photo taken from Henrik Larrson's excellent online collection of pictures
Went to the Kraftwerk concert in Toronto last night. My friend Andy and I chair-danced like dorks and tried not to elbow our staid neighbours, who were demurely toe-tapping and text-messaging the entire time. Upper Canadians might just be more reserved than Germans. Anyhow I haven't laughed so hard in a long time, and the show was flipping great. The set was really perfect, the four guys and their machines framed by bands of light behind and below. I loved all the cycling footage during Tour de France. You can see the video here (scroll down). Autobahn portrayed nostalgic vacation illustrations from the heady days of early highway design, depicting the whole concept as a sort of cute, out-moded human project. That subtle (well .. subtle by Kraftwerk standards anyhow) ecological stance, juxtaposed against groovy, flesh and metal, fetish shots of cyclists, made it clear that bikes and computers are the cyborg partners of choice for these fellows. Vitamin also made a big visual impression: a field of trippy spinning pills like in Drugstore Cowboy and a great, simple wireframe animation of Alkaseltzer type fizzing action in a glass. Andy was pleased that they played Pocket Calculator, which he has been singing regularly, while making pokey finger motions, for at least the ten years that I've known him. The graphic was hilarious.... a big calculator with poking finger! Says Andy, "My god these guys are so literal." He's right, but they do it with gusto and it makes for a lot of fun. Thanks to Tom Moody, whose earlier Kratwerk post inspired me to go.
Note: afterwards we went down to the floor to check out the island of equipment. I didn't know what any of the machines were, but I do recognise a mitful of floppy disks when I see them. I asked the guy what on earth he had on floppies, and he, with a wry smile, said "lighting cues." Mysterious.
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