what does michael rother sound like live these days?

The show had some slow parts, but several songs had extended neu'd out endings that laid my brain out flat, if you are a fan worried about being let down -- Do Not Miss This Show

ya' know secret machines covered that Harmonia track (Immer Weider, I think) on their last EP...so it could be pretty cool...

I'd go if I lived anywhere near....I expect nothing short of a full report from anyone who gets to go!

he is coming to town and playing NEU, Harmonia AND solo stuff -- i can't wait!!!!
i bought tickets bc i am not missing this.

Yeah, gonna be great!

Oooh Hallogallo 2010 is still one of my favorite live shows ever.

oh shit, anyone going to the Chicago show?

I am planning to be at the Bottle.

Saw him in January and loved every minute.

I'm absolutely going to be at the LA show

He's at Big Ears in March, psyched.

I’m going to Chicago show ding dong that is why I bumped thread

I can’t wait!!!

well I might've forgot you were in that area :)

I started listening to his most recent album As Long As the Light and it’s enjoyable so far. I’m very curious what sort of equipment he’ll need to play music from various points in his career. Seems like a ton of gear??

It’s fairly minimal really - Michael and Franz Bargmann on guitars, Hans Lampe on drums (electronic kit) and MR’s partner Vittoria Maccabruni on electronics. Both she and Michael have laptops with a bunch of sequenced and triggered elements I presume.

All of his drum parts will be electronic kit? That’s kind of a bummer

I guess he can borrow whatever he wants from whomever he wants as he is Michael Rother

i'll be at the SF show

seeing him in seattle- pumped!

will also be at the chicago show. saw him in 2010 and it was so good. psyched!

LL the electronic kit sounded good to me - I mean Lampe is presumably in his mid 70s but played rock solid with a pretty light touch. Not disappointed.

just bought tix to seattle

Chicago show sold out? anyone know how to get a secondhand ticket for less than $600?

Dang
Not surprising tho

Wow, glad I didn't sleep on getting my tickets.

well it surprises me, guess I didn't realize the venue was kind of small. genuinely no idea where to even go to find tickets, frustrating because you know people will be trying to offload them the day of

Yeah, sorry, didn't mean to be flip. I figured it would sell out given how small Empty Bottle is, but had no idea the resale would be THAT much.

Boo NYC and Big Ears are the only concerts on the Eastern Seaboard?

had a similar experience w/ Dan Deacon in Madison, small venue that sold out, resale tickets were like $300-400, luckily the box office actually had a couple left at their original price (20 bucks)

frustrating because does anyone actually buy tickets at this price? like whatever I'll pay a 20-50% markup if I have to but get real

I can’t imagine anyone is paying $600 to see MR but sometimes if a band is v trendy there’s some asshole w too much money who is trying to impress someone else who might pay it? Idk.
The Bottle is def small enough that I hopped on buying tix right away.

FWIW, there's still tickets available for his show here in LA for $45 each.

seeing him tomorrow! extremely excited. venue seems a little undersold, find that a bit sad given his influence and impact. but seattle is completely overrun with dull techies i suppose. anyway, should be really special

after the will-he-cancel thing with neil last summer i feel like it's REALLY becoming "see these guys while you still can" time, especially a dude like this who doesn't come stateside often

I've seen Rother multiple times across Europe over the past few years, and he is always worth the price of admission. But he was mostly doing NEU! and Harmonia material when I saw him - Hans Lampe from La Duesseldorf was playing drums. Some of the shows they had 2 drummers and Lampe was easily outplaying drummers half his age, which was impressive.

For a couple of shows he managed to get Stephen Morris from New Order up onstage with him. That was a real treat! But at the London show of that tour, Paul Weller (?!?!?) randomly appeared for a song. Seemed that word of that guest appearance got out ahead of time, so the place was rammed with dadrockers who were so clearly not there for the krauty goodness.

Does he bring guests along to the shows in the States or is that just a thing he does in Germany?

He was great on Saturday night in LA. The show was tied to a Joseph Beuys exhibit so he played mostly Neu and Harmonica I think. The drummer was a powerhouse. Rother never introduced the band so I don't know who was with him. he said they sound checked with a guest named David whose full name I didn't catch but that David was ill and couldn't make the gig.

Will be at tonight's show here in SF, and very much looking forward.

Also will be there! Looking forward to it too. Hoping he plays a bit of Katzenmuzik, but not holding my breath.

Rother never introduced the band so I don't know who was with him. he said they sound checked with a guest named David whose full name I didn't catch but that David was ill and couldn't make the gig.

― bryan, Monday, 24 March 2025 15:27 (one hour ago) link

David Pajo

thanks I was kinda curious who he mentioned

Saturday night's show here in LA was really good. There's a setlist posted that's mostly correct - "Seeland" was early in the set and unbelievable to hear bouncing around the downtown LA buildings. Rother mentioned that British Airways lost some of their gear so there was some last minute scrambling.

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

Rother never introduced the band so I don't know who was with him.

Hans Lampe (drums), Vittoria Maccabruni (keys/vocal), Franz Bargmann (guitar)

Yeah, that rocked, simply put.

Vocals???!?!?

Yeah for one song and she was mixed a bit low too. Good show! Definitely rocked. I appreciated the woman a few rows in front of me who yelled out "Katzen!" between songs. Sadly no Rother solo music (that I could make out)

god bums me out Chicago is sold out, been wanting to see something like this for like two decades

I was in conversation with one of the folkyeah crew last night (show bookers, general putting on events etc.) and they said the main point person who had been working to get Rother to come over for a show like this in SF for fifteen years...couldn't be there last night because of a nasty flu he'd picked up from his kid. D'oh!

Killer show. Hans was so good! My only complaint was that Rother's gear table was blocking view of his actual guitar playing.
I kept laughing thinking about being the rhythm guitarist and spending the bulk of a long set just chugging along playing an A.

dream gig tbh

table was blocking view of his actual guitar playing.

lol that was my first thought when watching the video posted above.

SO fun, joyous. band was v fun to watch, and the old photos used in visuals were touching. some pics also showed schematics and track routing notes among them hunched around various consoles and gadgets, reminded me how those early Neu/Harmonia albums were in part just brilliant engineering (not sure i could pick out conny plank amid the many photos of cool bearded german dorks but i’m sure he was there). also reminded me to not reflexively discount digital amp modeling because if it’s good enough for Mr Rother…

sounded way MORE electronic live, which i really enjoyed. definitely reframes how i’m going to listen in the future. it was also wonderful to hear it LOUD and so ‘full’ sounding (i think minimal and spare define lots of neu classics, this was certainly both but also something… different) i dont think even stereolab got to that completely ecstatic repetitious state for me

the best thing he did last nite though was say it was okay to stand up and “that the music is for moving to”, i certainly needed that, there seemed to be some awkwardness among the staff/crowd about what kind of show this was supposed to be

michael’s whole ‘deal’ is so much more compelling to me than kraftwerk

also i dunno if any ilxors were at seattle show but what the fuck was that opener? terrible pairing. i was dying of secondhand embarassment the entire time. i would guess most of them would not have known who michael rother was. gentrification comes to the stage, or something. easiest description i have is “second best band on an average phish lot”. i could not believe they ended their set with a fucking half-instrumental BEASTIE BOYS SABATOGE lmfao. i think they said something like “hi everyone, we are mega cat” and i murmured to myself and my girlfriend “yeah, we can tell”. “i can’t stand it” indeed

wow, what a long post. just thrilled to have seen someone of whom i’ve stolen approximately 50-60% of anything approaching a ‘trick’ in my guitar bag

Frogbs — I may be able to help you. Does your Ilx mail work?

Ha, sounds like you got the short end of the stick when it came to openers. We had Isaiah Mitchell and Adam MacDougall -- saw them open for Mong Tong the other year and they were great, and they perfectly suited Rother as openers for sure.

LL - it should!

sent you message

I loved Isaiah Mitchell's 30 minute guitar solo, some other people...not so much.

We didn't have an opener in Chicago.

The show itself was transcendent and the drums were mic'ed really super well. two fun facts:
1) frogbs and i ran into jvc :) and
2)on the way out (Idk who is responsible for this) the music at the venue was Point That Thing Somewhere Else which seemed so appropriate for so many reasons not the least of which both have lefty drummers!

good times, glad i went

that warms my heart, thank you, music is love

Incredible, life affirming show. So good to run into frogbs and La Lechera as well.

first of all thank you so much to LL for hooking me up with a ticket for this!! was nice to meet you and Jon, wish we could've chatted more but, you know, life...

the show was amazing. I was expecting it to be half chill and half rock, but no, nearly all of it rocked. there was only one tune "Weissensee" where you could really catch your breath. I can't imagine this being a sit down show, seems impossible to sit still during any of this. I actually had no idea that was La Dusseldorf's drummer up there. I figured it had to be *someone* in the scene, because he was so great. as LL mentioned the sound he got was incredible. a lot of times a tune would start slow and drifty for a minute and then when he came in it was like launching into hyperspace. did feel a bit bad for that rhythm guitarist though :)

two observations: one, I now understand why Dinger and Rother couldn't figure out how to translate Neu! into a live show. they don't do "songs" of course but they're not really dynamic jams either. the music is simple but it has more parts than you might think. some degree of translation had to be done..."Dino" for instance doesn't really sound electronic like it does on the album, you also really couldn't hear that groovy bass line, but Rother's guitar parts are still there. two, the whole thing was surprisingly emotional for me, especially at the start, beginning with "Neuschnee" and then "Isi"...I was just like, am I really seeing this? I can't believe this music is 50 years old. 50 years before that it was like...flapper jazz and ragtime and shit like that.

Rother himself seemed really nice. very soft-spoken and he has that sort of sly, old-school German humor to him. at the end of the show I went to get my coat and he walked right in front of me...crazy to think a man involved in some of the very small slice of music I'd classify as "eternal" was like, a foot away.

Delighted you could make it out! Kinda loving how this whole tour has been one amazing performance after another.

Oh man it was SO DREAMY. I’m glad I took a few little videos. I was also thinking about the “mama’s heartbeat” drum parts and how today is my mom’s birthday!
I also did not know Hans was La Düsseldorf drummer. Makes sense, they are underrated in the krautrock pantheon imo.

Strictly speaking, a Neu drummer as well! He engineered on the second album and played parts on Neu 75 as well as live, thus his La Dusseldorf stint as a result.

Anyway, had some thoughts:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/some-weekly-142-125301577

good stuff there. I too have had that feeling of "well, now or never" whenever someone I like comes by. not just because all the 70s and 80s crowd are getting up there, but also who knows how many non-American bands are even going to want to come here in the foreseeable future!

one thing I'll add...I've been reading reviews of Rother shows for the last 15 years, one thing I remember is they generally go something like "it was good, but there was one section near the end where they got into a real motorik groove for 10 minutes and that's where it was really transcendent"...this show was pretty much *all* that

I think the reason "Lilac Angel" and "Hero" weren't played was maybe out of respect for Dinger - the vocals are pretty central to those tunes. they did have a singer but she only sang once, kind of an odd choice but it worked!

Yeah I mean, I wasn't crushed they didn't do them or anything, might have been fun though! But yeah, they're so associated with Klaus and they have so much else that really, no worries.

also wanna point out the highlight of the show for me was a track I'd completely forgotten about - Zylkodrom

(this happened a couple years ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTB0lpDFbkY

thanking everyone for your check-ins here. live show attendance is a thing of the past for me, so it's fun to see folks with similar enthusiasm coming back with so much positivity. also wondering if the rumors from the other rother thread are true about his enduring dreamboat status.

Yes. They are.

I remember this photo popping up during the slideshow and thinking, how are these guys nearly the same age?? I guess being a chill dude your entire life has its advantages

https://www.self-titledmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/NEU_Bochum_2000_copyright_Anton-Corbijn-1024x1010.jpg

Whereas Klaus was never a chill dude for even a day of his life.

Probably not the right one to judge his dreaminess, but he was certainly charming as all get out during the Chicago show!

It helps that his music literally feels like uplift or flying. Add apparent physical fitness, chillness, and likely sense of humor and yes, this is someone I would not mind sitting next to on a long overnight flight.

Hi folks - due to illness I now have a spare ticket for the London Michael Rother show tomorrow (20th September) at the Islington Assembly Hall

Face value (£36) or best offer since it doesn't appear to be sold out but I need to transfer it 2 hours before showtime (7pm tomorrow)

message me on ILX mail if you're interested

Sorry for whomever is missing out - hope you can sell it!

No takers in London tonight?

At this point I'd be willing to give this ticket away to make sure it goes to good use.

Email me before 7pm...

hope he makes a live album of his current tour, I think it's different enough from the studio recordings to be worth releasing and none of the live videos really do it justice