For those who don't have the patience to read this in its entirety, here is the simple review: "holy motherf*ckn $hit, that was the best show ever".
Playlist - Mensch-Machine (Man Machine) Expo2000 (with pieces of UR remix) Tour de France 2003 Vitamin Tour de France Autobahn Das Model (The Model) Neon Lichten (Neon Lights) Radioaktivitt (Radioactive) Trans-Europa Express ---curtains--- Nummern (Numbers) Computerwelt (Computerworld) It's more fun to compute Taschenrechner (Pocket Calculator) ---curtains--- Die Roboter (The Robots) ---curtains--- Electrokardiogramm Aero Dynamik Boing Boom Tschak Musik Non-stop ----------------------------- We arrived at the Palladium just before Kraftwerk were to appear (they started at exactly 23.59, with no opening act, etc.), and found a very genuine mix of fans from teens to past middle-aged, and having never been to a general "concert" in Germany since 1994, didn't know what to expect. We found a nice spot to wait, and exactly on time, the lights dropped out, and the stage with curtains was illuminated from behind with the shadows of the group against a red light. The opening bit from Die Mensch Machine (Man Machine) started playing, and the crowd reacted like you'd expect them to - cheering and clapping. European crowds (IMO, of course) are generally more appreciative, but I find they are also a bit more reserved, and this was about exactly as expected. The group made little gyrations of the arms in beat, and then the curtains sprung open to reveal them in black suits with red dress shirts and black ties (like on the cover of Man Machine), all standing in front of individual steel tables on single posts (very futuristic, and akin to something found in 1984 or Brazil) with a laptop each. The gigantic screen behind them was alight with very primitive looking graphic boxes in red and black - mirroring the cover of the record, and as the song started to get to the lyrics, the lyrics flashed in time with the music - like subtitles. The sound was not fully integrated with the venue (only stacked on edges of the stage), but not only did the music sound extremely full, I noticed right away that they had updated the classic tune with some extremely well processed drum kits, and thusly the sound was very strong, and this edge would carry throughout the night. The underside of the enormous video screen (probably around 20 ft x 60 ft [7m x 20m]) was bathed in red light, and red lights shown from the overhead tower, and bathed the group's faces in red. After a few minutes, the lyrics were switched from all German, to partially english, and the vocals were added over the top, live. After the lights dimmed to signify the end of the song, a bright green light encompassed them, and the background video screen showed the expo2000 logo, in basic green (almost like it was being created by an argon laser) with no other colors. The chords started up for expo2000, but after a few minutes, the vocals were still not added in. The Stephen Hawking-like voice came in and started speaking in German about "the 21st century" (like in the kling klang mix) and after a couple minutes the background was a really neat visual display of fast green shapes being stretched from right to left with really spatial effect. The kicker for this song, was about midway through, the beat dropped out, and some very flashy strings came in (and I realized that they were changing it up from the original), and after a moment a vocal came in and said "Detroit they sold everything, Germany we sold everything", with the quirky synth line from the UR remix (FYI the UR remix says "Germany they sold everything, Detroit (we) sold everything). A really nice nod to Detroit, and people were much looser at this point than I expected. It's hard to describe in words, the relatively static presence of the guys on stage, and the feeling that the very precise visuals added to the music, and to the crowd. The green light dimmed, and was replaced by a static 4/4 beat and the image on the video screen looked like a really large graphical EQ meter with bars representing the 22 frequency zones. They started red, and as the song picked up and the crowd realized it was the Tour de France edits of 2003 all mixed together, the Eq bars changed color and eventually gave way to some old video clips of the Tour de France (think 1950s or 1960s film). While the song progressed, the film started cutting up faster and faster, and then we watched as the crisp lines of the tour de france logo started cutting into the film in the red and soft blue colors of the album color. Again, I'm struggling to properly portray the vivid nature with which the symbolism from the album covers was displayed, even tho it would appear subtle if you weren't that familiar with all of the album covers. Highlights of that visual display were the flash animation-looking eiffel tower with the circular bands of radio expanding around it. They went straight into the next song and the video screen showed hundreds of very slowly rotating CGI pills and vitamin tabs. They played the song "vitamin", and had some really neat graphics of alka-seltzer-like pills dropping into water and disappearing (those types of pills are quite common in europe for all kinds of things, including vitamins). I can't stress how insane the slowly rotating, yet stilll progressing down teh screen (like rain) really looked in person. Near the end of the song, the vitamins started coming towards the viewer, and the detail of the rendering was really shown to be intense. As the song played, the vocals were again played across the screen to beat, like subtitles. At the end of the song, the word "vitamin" appeared in white, and started vanishing like individual alka-seltzer tabs, and then the lights went out again. After a slight delay, and darkness, some extremely familiar chords rumbled through the hall, and the place immediately erupted as the original Tour de France played along with some similar visuals, yet it didn't seem as "new" as the graphical representation of the 2003 edition. Graphical maps of the actual bike race were shown, and the colors of the original album were applied to the black and white video. As the song waned its last notes, the crowd gave a huge "thank you" with cheering and and yelling, and Kraftwerk seemed to acknowledge this by offering a slight delay in music while the crowd responded. After a moment, there was a noise of ignition, and a few scant people in the crowd immediately realized what was going on, and went absolutely crazy as the sound of an engine turning over turned into the sound of a car running, and then traveling away, and finally honking a very recognizable honk "beep beep". Still in absolutely darkness, the hall was shook with everyone's pleasure as the words "auuuuuuuuutooooooooobaahhhhhhhhhhn", "auuuuuuuuuutoooooooooobaaahhhhhhhh", were accompanied by a huge blue roadsign logo (the european international sign for "highway") flashing as the words were spoken live. As the familiar chords of the 20 minute epic rivaled the still spastic cheers of the crowd (at this point I was completely taken by the energy of such a mixed crowd), the original album art from autobahn appeared on the screen, and the entire visual sequence throughout the 5-6 minute edit of the song was in the style of the original album art that is hand-drawn and has a particular coloring and style to it. At this point, my perma-grin was replaced by Perma-holy-teeth-showing-grin, and I was jumping up and down in short spurts involuntarily, as I felt the years of listening to this song release themselves into this experience that I (not so coincidentally) actually used the autobahn to get to. The cheers continued throughout the entirety of the song, and I haven't been fair to Kraftwerk, as they really updated the older song with nice new drumkits, and they didn't lose the sound at all, but rather added to the technology at their disposal by utilizing compression and newer effects to make these classics REALLY shine in a live performance. After Autobahn, They played Das Model with videos of 1950s or 1960s era video of women attending modeling school (with the books on the head and all the favorite clichs). The next song, Neon Lichten (neon lights), which has always been a favorite of mine (save the contrast and uneffected singing voice over the top), was played to some really neat scrolling neon sign images, all photo-collaged on top of one another. When the vocals came in, they sounded PERFECT, and it was instantly better than the recorded version with the integration of the vocals as another instrument, rather than the "added on" feeling in the recording. The next song started with a scrolling message not very unlike Star Wars intros, although it was not in the same style, and it said some very familiar warnings about Stellafield and the amount of radioactive materials that it would release. This classic tune (Radioactivity/Radioaktivitt) sounded so much better than the original, and you could hear the crowd singing along to all the words as they flashed in time on the screen against radioactive symbols and pictures of atoms combining and splitting in interesting manners. When the morse code noise came in to the song, a radioactivity meter (looks like a tuning fork) appeared and had little rings that moved in beat with the beeps... The next song was Trans-Europa Express, and the album logo was displaye dnumerously, along with some black and white video footage of the TEE from the 70s, and then the lights went out and the curtains closed. After a few minutes of synchronized clapping from the crowd with cheers of "kraftwerk", the curtains swiveled open, and the group returned to stage with different suits and LED lights hanging from around their necks. As the lights came up softly, the speakers whispered "eins zei drei vier funf sechts sieben acht", and another cheering outbreak (akin to what had started for Autobahn) grew to almost a riot, as Kraftwerk played "Nummern" and the visuals showed (of course) very 1980s styled "futuristic" numerals in green on black background, as the words were repeated in all kinds of foreign languages. It was extra-special, as they completely changed up the order and beat of alot of the numbers, and languages, and it made it into a really neat and updated version of the classic original. Not allowing for the crowd to react once the jumbled overlapped numbers at the end of the song started, they proceeded directly into Computerwelt, and by this time the crowd was so reactive, that Kraftwerk owned the whole of them with every beat. The visuals were akin to earlier songs, with the fast paced lyrics showing as they were spoken (in beat), and again, with no rest, they proceeded directly into "It's more fun to compute", complete with C64 graphics and visuals. For the third time in a row, they proceeded directly into the next song, and the place just kept getting more excited, as they played Taschenrechner with an image of a calculator on the video screen, being used by a moving finger that reacted in time to the song, and all of the beeps and bops output something different on the screen of the calculator. At the end, the curtains closed once more, and the crowd was not only slothering drunk at this point (remember, this show started at midnight), but if Kraftwerk would have started playing German drinking songs, I think the entirety of the crowd would have put their arms around each other in comradery singing along. The crowd again chanted and clapped a beat, that gained momentum every clap, and eventually got so fast that it became chaotic, and everyone just screamed as loud as they could. After a few moments, the cheering still very much alive, but beginning to lose steam, shadows were cast on the curtain from behind, of different angled strobe like flashes of the "robots", and it suddenly became hard to hear the intro to "die roboter" as the curtains were thrown open, revealing the robots standing at the podiums all pointing at the crowd. As the song progressed, the angled strobe effect continued on the video screen, and the robots moved to beat, and made gestures and gyrations to the crowd until the curtains again closed, and the crowd responded as it had just previously, until the curtains opened to Kraftwerk back on stage in front of their solid laptop stands all dressed in the green-lined suits that they appeared on the back of a few of their albums wearing. They played "electrokardiogramm", then "aerodynamik", and the crowd hadn't lost any steam in their enthusiasm. After they eneded aerodynamik, a dense blue light shown from the rafters on the faces of the band, and the still illuminated (probably from a black light) green-lined suits contrasted them, and made them almost "blue-man-group" looking. All at once, BOING, BOOM TSCHAK started up, but it was also severely updated, with new PONGs and BINGs thrown into the mix into the classic electro sound of the masters. The screen showed the vocals as batman-esque POW bubbles, and the song quickly turned into Non-stop music. As it was playing whoever was closest to the stage exit left his post at his laptop, closed the laptop, and went to the stage stairs, bowed, and then walked off stage. They continued until all members were gone, but "musik non-stop" was still playing in a loop. The curtains closed, the lights came on, and I realized that everyone in the place had the same giddy, childlike permanent grin on their face, and I couldn't believe what I had just experienced... Truly amazing would be another way to describe it, but none of the words written can begin to describe the entire show through my eyes...
