TOBY
Group: Members
Posts: 1562
Joined: May 2002 |
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Posted: Mar. 17 2004, 07:12 |
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Right chaps I went to see Kraftwerk last night in Glasgow, infact my ears are still ringing. If you are going to see them on this tour and don't want to know the set list in advance or any other spoilers, don't read any further.
The gig was in Glasgow's Carling Acadamy which has recently been renovated and re-opened, its plush inside with a new state of the art sound system, perfect for Kraftwerk. It's not huge with a capacity of around (I'm guessing) 3000 but this was the only time I've been to it and its been sold out, it was packed, I wanted to go to the toilet half way through but I couldn't move.
The first thing I noticed was what a strange mix of people made up the audience. A lot of young ravers but probably more older people who could remember Kraftwerks hayday. I also noticed how few girls there were, it was a very male crowd, possibly not suprisingly. So around 8.30 the lights went down and the audince went wild, lots of whistling. A massively, massively loud eletronic vocoder (the Kraftwerk trademark) spat out the intro to ManMachine and the concert kicked off. There was a white curtain across the front of the stage and the band were backlit so they were silhouetted for the first part of the track but then halfwy through the curtain went back and we saw the band and the backprojected visuals kicked in to a loud aplause.
So here were Kraftwerk in the flesh wearing black suits with red shirts and black ties. They didn't move an inch even though they were producing such funky upbeat dance music, it looked brilliant. After ManMachine they went straight into two tracks from the recent Tour De France Soundtracks album. It has to be said this was the weakest point of the show, the new stuff just aint that exciting and you could tell the crowd just wanted the classic Kraftwerk stuff. But we soon got it as the infamous intro came on of the car door slamming and the ignition being turned, the audience went mad, yup it was Autobahn. This suprised me as I thought this would be the encore but it didn't matter, this was superb. A version halfway between the original 73 version and 91's The Mix.
After that the classic tracks just kept coming, the original Tour De France (utterly superb) The Model, Neon Lights, Home Computer plus some others. Then the highlight of the show, a completley amazing, pumping version of RadioActivity. The long intro to this track was superb. An eletronic vocoder voice, turned up to such a volume that it actualy hurt, read out frightning facts about the Sellafield Nuclear power station. The track then slowly built up into a monsterous pace, the atmosphere was amazing.
Then the band went off stage and the curtains closed for a few minuits. When they reopend it was to the music of The Robots and there on stage were the four infamous Kraftwerk robots all moving around, it was completley ridiculous but also completely brilliant, again the crowd went wild. The curtain then closed again before the actaul band came back on wearing their also infamous all in one glow in the dark suits, again ridiculous but they did also look pretty cool. This was to be the last part of the show and we got Pocket Calculator (this got a big cheer) Numbers (another pumping version), another track from the Tour De France Soundrtacks (not so big cheer) before finaly a massive version of Music Non Stop, not my favourite track but this was something else, an excelent ending. Ralph Hutter then said goodnight and that was the end of my first Kraftwerk experience but hopefully not my last.
A few obsevations I made. Contrary to popular belief, and from the lack of movement on stage, Kraftwerk do perform live. Pretty much all the vocals are live as are all the main synth lines, indeed I heard a bumb note during Tour De France. I'm not sure what all four of them do all of the time on stage (we joked that one of the newer guys in the middle looked like he was surfing the net on his laptop) but it is certainly live.
The concert was hugely loud. I've seen all the big dance acts live and only The Chemical Brothers were louder than Kraftwerk, this was painfully load in parts with thunderous bass that shook your guts (always the sign of a good concert). The sound mix in general was superb as you would expect.
The strange cross section of people in the audience was a bit odd during the concert. You could tell the younger ravers were well up for it all but it did strike me that a lot of the older people didn't expect anything this intense. A lot of the tracks played last night were way more upbeat than even the 91 The Mix versions. Kraftwerk weren't trying to hide that fact they invented modern dance music, they were giving it their all.
My only criticism. The only classic track (and my all time favourite) they didn't play was Computer Love. That pissed me off, but only slightly, it was a great night.
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BTW I think they always close the show with 'Musique Non Stop', it makes sense, they leave the stage one after the other but the music keeps playing.