Arnaud schrieb am 19.08.2003 18:48 Uhr:
I'm another guy who knows the band from their first days, I was 14 when they released their first album, and especially "Megaherz" catched me right away.
very interesting.
Did you also know at that time the other german groups labeled "Krautrock" such as Tangerine Dream etc.
Did you also like their music or something in KW was more interesting for you?
I ask this question because for me, early KW (before the LP R & F) is not very interesting compared to early TD stuff for example.
I never felt that Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream were competitors. I loved both of them for the things they did, both of them were unique in their way. Some of my favorites of that time were Can, Amon Duul II ("Yeti" was among my first LPs, if memory serves), Guru Guru and the other usual indigenous suspects, but also I loved Albert Mangelsdorff, Gary Burton, Miles Davis and some other jazz. I had also records of Van der Graaf Generator, Deep Purple, Status Quo, Led Zep, Jefferson Airplane, United States Of America, Soft Machine, early Gong and many others. More important to me was a radio series entitled "das neue werk" (decidedly without capitals!) where hard-core contemporary composers were featured on late Sunday night - Ligeti, Stockhausen, Nono, Berio, Henze, Boulez, newest sounds from the famous WDR Studio for Electronic Music, and so on. I remember I was lying in my bed, all lights shut down, only the small light bulbs behind the radio scale and the green magic eye were glowing, and I listened to these completely strange sounds coming from my Telefunken Concertino valve radio. I was eleven or twelve when I first discovered this series, and with it I discovered that music is a medium you can fly with. To Sirius and back in just 45 minutes. (Or to Spain and back with Miles Davis or to Rio and back with Astrud Gilberto and Tom Jobim.) So you see I've been pre-contaminated when I discovered Kraftwerk. But Kraftwerk became the one band who was able to add the dimension of rock music to the experimental electronic music I've heard until then. I think THAT was the catchy thing for me. Jan