When I was a lad back in the 80’s, I can remember being in the centre of Cork city on a cycling holiday with a friend. I recall going into Golden disks and finding a 7″ single called “The Model” by a band called Kraftwerk. At the time, it was a record I had been trying to find for about a year after it’s release and chat peak but until that point, had been unsuccessful. I loved the song, for a while I declared it to be my favourite song of all time (a claim that I now realise is actually impossible to make). Anyhow, I found it in that store on that day way back then, I managed to look after it for the remainder of the week on my bike, kept it from getting wet, scratched, bent etc and when I finally got home, I played it to death for about the following three years.

Of course, in that time, being a record collector, I also decided to look at other material from this strange band. I ended up owning some of their albums – ‘Man machine’, ‘Trans Europe Express’ and ‘Computer World’. I owned a fourth album (I think) but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was called. Anyhow, part of the fascination I held for this shower of German geeks was the fact that I was a fan of the synth bands who were all over mainstream pop at that time. Depeche Mode, Visage, OMD, Talk Talk etc and Kraftwerk seemed to be the pioneers of this whole movement. I can remember reading articles about them with great interest and some fascination. They were building their own synths, messing around with their own vocoders, they were engineers and they were experimental.

I used to listen to their albums; I think more through a sense of duty to the cause rather than any real appreciation of the repetitive and sometimes monotone melody. I was not being moved musically, rather this was me being elitist or perhaps even showing off. I loved the fact that I was the only “Kraftwerk fan” that I knew of (apart from my mate Podge who did listen to the albums once or twice). Fast forward to 2008. Kraftwerk playing a live concert in Dublin. Only 5000 tickets, outdoor, marquee, summer, fun blah blah. I had to go and see that, out of fascination, a sense nostalgia and whatever yer havin yerself.

The gig was a 6 hour dancefest. Little did I know that in all the years that me and Kraftwerk have been apart, a whole new generation of cyber trance dance / synthetic drug music kids have adopted Kraftwerk as the beat masters. Walking into Kilmainham yesterday evening, I should have copped that straight away. In the park you could get your face painted, have a massage, visit a chiropractor, suck pure oxygen for 5 minutes, choose from a million different smoothies, have a gourmet burger, sit on bean bags and watch fringe theatre, dance in circles with flowers in your hair and politely queue in an orderly fashion to urinate. I mean lets face it – the clues were there before the music ever started.

MUSIK NON STOP
Upon walking into the park, (around 5pm) I was immediately hit by the bass. The bass line was at a frequency that makes your ears ring (they have not stopped yet). I think putting a heavy canvas wall between 100,000 watts and your ears adds an extra muffle and reduces the lowest frequencies by a factor of -10. Either way I could not hear Dee, nor Podge nor Nick talking to me unless we were in certain positions or behind certain domes etc. I walked around the field and listened to that bass for the next three hours. Not that I really minded it, the whole thing was an experience. I kept on being amazed at the crowd, I had pictured loads of 40-50 year olds (all now working in IT), I had imagined that the male to female ratio at a Kraftwerk gig would be 99:1. I had envisaged gaming tents with rows of XBOX 360’s, and maybe lines of Commodore 64’s (in keeping with Kraftwerk’s era), but as I described above, what I saw was the opposite. I loved looking at wall to wall babes, at the masseuse’s, being able to buy a nice cup of tea and a muffin for a fiver from a smiling friendly face. It occurs to me I spent the evening smiling myself.

Kraftwerk appeared on stage at exactly 9:00pm. They open with Man machine. The crowd go mental. I look around bemused. Why are they going so crazy for such monotonic inane electro clicks. I still haven’t copped on. I stand still for two hours and watch the 4 members of Kraftwerk eh . . . stand still for two hours. They poke fingers at their boxes and laptops in the classic Kraftwerk pose. Then ‘Neon Lights’ and I am moved musically for the first time throughout the entire event. Then ‘Radioactivity’ and I am blown away by the sheer beat, power and the effect of the vocoder. It was never like that on vinyl back in 1983. They play “The Model” but I feel nothing really, I sing along and it’s “nice” but that’s about it. I guess I was right about it being impossible to declare a “favourite song of all time”.

I see the sea of digital devices before me, all lit up, all snapping, recording, germinating YouTube’s next bumper crop. I see the digital devices requesting pills on scrolling dot matrix text. I am surrounded by clouds of smoke from the finest weed Dublin has to offer.

It occurs to me, I’m actually seeing Kraftwerk out of context. It’s not the same band, not the same cause, no more pioneering. They have found a new home for their geeky repetitive “Kling Klang” blips. I guess when you listen to the stuff from 197x, you probably need to be high. Was I the only one listening to it sober at that time? But yeah, I totally get it now. Take that vintage electro pop, sex it up, pump it up and its pure dance. Not only that but the kids get to say that they are Kraftwerk fans, it gives them a sense of credibility. “We’re real Kraftwerk fans, We’ve been collecting their albums for years”. OK sweetie – whatever you say!

I finally get it. I’m at a rave.

Kraftwerk – Radioactivity. Live at The Myth in Minnesota on April 19, 2008