Taken from
http://www.freakytrigger.com/hate.html :
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KRAFTWERK
Anyone who cycles is a bastard. You have your pavements, for the use of
the foot, and you have your roads, for the use of the car. Neither fish
nor fowl, the bicycle exists solely to annoy pedestrians and motorists
alike, to let middle-aged men case their flabby arses in lycra and then
wave them at you, and to allow people to wear hats even the Pet Shop Boys
would shun. I mention this only because an addiction to cycling is the
reason most often given for Kraftwerk's fifteen-year retirement from
making music. Makes sense, really. But while not wishing to play dentist
to any gift horses, I'd suggest that there might have been other factors
involved.
How, after all, would you make a Kraftwerk record? You could follow a
simple formula. A hi-tech, but essentially dull, item is chosen. The
motorway, for example, or the Tour De France, a race so polite that the
riders stop to swap jerseys every few miles. A keyboard is turned on. Now,
here's the cunning bit. As you play a tune on the keyboard - any will do,
but make sure you only use one finger - you sing some lyrics about your
chosen item. Again, any will do, but make sure they're very, very simple.
For example, if you're singing about Radioactivity, you might want to
sing: "Radioactivity / It's in the air for you and me". That's about the
level required. Make sure you sing like a robot - if you put any
inflection in your voice at all the spell will be broken and the audience
will suddenly realise that you are not in fact a futuristic machine-man
harbinger of the new era, but a balding man in an unfortunately tight
jumpsuit.
Anyway, say you decided to write a song about your weblog, a hi-tech item
indeed but most likely very, very boring. You get your keyboard, pick out
some Frere Jacques rip-off with your pinkie, and start singing.
"I change my website every day
[doot-doot-doot-de-da-doot-doot]
My weblog is the perfect way
[doot-doot-doot-de-da-doot-doot]
My weblog serves me very well
[doot-doot-doot-de-da-da-doot]
I use Shockwave and XML
[doot-doot-doot-de-da-doot-doot]"
So, demonstrably it's not the hardest thing in the world to make Kraftwerk
records. How come nobody does? (Least of all Kraftwerk themselves). The
official history suggests that the band - perfectionists, as the
staggering detail of their work so ably indicates - felt unable to compete
with the new wave of dance music which built on the foundations they had
etc. etc. Rubbish! What actually happened is that, around 1981, people
started buying computers, and those computers started making noises
themselves, and lo and behold the soundtracks to Chuckie Egg and Frag!
sounded exactly like Kraftwerk (except usually funkier). Suddenly the
bottom fell out of the cod-futurism market: the future had arrived, and it
sounded Krap. Ralf und Florian were reduced to singing horrible songs
about phone sex to pay the re-saddling bills, and then just resigned
themselves to back-catalogue irrelevance. As for influence, 25 years on
and Kraftwerk's biggest impact has been on a generation of twats
programming irritating four-note tunes into their mobile phones. How
vacuously modern, how very appropriate.
Tanya Headon | dis/agree? | 9/14/2000
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Brian MacDonald <brianm@kuci.org>
Hey, she wrote that.. I didn't...
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