Kraftwerk More Influential Than the Beatles

You don't need to find three or four friends to form a band anymore and buy drums and guitars and keyboards. You can do it all yourself in your bedroom on your mobile phone. I don't think that is a good thing myself but it is what it is.

 

If what you produce is good, then it's a good thing. If you have no ability to play so much as even a triangle or a tambourine but are able to produce good music then that is a good thing.

 

Not to go off on a tangent but personally I think there are certain genius people that can work in isolation (Aphex Twin, Beethoven) but most people benefit from working with others and the interaction you get in that environment. Even if it's just ideas and inspiration, like Bowie and Eno messing about in a studio.

 

Brian Eno talked about this in one of his books. Self Generating sounds...Self Generative sounds.

I've had that with electronics...where you just let the sounds/noises/beeps play out and the sound starts to change and work off itself...without any human manipulation.

Kraftwerk seems more intentional and precise rather than random. If it's the machines that are allowing for/enabling the precision and synchronized sounds, it's Kraftwerk who are overseeing the machines and making the ultimate editorial and production decisions.

 

Yes, I did notice that.

And actually thought that it made it more relevant/interesting...to see what people were thinking about Kraftwerk that "long" ago.

 

I'm not making a value judgement when I ask how many of their original members are still in the group?

I'm trying hard to "remain neutral" for the purpose of discussion and clarification.

I'm referring to this part of the 1997 article I posted earlier today, where it states...

"With its 1977 album, "Trans-Europe Express," Kraftwerk created one of laboratory pop's masterpieces, a prescient album full of romantic synthesizer melodies over metronome beats conceived around a train ride through a borderless Europe. The album was released the same year as the Sex Pistols' watershed punk album, "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols." But as punk rock was telling young people that they could form their own rock band without technical skill, Kraftwerk was sending out the same do-it-yourself message. But not only were skilled musicians no longer needed, neither were bands: just machines.

On the band's next brainstorm, the album "Man Machine," with visuals borrowed from Soviet art that glorified the automaton worker, it completed its conceptual evolution. The catch phrase of the "Trans-Europe Express" album, "We are showroom dummies," became, on this album, "We are the robots." The band started refusing to be photographed. From then until now, Kraftwerk has only allowed its homemade robotlike replicas of themselves to be used for press photos.

But Kraftwerk's conceptual high-water mark as human machines was also the catalyst for the band's undoing. Unlike Hutter and Schneider, the rest of the band wasn't ready to become machines. They were frustrated: the pair constantly turned down attractive offers for collaborations with, among others, Michael Jackson, Elton John and Bowie, and the band began working at a tediously slow pace.

"We developed in the end that we were the robots, and I didn't want to be a robot any longer because I had changed my personality over those years," said Flur, who now leads his own minimal electronic band, Yamo. "And I could not wait always six or eight years for the next album or tour. If robots stand still, then they get rusty. They always have to work."

Per Kraftwerk: Call Them the Beatles of Electronic Dance Music

 

oh please. people have been doing this for decades...all that has changed is the technology.

 

Not to the extent they do now in my opinion, so we will have to agree to differ.

 

I just found this thread on page 9.

In danger of being buried.

 

Kraftwerk are from Dusseldorf in Germany, last week the Tour de France started there. I was watching it on tv with my 2 sons, 10 and 8 years old.

I played them some Kraftwerk, they liked it and said it sounded more modern than what I usually play.... They even played it again the nex day!

 

they were, but i believed they grew beyond that definition

 

Like the Beatles...

 

no the Beatles were never a boy band, unless you want to call the stones a boy band or any other 60's pop group for that matter, as i have said before the closest to the boy bands from that era were the likes of the Four Tops, Temptations Drifters etc etc

 

So what you're saying is some of the greatest music of all time was made by boy bands?

 

Yes the Beatles and Stones etc were very definitely boy bands. The definition that I recognise is pop music made by young males aimed primarily at young girls. That was the early Beatles, pop music, and if you are singing 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' you are addressing young teenage girls pretty obviously.

 

I don't really agree with that but it's true that 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' is not exactly 'The Times They Are A-Changin''.

 

The Beatles early music was aimed at young people of both genders.

 

Well, the Kraftwerk give away thread at the top of this forum has already grown 28 pages in just one day. Quite some interest for a band that some here have never heard of or consider basicly forgotten.

 

Found this by coincidence at Twitter, a young Beck being dressed like Kraftwerk

 

I can hardly wait for the Kraftwerk giveaway results!!!!!!

 

Be careful, can be a strict Beatles fan eager to flip that Kraftwerk item at EBay

(Right now we have 50 pages at SHTV of people eager to win the contest , that's not bad. Hope all know their musical at least or are open to it)

 

I listened to side one of Kraftwerk's The Mix via cassette...last night.

Actually very good.