Monday, April 07, 2008

Kraftwerk 1973



Me and the lovely Mrs 50p Bloke saw Kraftwerk in 2004 at the Brixton Academy. Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter were the only two from the classic 'Werk line-up. But reading I Was A Robot by Wolfgang Flür, it's clear that it was always Ralf and Florian's band. And Kraftwerk live are still simply phenomenal, and in fact seem to have spent the last 20 years simply honing and fine-tuning their gizmos to deliver the hits as technologically perfectly as possible. In that respect, it's probably a better show now that it was in their 70s-80s pomp.

But even if Kraftwerk are a two-man operation, it's Interesting to see this clip from 1973, which shows them minus Karl Bartos, who was yet to join, and also without the mid-20th century animations and graphics. The newly-joined Flür is there, though, nervously tapping his homemade electronic drum pads. He describes the excitement he felt at this performance in his book - required reading for any Kraftwerk enthusiast, despite the comments posted by YouTube viewers.

1 comment:

Ben Willmott said...

Enjoyed many a late evening in Worcester to this soundtrack, so gentle and surprisingly organic. Years before the whole Eno 'Music For Airports' and Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Micko Bowling Green did his dissertation on them and shared a white wine by the Rhine with Florian discussing it. Am going to have to track some highlights of that down for spikyben!