Nice review thanks, would love to have gone to that gig but i was away
when the tickets came out and then they were stupid money on ebay.
Still im glad i caught them at Brixton a few years back, not just for
the music, but for the great characters in the audience also! I'll
never forget a small guy in his 60s dancing completely out of rhythm
with a smile on his face. That gig seem to attaract every type of
fan. I would of liked to have gone to the brixton gig afterwards at
midnight just to see the difference in set and people. Did anyone go
to both, was there differences? Cheers
2009/7/4 fran...@thatamazingthing.com:
Very brief would be: Fantastic!
A bit more would be:
For those who saw the Minimum Maximum tour (or have subsequently seen the
DVD) the set up and the set were similar.
Some things were total like for like - start with Man Machine, end with Music
Non-stop, I think the set might have been something
like this
The Man-Machine
Home Computer
Tour De France
Autobahn
Trans Europe Express
Metal On Metal
Neon Lights
Show Room Dummies
The Model
The Robots
Numbers
Computer World
Vitamin
Radioactivity
Aéro Dynamik
Music Non Stop
Might not be fully accurate, my memory's terrible, I did this by looking at
the Minimum Maximum track list, knocking out what I
don't remember them playing (not sure about Home Computer), rearranging into
the 3 spits and adding Show Room Dummies which is the
one thing I remember them doing not from Minimum Maximum - maybe other peepz
can chip in and correct, it was great to meet list
members Robin and Dan there, maybe (almost certainly) they recall better.
I saw Minimum Maximum at The Apollo in Manchester, the sound there was
tremendous, at this gig from where we were (right at the very
front!) it was not as good but same ballpark. I believe from friends in
seated areas further away / less central that it wasn't so
good there, one bunch got cheap, last minute seats where they said it sounded
terrible and they couldn't see the screen but were
lucky that they moved to stand elsewhere and the stewards were very chilled
and didn't move them on. Others were just an awful long
way from the stage.
I guess this is understandable as the Manchester Velodrome isn't meant as a
gig venue. From where we were the show was great and
the gig was definitely run well with no long queues etc. I'd be interested
in whether Kraftwerk agreed to play the gig for
Manchester International Festival before the gig got placed there or if that
was a big part of them playing as you might expect.
So apart from the odd song what was different to MM? Well first there was
the replacement of Florian. Obviously this is something
we've seen before but (apart from it being one of the founder / life of the
band members) the difference was it was someone who
looked way younger than the others! To me this lacked a bit of gravitas but
my girlfriend liked it ;-)
The videos used were also same as MM but with one big difference. At the
entrance you were given 3D specs and all the stuff after
Robots above had been redone in 3D. And I've got to say it was awesome. I
live very close to an IMAX cinema and have seen plenty
3D stuff there but though the screen was smaller here it seemed better, at
times the stuff that was on the screen behind them not
only seemed to come out the screen but when placed in front of the band
seemed to obscure them. How dey do dat? It was brilliant.
Possibly the highlight of the night though came early on when, during Tour De
France, members of the British national cycling team
took to the Velodrome track. Us Brits are quite fond of our cyclists at the
moment as they are about our most successful sporting
team, dominating the Beijing Olympics etc. so they got a mega reception and
everyone got the Kraftwerk significance (I think /
hope!). But best of all for me I was stood near enough the stage to see that
Ralf was totally buzzing - you'd expect that but he
had a massive smile on his face as he called the names of the cyclists out
and he grinned away and nearly danced throughout the
track!
Top night, maybe the one shame was that the Steve Reich piece that supported
was pretty much lost in the size of the venue / people
anticipating what was to follow.
