[sdiy] We are the Mummies (was: Freak at Home)

[Rude 66]

i agree on most points, though it isn't a bad thing to be influenced by
something and then take it a step further. in both kraftwerk and new order
you can clearly hear their influences on particular records, but their take
on it is always different and 'theirs'.

i guess i'm one of those 'stupid raver kids' who see them as godfathers of
techno because they are. t.e.e. predates moroder's electronic work several
years, i'd say it's the other way around; moroder heard t.e.e. and then made
'from here to eternity' and 'i feel love'.. tracks like metall auf metall
were the very first to be mixed by dj's as a backbeat for other stuff.

and you've got to give it to them: rthere's not many bands that had whole
musical styles made after only 1 of their songs and have millions worship
them..;-)

as for the live shows, it's the age old dilemma of working with sequences
music: is it live or not? i'm sure a lot of those songs would sound terrible
when played by hand. then again i saw those classical performances from
their songs, and that was very good too.

neu!.. now you're talking. and conny plank.. true geniuses.

back to diy: what was true about them building all their own stuff?

r./







----- Original Message -----
From: "jbv" <jbv.silences at club-internet.fr>
To: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 1:34 PM
Subject: Re: [sdiy] We are the Mummies (was: Freak at Home)


>
>
>
> > isn't that why they took those robots on stage from the
> > early 80's?
>
> Only dummies were used in the early 80's. Robots appeared in the early
90's.
>
> >i almost got to play on one of their pocket calculators they
> >handed to the crowd.
>
> I did manage to press a couple of Florian's pocket calculator in 1981...
>
> >Not to harp on a subject thats definatly a matter of taste and opinion,
but
> >have you listened to the really early Kraftwerk?  Like Ralf&Florien or
> >Kraftwerk2?
> >Dont get me wrong, I like Wolfgang's
> >contributions too, but when he came on board they definatly had started
to
> >break away from the Tangerine Dream-esk sounds that they had been known
> >for previously.
>
> Gasp ! This is pure revisionism !
> KW has always been light years away from TD and other "kosmische music".
> Actually, their big influence in the early 70's was NEU!, the only truly
> innovative
> duo of krautrock... Ralf & Florian never really managed to approach
similar
> brilliant & innovative concepts. After that, they tried to catch up with
> various
> trends (the Beach Boys with "Autobahn", "Pop Corn" with "Radio-activity",
> Gorgio Moroder with "Man Machine", the worlwide underground minimal synth
> with "Computer World", "Art of Noise" and all the 80's crap with "Electric
> Cafe")
> but everything failed... The only 2 songs that are still worth listening
to are
>
> "TEE" and "Tour de France" (the latter for the lyrics).
>
> Man, several years ago (1998) I got tired (and was almost banned from the
> KW mailing list) of all these young morons who consider them as the
"godfathers
>
> of thechno"... Actually, I remember seeing them in their first gig outside
> Germany
> (in Paris feb. 1973 at the krautrock festival set up by french mag Actuel)
:
> they
> were just a couple of unknown newbies... A couple of years later, they
> understood
> that the only way to make a carreer in the music biz was to work on their
image
>
> rather than on their music, and then they invented the Kling-Klang studio,
the
> dummies, the robots and all that stuff... Actually, they should have named
> themselves
> "Propaganda"...
>
> I saw them several times over the years (in Paris in 73 & 81), in Zürich
in 91,
> in Linz
> & Karlsruhe in 97, in Tokyo, L.A. and San Francisco in 98... and everytime
> there was less and less meat around the bones... In 97 they were just
> representatives
> for Doepfer gear, and these days they just seem to promote VST plug-ins
(or
> whatever).
> The last great show was 1981, at least for the great imagery of the KK
studio
> live on stage. But even at that time, I'm quite sure that most of the show
was
> pre-recorded. I perfectly remember seeing a 16 tracks tape recorder
backstage
> and I thought "wow! they tape every gig for their archives or something".
> But now, after seeing several gigs in a row during the 98 tour (where
obviously
>
> 75% or more of the show was pre-recorded), I'm convinced that they were
> faking to play, and that they've always been...
> I have a short video excerpt of the Paris 1973 gig, in which they perform
> "Kling Klang", and obviously they play VERY little (but the audience was
too
> stoned to notice)...
>
> Putting robots on stage in place of humans was a sexy & exciting concept
in
> 1978 (because it was out of reach). But nowadays, what is it all about ?
> Triggering samples and MIDI sequences ? What a joke !
> A much more exciting approach would have been to flood the web with a
> remix of their song "Von Himmel hoch" from their 1st album as soon as
> US troops started to bomb Iraq... Just a suggestion...
>
> Nowadays, their live appearances are just a good opportunity for EMI to
sell
> their back catalog and to maintain that stupid myth of "techno pionneers"
for
> the young generations of brainless consumers. Ralf & Florian, as well as
many
> other pseudo-innovators of the 70's, are just trying to sell a few more
albums
> before they get retired...
> Elvis Presley was doing better in Las Vegas 30 years ago...
>
> And I for myself, I find a great pleasure cluttering the archives of
various
> mailing lists with anti-Kraftwerk propaganda.
>
> IMHO, in all the Kraftwerk saga, the truly innovators were NEU!, Emil
Schult,
> Conny Plank, and (in some ways) Wolfgang Flür. For more details, just
> read Wolfgang's book "I was a robot" (the 1st edition, since I've heard
> that Ralf & Florian managed to have some chapters erased from further
editions
> of that book after a lawsuit)...
>
> JB
>
>