Kraftwerk More Influential Than the Beatles

I do believe you will have a bright future here. We will let Peter Pyle show you around.

 

Meaning?

 

It's not about the Female Artists being scantily dressed?

As they Strut and Gyrate?

Sex Appeal?

The women are just Props For The Production put on by the Producer?

But Adelle might be an exception.

Where does SHE fit into all of this? With her soaring/dramatic/emotional/ heartfelt/confessional/ haunting songs?

 

Musically, even with Adele, the producer is king. One guy plus singer. That's a good enough game plan for pop music over the last 20 years or so?

Music-wise....Adele? I don't know. Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion?

 

So Kraftwerk wins again and has brought us to this point?

 

You know that song that goes "All we are is dust in the wind...?"

Is that really true?

 

I wouldn't blame The Beatles.

Not even sure I would really blame Kraftwerk. Do they get credit because they sort of put the tech on the map?

Pop music now just seems, in a way, like the same sort of meaningless fluff that existed before The Beatles even came along. Simple dance numbers....but instead of a band, it's a producer with a band in the box.

Madonna wins again.

 

Solid tunes that get covered in rock, blues, jazz, classical, soul/r&b, avant garde, etc., And Ralf and Florian should know, they were so excited by Hendrix, they even played with a Hendrix impersonator. Hendrix is the game changer here, his virtuosity and use of harmonic saturation ushered in the modern age in sound in pop/rock, he excited the German avant garde/ krautrock/ kosmische far more than the Beatles.

 

Yes, it's probably true.

Not only that, but the love you take is probably equal to the love you make.

 

I think you're missing my point. I was saying that if you strip away the essential things that make something great, of course it ceases to be great.

Jimi's songs without the guitar, the Bulls without Jordan. Average stuff.

A Ferrari without an engine? Just a nice looking piece of metal. Kraftwerk without "keyboards, synthetic instrumentation and drum noises"? Well, yeah...you ain't got much.

That's all I was saying!

 

The Beatles were more precise than Jimi Hendrix.

Kraftwerk is TOO precise.

Harmonic saturation is not what I associate with Kraftwerk.

 

I think you are missing my point, Jimi's tunes are well written enough, lyrically and musically you can strip away the guitar playing and they do stand up, such that they are covered throughout many genres.


Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing Live by Mark Summer of Turtle Island Quartet

 

We're in trouble.

 

I looked that one up on wiki, had to change it...it's not really true

 

I thought we were stardust. Now wind has to be involved?

 

So I guess you're not familiar with genres like classical or jazz. And yet we're supposed to care what you have to say about electronic?

 

They play guitars so they were influenced by The Beatles. They play loud at times so they were influenced by Led Zeppelin.

 

Kraftwerk might not have had much to do with harmonic saturation (I'm not sure because I don't know what that is), but they were huge on melody. It's one reason they were so influential.

 

So did a few bands from GDR. But yes, of course Kraftwerk were from West Germany.

 

Bands were allowed outside of East Germany? If true, I'm surprised. I know the Russians didn't allow it.

 

The thread is partially about The Beatles, and The Beatles start with the songs...and the songs hold up and most everyone knows them and knows them well, plus great productions, arrangements, and performances, varied and musically enjoyable and accessible as well as adventurous and ground breaking...I don't think many know or care about Kraftwerk, they were just some precursor to Devo...humans pretending to be robots making music. It's no contest, not even close. McCartney's Temporary Secretary is better than anything they ever did, musically (although if you want to give examples to change my mind, feel free, as like I said, the only song I know of theirs really is that Autobahn one, and it's mildly amusing, but other than that, it's no Whip It.)

You don't have to care what I say about Electronic. I just think it's mostly rubbish and has ruined pop music, at least the way "electronic" has influenced pop music. It's all production with nothing much beyond that.

No one cares about classical or jazz much either these days. I would say, for me, though, both of those, too, start with the song (melody). Again, you don't have to care what I say. Isn't that how the internet works? People say stuff, their opinion. No one has to care.

 

Really? I think it might be.

 

1) This thread is about influence in music, not what you personally think constitutes "good" music. It was also probably intended as a Kraftwerk thread, not a Beatles thread (in spite of the title).

2) Kraftwerk had tons of melody in their music--like literally every single track starting with Ralf and Florian was rife with melody. Have you ever actually listened to their albums?

3) "Temporary Secretary" (one of my favorite solo McCartney tracks) is basically McCartney consciously ripping off Kraftwerk's sound, which is if anything a signifier of Kraftwerk's influence at the time regardless of whether McCartney's effort was "better" than anything Kraftwerk did.

4) I'm still not sure you know what this thread is about. But don't worry--you're not alone.

5) I won't dispute the qualities of pop music or modern music. All I can say is that among the many things The Beatles inspired, one major thing was innovation. I guess you'd prefer five decades of 60s style pop/rock tunes, but that's just not how modern music operates and The Beatles are largely to thank for that. In the long run, Kraftwerk (like Devo) will probably be a footnote in the history books, but for the time being their presence looms large over pop music and other genres. And that's what the thread is about. Whether that's "good" or not is hardly the point. And obviously The Beatles were more influential than Kraftwerk--it's a stupid premise to kick off what could have been a solid discussion about Kraftwerk and progressive electronic in general (though let's be honest the thread would've died pretty quickly).

6) It's not that I don't care--it's that you honestly sound like you don't understand how electronic music started or how it evolved.

 

If you're not familiar with much of Kraftwerk's material, how can you say that something as weak as Temporary Secretary is better than everything they did? Humans trying to be robots? You think that's all there is to them?

 

It was The Beatles in the title that made me post.

If there was a thread that said Madonna is more influential than The Beatles, I might throw in my opinion in that one, too.

No, I said as much. What I've heard doesn't do it for me. I get that they are seminal and all that. But it seems more just the concept and use of instruments that makes them a "thing". Musically, I don't know that "people", the world, is all that into it. Whereas they are The Beatles. The Beatles aren't just about putting guitars and studio produtction on the map. They are about the music above all.

What's a good Kraftwerk melody?

Sure. McCartney was influenced by Fred Astaire, too. Far moreso probably. All kinds of things are "influential".

Okay. I said my bit. I don't think Kraftwerk holds a candle to The Beatles, even if every last musician on earth ends up making music on their cell phone.

Okay. I think it's sort of an indirect influence, but whatever.

I get how it evolved. It started long before Kraftwerk. It even started before Tomorrow Never Knows.

Anyway, don't worry about me. I said my bit. I'll bow out!