Kraftwerk live

Imagine everybody you ever knew from electronic music(like everybody who was anybody from the midwest came in for this show) all geeked out of their mind to see Kraftwerk, everybody was running around like sugarshocked school kids. The joint was sold out and it was such a diverse crowd, you had young white techno people and middle aged black folks just getting ready to see Kraftwerk play their first gig in Detroit since 1981. People were so into it that for 15 minutes before Kraftwerk went on stage the crowd was chanting Boing, Boom Tschak Ping at the top of their lungs. When KW finally took the stage the place went wild. If there is one thing you can say about Michigan, it is that we love us some Kraftwerk. People were crying and getting down. It was fantastic.

They had a mock-up of their studio on stage (I can't believe most of the gear served any purpose...kinda like empty Marshall stacks). A video screen behind each member, and at the end of the show, the screens lowered to reveal the robots! The humanoids left the stage and the robots "played" the last song. Very appropriate.
I'm not really sure that they played a live note at all that night, but I really didn't care. I've never heard anyone who was there suggest that it was less than amazing.

(I remember marvelling at the age of the crowd, ranging from about 8 to 80.)

not too dissimilar scene at Luton in '97 seeing as there was a huge Detroit contingent DJing at the same event. according to accounts i read the likes of Mills were down the front going mental rather than watching from backstage too.

The sound was just unbelievable, the clarity, depth, the BASS! On a few occasions it was a little full-on at the Metro, the digitised voice in "Radioactivity" felt like it was perforating my ear-drums.

Also at then end as they walked off one by one, Rolf (or was it Florian) even gave a small wave at the crowd and did a little skip. Which of course is the equivalaent of Iggy stripping naked, surfing the crowd, and smothering his knob in peanut butter.

That's Florian without a doubt - he often behaves like an embarrasing dad, hahaha (playing the keyboard through his legs for example).

The DVD (with all the tour videos plus surround sound) should be something else.

It was the live equivalent of 'The Mix': derivative, recaputulatory, motionless, lacking in vision. I wonder. It seems they lost their magic some time ago and no-one wants to admit it. Live they are just as dull as their new records, and in much the same way.

These guys had the funk

This thread makes me miss Detroit so much.

Great clip, dancing AND audience participation. Is there any more like this?

is anonymous KW nr. 2 cracking up at 0:30?

Two Oakland shows in March - thanks to a buddy I am in

ummm they are playing Chicago huh
http://jamusa.com/events/kraftwerk-3d-concert/

holy shiiiiit

Also doing the whole 8-album thing in Vienna in May.

is Vienna sold out already? Might be good to combine with a weekend there

no, tickets aren't on sale till 28 Jan:

http://www.festwochen.at/programmdetails/?tx_mqprogramm_pi1[eventid]=34&cHash=dee1fc31edb9f563346c82dd45b9e40b

yuk, you'll have to c&p that link

We are going to Chicago! What hotel is best? Is there transit to the Riviera?

Vienna tickets went on sale this morning, still seats left for most shows.

Kraftwerk's coming to Madrid next april, and tickets go on sale this wednesday...thing is, -nobody- knows what they'll cost and I'm expecting the worst (anywhere from 30-50 bucks) ― manuel (manuel), Monday, November 17, 2003 8:49 AM

Yep. Tickets are $55 plus service charges in DC. But its a 3d show...

Anybody know a good way to swap my Trans-Europe Express tickets for Computer World? Er ... Craigslist, I guess?

Tickets are normally personalized so you might have a problem there.

closeups of their "workstations":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la7CTPNTDb4

Tickets on sale now

http://www.factmag.com/2016/09/26/kraftwerk-announce-their-first-full-uk-tour-in-13-years/

been trying all morning for bristol.

website is totally dead.

had tix booked several times, but site crashed each time.

Booked for TEE in Antwerp. Psyched

xpost

A group of three of us managed to get tix for Glasgow ok, hope you get yours mark

Had 4 for Sheffield, crashed after submitting CC data. Don't hold out any hope.

the site for colston hall/bristol is truly awful.
was warned about it yesterday while at work.
the link from kraftwerk took you to gigsandtours.com
they never had any tix available.

sold out.

Glasgow now sold out too

We struck lucky for Nottingham, using the venue's own website. It was down for the first 20 mins, then miraculously came back to life, after Ticketmaster / See / Ents 24 were all saying "sold out".

A group of three of us managed to get tix for Glasgow ok

When did you get yours? I was trying to buy tickets for either Glasgow or Edinburgh from 10am and it seemed like they sold out right away :(

yeah, i was trying to get tickets for glasgow and they were all gone by 10:02!

A pal of mine emailed me at 10.17 am to say he'd got them - he went through the Concert Hall website, just like Mike, so I guess that was the way to go.

I'm sorry that people will miss out on the chance to see them - and I hate to think what greedsters are going to try and resell tickets for - but also very pleased they're not playing an enormodome like the Hydro.

suspect a UK arena tour would have been v much undersold unless it was like two dates. their popularity is prob being exaggerated by (a) everyone who wants to go having 24/7 internet access and (b) the % of tickets going straight to tout gangster scum sites

This was way less stressful than for Tate Modern, when I didn't get through on the phones until 4pm, the sole website having irretrievably crashed in seconds. Many hundreds of calls, but totally worth it in the long run.

Oh for the days when you'd queue up outside the venue in the rain instead

Third row, Robotfuckers!

xp my wife was rehearsing at the concert hall in glasgow today and people were apparently there queueing in person! so 20th century!

Oh for the days when you'd queue up outside the venue in the rain instead

― めんどくさかった (Matt #2)

my brother (who hates computers) got tickets for one of prince's last concerts by doing exactly that

queued at concert hal, 60 people in front. phoned up at 10 on the dot and got 3 front ow tickets. hung up the call and suddenly everyone was turned away as it had sold out already. virtually everyone was turned away

ya (lovely) lucky bastard.

I didn't manage to get tickets and therefore hope that these are all acoustic gigs.

On 20 July 2018 around 21:50 local time, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst welcomed the legendary electronic band Kraftwerk and 7500 visitors to the Jazz Open Festival on Stuttgart's Schlossplatz – live from the International Space Station

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCQEzgtWv-E

http://blogs.esa.int/alexander-gerst/de/2018/07/21/good-evening-kraftwerk/

Nine nights at the Walt Disney Hall here in May - one night for each album + a finale
https://www.laphil.com/events/performances/2912/2024-05-24/kraftwerk

It's been 15-16 years since I've seen them last (Florian was still there), but I kinda want to see this - The Disney Hall's acoustics are very very good.

I think I still have my 3D glasses from seeing TEE at the Disney concert hall. It was a real good show. This is tempting.

/r/kraftwerk had the presale code - got floor tickets for Trans-Europe Express night and am completely stoked for this.

New US tour dates, and some festivals

Why was Tony Hawk involved in this

As much as I love them I saw them a few times in the early 2000s and it was the same show every time, and at least they still had Florian. Is it just Ralf and three dudes?

Oh, and I also saw them in 1998.

Why was Tony Hawk involved in this

I was so confused when I saw this.

I don't know, I'm sure this might be cool, but I'm honestly more excited to see Michael Rother the same week these guys, whoever makes up the lineup at this point, are in town.

Henning Schmitz has been in the band since 1991

Fritz Hilpert, who joined in 1987 and missed a show in 2008 from a heart attack, has not toured since 2022

New lineup just announced:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tbezmmltvdtjthfeaftfoop6/bafkreiavjmdljv5nsh5irveicgqggkqvw67cb5ca5i6i6jsrkdec3zmcze@jpeg

Apropos of nothing I went to Berlin's Technikmuseum last week. There was a surprisingly large train area on the ground floor, with lots of different trains. Including - yes - this model of a TEE:
https://i.imgur.com/XmRNhor.jpg

It's a Deutsche Bundesbahn VT 11.5. Judging by a mixture of this map and this website Kraftwerk would have left Paris in the morning at 7:35 and arrived in Dusseldorf at, I'm guessing, around 13:30. For a moment I wondered why the route map, dated 1974, didn't go to Berlin. But then I remembered. It was 1974. Different world. Berlin wasn't on the regular West German train network.

I learn from the internet the the service was first/business-class only, which is ultimately what killed it off. That, and planes. And other trains. I mean, the TEE is obviously a massive phallic symbol, but what an incredible thing. Imagine penetrating Europe with a codpiece looking like that. You would feel like a god. A golden god. In their final form those trains had multiple 2,200-horsepower gas turbine engines. Imagine being a short fat German businessman circa 1970 with a 10k+ BHP multiple gas turbine going off to show the French how to build cars. You would have felt like a god.

As I stood in front of those model I could hear the beat from "Trans-Europe Express" in my head. A-chug, chug-a-chug / a-chug, chug-a-chug. And then it dawned on me that no-one alive in Berlin in 2024 remembers Kraftwerk. It's a city of young people and immigrants. They have their own legends, no less valid than my own. And if my legends were so good, where are they now?

As I stood in front of those model I could hear the beat from "Trans-Europe Express" in my head. A-chug, chug-a-chug / a-chug, chug-a-chug. And then it dawned on me that no-one alive in Berlin in 2024 remembers Kraftwerk. It's a city of young people and immigrants. They have their own legends, no less valid than my own. And if my legends were so good, where are they now?

― Ashley Pomeroy

fwiw if i know berlin for anything it's for being the queer capital of europe. kraftwerk show up more often than lot of other bands of their era in queer people's legends!

Still all-time, who cares who's standing at the video manipulation podium (Georg Bongartz, for the record).
Setlist from the show I saw:
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/kraftwerk/2025/orpheum-theatre-minneapolis-mn-4b5fd3f2.html

yeah, i never updated my situation re the local gig at colston hall/bristol a few years ago as per mentioned earlier in the thread.
as i worked near the venue i checked in with the crew on the ticket desk a few days before the KW gig.
the woman assured me that there would be some last minute tix released and told me to keep checking.
and then via a matter of perserverance and good luck, i was able to grab to 2 tix.
despite the last minute grab, we had tix placed centre just a few rows back from the mixing desk.
which as it was one of their 3D shows meant that the 3D stuff actually worked.

as per matt#2 : best gig ever.

I think that's roughly the same setlist when I saw them a couple years ago. though we didn't get "La Forme" and maybe not "Planet of Visions" either. the "Tour De France Etape" stuff absolutely ruled live. as did everything else. kinda regret missing them in Chicago this past Saturday but there's just no way I could've made that work. oh well.

one thing that occurred to me seeing them live is how it really is just an unabashed celebration of technology, it doesn't much delve into the negative or philosophical connotations, it really does replicate that feeling of being a kid in the 80s encountering a new piece of computer equipment for the first time, mind reeling from the possibility. like the idea that a computer could replicate something like a human voice...wow! and the wire frames! it kinda looks like a person!