From Oblique Hostility Sent Thu, Jan 22nd 1998, 16:06
From Oblique Hostility Sent Thu, Jan 22nd 1998, 16:06
On Thu, 22 Jan 1998, Philip Downey wrote: [Someone BESIDES PHILIP wrote this: > >You are putting Kraftwerk as inovative. That's like putting L.V. Bethowen > >(i don't even know how to spell it) as inovative. > > > As usual, your mountainous ignorance is appalling. Nice turn of phrase. > > Kraftwerk then. Innovators. Definitely. Good. Yes. Tour de France is > still a heart-stopper. Others on this list can comment better on them > than I could, so I'll leave that to them. But before Kraftwerk, there > wasn't anything recognizable as 'techno.' There was disco, prog rock, and > W. Carlos. Came outta nowhere, friend. Not just that, it was also good. > Actually, while I give them the nod as innovators, they didn't spring sui generis out of no where. They definitely came from a context of German Prog Rock at the time, along with Tangerine Dream and a host of others. And in the US, their track 'autobahn' was perhaps the most unlikely radio hit of all -- 18 minutes long, repetitive, sung in german? Yow! This in a year if I'm not mistaken, Terry Jacks had a big hit with "Seasons In the Sun." And while I'm splitting hairs, techno, while it owes it's robotic beats and futurism to Kraftwerk, owes just as much to disco and the more danceable end of R&B. And if you look REALLY hard, perhaps some aspect of Beethoven is in there as well ;-)