Kraftwerk in Helsinki
Kraftwerk, live in Helsinki
Talking about Kraftwerk is awfully similar to discussing the impact of Orwell or Scorcese: it’s painfully obvious, redundant, and slightly embarrassing because I’m reduced to a mumbling mess that can utter little more than “so good”.
But Kraftwerk is just so good. Here is the purity and simplicity of a single concept, diligently tested and gradually streamlined over forty years. Kraftwerk built a genre out of robots, cars, bicycles, and sheer repetition. In the process, they created a cultural juggernaut with an endless shadow, spinning off a cliché that has become part of our cultural memory via Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons — but the moment you see the silhouette of four men posed like mannequins, a chill rushes up and all of that is forgotten. As my friend Arabella said, “We’re looking at the original text.”
It’s easy to forget how many perfect moments they’ve created: Man-Machine. Tour de France. Numbers. Computer World. The Model. Neon Lights. Autobahn. Trans-Europe Express. We are the robots. When the band leaves the stage and the curtain rises on four plastic robots, the relationship between the audience and the performer is short-circuited along with the connection between man and technology: it feels strange to cheer and dance for robots. Twenty-eight years ago, Kraftwerk sang I program my home computer, beam myself into the future and each year these reverberations become more profound as the band performs from laptops and the audience waves its cellphones and cameras, broadcasting each moment to the computernet.
Because Kraftwerk’s brand has become so vivid since its inception in 1970, it often eclipses their absorption of political flashpoints such as the Autobahn, the Bolshevik cover of Man-Machine, or the grim pun of Radio Activity. For a proper biography, I recommend Tim Barr’s Kraftwerk: From Dusseldorf to the Future (With Love)
And the show itself? Of course it was perfect. Only caveat is that they didn’t play my favorite song:
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Kraftwerk – Spacelab
from The Man-Machine. Kling Klang, 1978 | buy mp3s
to me, Kraftwerk are more important than the Beatles, Stones, Zepplin, and Doors put together multiplied times 1000. they’re up there with any musicians who have ever done the thing. fucking brilliant, and every time i play their shit i am reminded of it.
Amazing, you are very lucky to have seen them.
The mouse pointer that appeared on the screens every now and then was a bit annoying. But Kraftwerk was good, the show was beyond my expectations.
Saw them in Denver last year; probably the best show I’ve ever attended. I agree with Tom above, but the amazing thing to me is that so few people (at least in the US) are aware of their significance, even if they know the band. Now that’s vaguely embarrassing.
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