively it became obvious that Kraftwerk were, and always will be, the four members from the classic line-up.

The Big Four is my mental picture of Kraftwerk. I love the phrase "two goons in costumes", it is fair. After the age of Karl and Wolfgang, Florian was kinda my man left in the group due to his wicked smile at underleg pocket calculator shenanigans. I'm thinking I should go back some day and listen to pre-Autobahn KW, but it seems I never do. Even though "three goons in costumes" seems even worse, I urge anyone to continue posting those current youtubes of the MOMA stuff, I can't kick it completely it seems... :)

(I guess another thing about KW and the discussion above is that I've really, really never seen them in my head as being a "live band". But then, I never do that about any band actually -- I'm somewhat Geirish here probably, feeling live performances are somehow poor simulacra of the real thing ie recorded sound which is the Only Thing That Counts haha.)

I am down for gabbing about this all day (and want to apologize to everything for challenging him about not seeing them live, it's clear you're a pretty devoted student of the history)

I think a great deal of the criticism being levelled at them is due to the fact that in the 70's, they actually were a particularly incredible live band. Occasional tracks would use a rhythm box, a simple sequencer, or a brief vocodered pre-recording, but frequently every single sound you heard was hand-triggered. Kraftwerk challenged the idea of this music being 'studio-only' every time they toured, and like any live band you can hear them breaking in versions of the next album's material on each tour.

So I can totally relate to the disappointment of Everything at the current museum incarnation, even if I myself think it's fascinating

Oh everything, the Flür book: It is chock-full of unseemly griping, but I'd recommend it to any KW fan for History, ifn't anything else.

A favourite part (I paraphrase obv, and also it's been years since I read it): "and after the release of this record released in the middle of the seventies, we had a party where there was champagne and dancing and fun and a sex movie shown by the miracle of super-8 on the wall in the bathroom in the hotel room."

Apparently about 30 years later, the *real* Kraftwerk (ie Ralf) tried to EXPURGATE the sex movie bit from the book by LAWYERS bcz porn was then extremely unpoliticallycorrect. Can't have that haha!

xpost

as far as the 'liveness' of the current incarnation, here's a good 2005 youtube of 'Music Non Stop' taken from a balcony, zooming in on each of their consoles to show what their hands are doing during each of their solos. that blip at 0:05, shockingly improvised

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpilbvC5sgI

those were the days:

http://www.currybet.net/images/blog2008/20080511_old-school-live.jpg

I think a great deal of the criticism being levelled at them is due to the fact that in the 70's, they actually were a particularly incredible live band.

I'm sorry Milton, but I'm pretty sure that for about everyone who's ever heard about Kraftwerk, listened to Kraftwerk, loved Kraftwerk, hated Kraftwerk, this is not a thing at all. What kind of live band they were in the 70s? That can hardly be a Thing, I'm sure?

Their records, and their records alone, is why they are all-time in the first place, that is obvious, surely? If you disagree -- ask around here on ILM, a circuit than which I challenge you to find another informal group more knowledgeable and judicious -- if you manage this, I might yield.

(getting more geirian by the minute; kraftwerk will do that to ya)

o wait MP you saying you actually SAW kw in the flute-age live in the 70s? :-000

wd of course have same memories if possible, but is not.

(also I think the boing/musique/teeechnopop triptych LP side is way underratedest @ canon so to speak)

some great footage here (incl. the band dancing) and a recent interview with Flur:

whoa, really enjoyed that

I have listened to far more live recordings of 70s Kraftwerk than I have KW albums

any good recordings out there? (lots of bootlegs mentioned upthread, but most I heard were pretty skeevy sound quality)

>Their records, and their records alone, is why they are all-time in the first place, that is obvious, surely?

No, I think there's a real argument to be made for the fact that they toured these albums as a very live band. I think people who came to those shows with any pre-conceptions of electronic music being a studio-only thing had those pre-conceptions erased.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/krautwerk-satisfies-ticketless-kraftwerk-fans-in-brooklyn-20120411

The night's headliner was billed as Free Kitten(esque), which was the first performance in years by Kim Gordon and Julie Cafritz's Free Kitten, minus Yoshimi P-We but with the addition of Magick Markers' Pete Nolan on drums. They delivered a thumping, synth-free version of "Heavy Metal Kids," a radio session-only tune, that will not be playing at MoMA this week. Playing a song that only the most ardent fans would recognize was a fitting end to a show crafted by fans for fans.

when you cash-in on your legacy more cynically than Paul McCartney does.

― everything, Thursday, April 12, 2012 12:33 PM (4 hours ago)

McCartney hardly played any Beatles material for a long time afterward. Don't know how the incorporation of it into his live shows has been "cynical." Or anything he's done re. the Beatles, really. That strikes me as a cheap shot - and inaccurate.

I'd agree with Tim there

many of my favorite bootlegs are fairly lo-fi room recordings, but here are some of the ones that are radio / TV or at least mix the board in a bit with the room:

K4 - (live june 12, 1971)
!/2 - (compilation of WDR TV performances) - these first two are mostly Kraftneu, more Krautrock than not
19750520 - Concert Classics
19760228 - Somewhere In Europe
19810907 - Virtu ex Machina aka Nippon Numbers
19980607 - Warfield San Francisco (this is just barely a board recording, but it does have at least a bit of bass, some people prefer the Tribal Gathering boot anyway for energy)

Thanks for the recommendations Milton - these are great

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

yeah, i've been obsessed with that boot, the version of "Autobahn" is really cool

Yeah I agree, this is fantastic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIKR0z87jH8

Whew. Lot's to wade through here but the idea of these shows as more of a museum piece is dead on correct. Seeing last night's show 8 can attest to it. It's the whole package, the setting, the presentation, the concept. Unless you were there it's pretty tough to get the entire feeling of the proceedings. And as much as I would have loved seeing them jamming "Ruckzuck" in 1971, the Radio-Activity show was special in it's own way. Just wish it had been a tad bit louder.

I thought this was funny.
http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/800/fran-drescher-kraftwerk.jpg

http://hipsterrunoff.com/altreport/2012/04/fran-drescher-goes-see-kraftwerk-ruins-vibe-her-annoying-voice.html

Yeah those wonderful Tokyo recordings really show how different they sound nowadays, if you listen back to back with say, the "minimum-maximum" versions.

Re. bootlegs, one show I was at was the Glasgow show in Nov 1991 and there is an audio boot of it out there. However, there was a big deal at the time of how the show was being transmitted via the internet to, IIRC, two or three European cities - maybe Paris and somewhere in Germany. This was pretty groundbreaking at the time. I can't really remember the details very clearly though. There were crowds at these cities who had paid to watch the show in real time and I think we were shown live pictures of the other audiences during the show (I might be imagining that). Anyway, this makes me think that there must be video of that show somewhere. Anyone know anything about that?

can anyone hook a dude up with the WDR TV bootleg? i know i've seen a lot of this on youtube, but would like to get the audio...

ol' Franny's a Kraftwerk fan? *makes high pitched nasal sound*

first 'Europe Endless' since 1976 (or perhaps 1981)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZGgmL5CSfo

and they pretty much cloned it. except for Ralf's characteristic occasional stray note.

the other unique songs from TEE posted by user citybug: http://www.youtube.com/user/citybug

Franz Schubert and Endless Endless were left off much like Geiger Counter was in the Radioactivity night.

KRAFTWERK SETLIST 4/11/12
The Robots
Radioactivity
Radioland
Airwaves
Intersmission
News
The Voice Of Energy
Antenna
Radio Stars
Uranium
Transistor
Ohm Sweet Ohm
Autobahn
Trans Europe Express
The Model
The Man-Machine
Numbers
Computer World
Home Computer
Tour de France
Planet Of Visions
Medley: Boing Boom Tschak, Technopop, Musique Non Stop

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2012/04/kraftwerk_playe_1.html

that was the show I wished I could attend the most. would absolutely love to hear "Radioland", "Airwaves", and "Antenna" live. Mostly because they'd never play 'em otherwise!

Franz Schubert and Endless Endless were left off much like Geiger Counter was in the Radioactivity night.

this really sucks - FS is one of the most beautiful things in their whole catalogue

yes, that would have been an interesting piece to update. maybe ralf wasn't feeling up to taking that long of a keyboard solo. they also left out the 'Metal On Metal' breakdown in TEE, though they played it the previous night.

'Hall of Mirrors' leads with samples from the studio version. 'Showroom Dummies', also largely cloned. except they end it with a bit of the riff from 'Mitternacht', which is fun as live versions of 'Mitternacht' from 74 & 75 would usually start out with a jam using the riff that turned into 'Showroom Dummies'.

hope someone managed to capture all the other tracks from 'Radioactivity', that was the night with the most songs they've never played live before.

>Their records, and their records alone, is why they are all-time in the first place, that is obvious, surely?

No, I think there's a real argument to be made for the fact that they toured these albums as a very live band. I think people who came to those shows with any pre-conceptions of electronic music being a studio-only thing had those pre-conceptions erased.

Fair enough, I guess? Our disagreement here may have to do mostly with location -- Oslo/Norway is an obvious stop for bands of a certain size (and a couple of sizes below) these days with the festivals and all, but even in my living memory it wasn't like that. I've heard legends the Sex Pistols actually played here once in a small room. People are still talking about when Miles Davis played at Sardine's in 1985 or something. The same year, the Waterboys' gig was a highpoint for rock ppl in this country. The Rolling Stones FAMOUSLY played here -- once! -- in 1965, and I'm not sure they ever came back until 1989. The Beatles never played here, certainly not after the Stones did. (OK lame joke.)

And most of the world is backwaters like that, I'd think. Maybe I'll have a look for kw tour schedules of the 70s, but gut feeling is that classic records become classic records because the records are classic, nothing more.

they weren't the only touring electronic band, but unlike Tangerine Dream & Klaus Schulze hunched down behind consoles & barely visible behind fog-machines, my friends who saw them in 75 & 81 both mentioned that with Kraftwerk, every sound you heard had a gesture attached to it; you could see what they were playing. in the 70's, even the people who knew what electronic music was thought of it as inherently studio-only; they expected those concerts to be tape playback. But no; two percussionists driving everything, so you can't underestimate the influence of those concerts.

the show still has aspects of live performance, but it's like the difference between a cyclist and a jet pilot

sideways but full-length 'autobahn'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNnXE0JQe1c

Aye mp; I'm not saying your take is wrong, just... alien to me somehow. Invoking the live shows of Tangerine Dream and/or K Schulze... maybe *they* played Oslo some time back in the 70s, but I wouldn't bank on it. (I would of course be srsly underage at that time anyway, so ah I dunno...)

(liking that last video obv though -- cgi of vw beetle fahrend along like whoosh hurrah! :-D My grandmother finally got a driver's licence at about the age of 60; bought a bright orange beetle. I can still remember the registration number, and the plastic hole pattern in the ceiling inside made me see 3d; the grandmother mentioned rounded 96 just now btw. OK, *now* I'm babbling.)

So,

The 12345678 boxset is getting 're-issued' in black box with LP style little sleeves, for twice the price of the existing box.

Just so's you know..

It's numbered - just 2000 copies!

mmm...