A Freshman at Synth University

"They're gods," he said. "Every techno, electronica, beep-beep song you've ever heard is influenced by what they've done."

He was referring, of course, to Kraftwerk. My friend said he was thinking about going to their upcoming show. When I revealed that I'd never listened to them, just knew of some song about a pocket calculator. He looked confused, stunned, "We... Are the Robots!" ??? "Uh, if you say so." "MAN! We're gonna get you educated." "Alrighty." Tickets were acquired shortly thereafter.

I spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon researching the band on the internet. Their site is great - all arty, logical, minimalist, just so German. There are some cool photos from the current tour. You can listen to excerpts from many different records on continuous loop. (Yay Flash!) I put one song on and liked it so much, I just left it on. It probably played for a half-hour. Who knows how many times it rotated through. In their bio on the All-Music Guide, Jason Ankeny writes "their enduring influence cannot be overstated," echoing my friend's fervent claim that without Kraftwerk, "there would be no electronica!"

We went to the first of their two shows in San Francisco at the Warfield. They're only playing five cities in North America, but just finished a ton of dates in Europe and Japan. The venue was aswarm with the stylish, the geeky, and several generations of "robot pop" music fans. We found some friends and sat with them at the tables near the main floor.

Projected imagery and four suited gentlemen standing behind four synthesizers with laptop screens - how exciting could this possibly be? The crowd was mad for it, and I was instantly hooked. The visuals were mesmerizing - big, pixelated words, archival Tour de France footage, 3D rendering, pills, robots, headache-inducing geometric animation. The songs are new to me, and if I didn't know better, if I didn't know that "Autobahn" was released THIRTY YEARS AGO, I would swear it came out last week. How can a band be so enduring as to not seem dated at all? How did I miss this?!

Even as it was all new, it was all very familiar. I had innumerable epiphanies during the show. "Ohhhhhh." I heard the genesis of Devo Negativland Gary Numan New Order Human League Depeche Mode Cabaret Voltaire The Faint And All Techno Ever. How proud these grandfathers must be of their progeny. How lucky am I to have gotten my first lesson in the fundamentals of synthesized music from the masters themselves.

Article Author: ert

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