“Radioactivity” by Kraftwerk
From the 1975 album Radioactivity

I know things have gotten a little Kraftwerk-heavy here lately, but this is a pretty rare find. I don’t know the exact date on the video, but given that the guys are so young, they’re still using those rudimentary metal-on-metal electronic drums, and this is the original version of the song, I have to assume the video was shot in the mid-’70s. Sure, it has a very ’80s look about it, but we have to remember that these guys invented the ’80s… in the ’70s.

Even if it’s from the ’80s, it’s vintage Kraftwerk, and worth checking out.

Minimum-Maximum by Kraftwerk
Full 2005 live 2-DVD set

I normally don’t post anything this long, but this is an unusual case. I suspect this is an illegitimate posting of the video, so it may get pulled pretty soon. But while it’s here, it’s worth checking out. The quality is perfect.

By the way… if you like this, I strongly recommend clicking the Minimum-Maximum link and buying your own copy. I’m about to do just that.

“Die Roboter (The Robots)” by Kraftwerk
From the 1978 album The Man-Machine

It’s true, I’ve been listening to almost nothing but Kraftwerk lately, so I’m adding another track here. The Man-Machine, from 1978, was the point at which Kraftwerk fully embraced the mantra, Wir sind die Roboter — “We are the robots.”

This is a funny video. It’s the band performing live on German television, I assume, with some prerecorded bits mixed in. What’s strange about it is that it’s often hard to tell when we’re looking at the actual members of the band, and when we’re looking at their mannequin doppelgangers. Or are there mannequins at all? And, given Kraftwerk’s pioneering work on the hybridization of live performance with sequencers, does it really matter?

“Pocket Calculator” by Kraftwerk
From the 1981 album Computer World

To say I’ve become obsessed with Kraftwerk lately would be a gross understatement. In the past week I’ve accumulated four albums from their late ’70s/early ’80s heyday, and have been listening to them every chance I get.

But it’s not like I’ve just “discovered” them. I’ve known about Kraftwerk since I was a senior in high school. Unfortunately, that’s because that was the year The Mix was released, and it gave me a grossly erroneous impression of what the band was all about.

The Mix isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s not what these old tracks are about. It’s a collection of remixed and, often, re-recorded versions of old Kraftwerk tracks, done in a generic early ’90s techno style. Everything’s digital and exaggerated and ridiculous: a soulless reinterpretation of the band’s oeuvre by the band themselves.

I did enjoy that album somewhat, and it’s great for testing out a new sound system, but it’s the direct result of the impression that album made on me that I never bothered to go back and listen to the originals.

Which is not to say I never listened to Kraftwerk in the intervening years. I bought their first two albums (Kraftwerk and Kraftwerk 2) on import CD, and I found a pristine copy of their third album (Ralf & Florian) on vinyl some years ago. But anything from Autobahn onward was strictly… verboten.

It was actually the result of this blog that I got into the band’s original recordings: I was so impressed by the original version of “Computer Love” I wrote about a couple weeks ago that I had to get the whole album right away from Amazon MP3. And I got in touch with my old high school friend and prog rock co-conspirator to share the wealth. Turns out he had been as dismissive of the band all along as I had — which kind of made sense, given that we both encountered The Mix at the same time — and now we’re exchanging emails and raving about this new music like we haven’t done in about 15 years.

“Pocket Calculator” is a song of particular interest in our friendship, as it was the ultimate joke for us on The Mix. One night during a break from college, a group of us got together for a marathon game of Avalon Hill’s Civilization that started around 3 in the afternoon and ended well after midnight. Then three of us piled into my car (a beat-up 1983 Oldsmobile) and headed down to the local all-night greasy spoon with the version of this song from The Mix blasting at insane levels from the car stereo. Even on cassette it sounded good. But it never sounded as good as this version. Kraftwerk may have fashioned themselves as robots, but there’s something uniquely, intangibly, wonderfully human about this performance.

“Computer Love” by Kraftwerk
From the 1981 album Computer World

Today I am sitting in my home office working on three computers from various eras in Macintosh history — the aluminum MacBook that is my primary computer today; an iMac G4 from 2002 that I used for years and have just brought up from the basement to put back into service for my kids; and a comparatively ancient (1997) Power Macintosh 7300 that I recently salvaged from someone’s curb a few blocks from my house. I’m using the MacBook to write this while I am installing Mac OS X Panther (10.3) on the iMac (and I was just reminded that that version of Mac OS X used “Eple” by Röyksopp — a more recent classic of electronic music — during the “welcome” sequence), and I’m simultaneously installing Mac OS 9.1 on the Power Mac 7300. Later on, I’m also planning to use one of the extra sets of ADB keyboards and mice I also salvaged at the curb to try to bring my really ancient (1987) and long-defunct Mac SE back to life with a fresh install of System 7.0.1 (or maybe System 6.0.8). But before I can do that I need to track down some 3 1/2-inch floppy disks. (What?)

With all of this computer love happening, there was only one song I could select to feature today on this blog. Kraftwerk is another band that is only tangentially connected to the world of progressive rock. Known best for their highly influential (and way ahead of its time) electronic music of the late ’70s and early ’80s, the band actually started in the early ’70s with a slightly more organic, if no less experimental, sound, one that was well placed alongside other groundbreaking Krautrock pioneers like CAN, Neu and Guru Guru.

But here we’re in the midst of Kraftwerk’s early ’80s electronic peak, with the 1981 track “Computer Love,” from the same album that produced the classic (and equally nerdy) “Pocket Calculator.”

Update: As I was watching the full clip (after writing the main body of this post), I noticed a melody right near the end that, to the best of my recollection, is not in the original album version of this song. But man oh man, was it recognizable. And then it hit me: Coldplay! I like those guys, but I’m beginning to wonder if any of their music is original. At least in this case (unlike the infamous Joe Satriani incident) the imitation appears to be deliberate, and done with permission.

Update to the update: I just went back and listened to the original album version of the song, and the melody is there too. I think it’s just that the album version is more electronically bleepy-bloopy than the live version, and as a result that melody never stood out to my ears so much. (Also, it’s probably been since well before the release of X+Y that I’ve actively listened to this song.)

Update to the update to the update: In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that before tonight I had never heard the original album version of this or just about any Kraftwerk song — I knew them mainly for the remixes on The Mix. But since Computer World can be downloaded from Amazon MP3 for less than $5, I went for it — and wow, what a difference. I’ve been fairly dismissive of Kraftwerk all these years, despite my awareness of their vast influence on electronic music, solely because I had been put off the band by The Mix, not realizing just how different those versions of the songs were from the originals.