Krautrock (Euroweirdness)

I sort of want to post something serious, but I had a bad day at work, and the serious stuff going on here in the U.S., mainly the presidential campaign, is profoundly disheartening. It's not just the campaign itself, but the people baying from the sidelines. So I'd rather think about something else.

It's a pretty self-indulgent post, I guess, since I think very few, if any, people who read this blog will be interested in this video. It's a BBC documentary on "Krautrock," which, if you haven't encountered it before, is the term applied loosely to a number of German bands active in the 1970s. The only thing they really have in common is that they were attempting to break away from the mostly blues-based music of the American and British rock scenes. Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, Faust, and Cluster were the most prominent names. The documentary is not available for streaming from the BBC, but there's some information about it here. It's an hour long. I've noticed that sometimes YouTube videos work better if you click through and watch it at the YouTube site rather than here.

If you aren't interested in watching the whole thing, it's worth sitting through the first ten minutes or so for the clips of German "schlager" music, which at least in these brief samples is the worst pop music I've ever heard. I can see why some musicians thought any kind of noise would be better.

 

I don't actually especially like most of the music referred to here, I just find the phenomenon interesting. But I do like two of the bands, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. The first, in their '70s and early '80s heyday, produced fascinating otherworldly soundscapes almost entirely with synthesizers, flavored with Edgar Froese's excellent guitar work. Some of their work was slow and dreamy, some propulsive. Most pieces were long, at least up until 1980 or so--30 minutes or more, occupying both sides of an LP. Here's a section from one that's familiar to all TD fans, "Ricochet," arguably their most successful long work.

 

If you were around in the 1970s you may have heard Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" on the radio (or maybe you were even one of the people who bought the album--I wasn't). Their work was  more conventional in musical structure, but was cool and mechanical by design, using the synthesizer in a somewhat ironic way, presumably as a comment on the alienation produced by technology. They deliberately presented themselves as somewhat robotic. 

 

Comments

[Paul]

Well, do I have good news for you!

http://www.getnextv.com/page/German-Schlager-TV

[Rob G]

Never cared much for TD but I was a Kraftwerk fan until they went off in that sort of dance/disco direction they took in the later 70s.

Funny, but I can say almost exactly the same thing about the 80s band Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark. I loved the stuff from the very early 80s ('Architecture and Morality' is brilliant) but then they became a dance band and I lost interest.

Do you remember the "band" Synergy? It was really just one guy, Larry Fast I think his name was, but he did interesting instrumental synth stuff in the 70s. I remember having the album "Cords," which was pressed on clear vinyl.

[Paul]

You reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwaxWoJPUC0

[Mac]

Oh man! I can't wait to watch these videos, Paul, but must be off to work now.

I can't remember ever hearing OMD, Rob. Quite possible I might like them. Never heard of Synergy at all.

[godescalc]

I know a little of the german "Schlager" from way too much time going to karaoke night in a Würzburg bierkeller, where the 80s-music end of the schlager spectrum (Matthias Reims, Wolfgang Petry) were often sung. They were cheesy in an 80s way; older Schlager were cheesy in a more sentimental, schmaltzy way. What merit they have relies on the lyrics having some impact: they're songs of loss and heartbreak and loneliness, typically, and not terribly likeable unless you're prepared to get at least a little sentimental.

(I quite like some of the 80s ones, although I don't know what this says about me - I blogged on two of my favourites here.)

(Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" got a lot of exposure in other countries. I heard it a lot as a kid, I think on radio but I'm not sure.)

[godescalc]

...ok, I thought I knew something about schlagers, but I'm finally getting bits of the video to play (our internet connection does not like streamed content, for some reason), and my goodness, I had not realised how bad it got. That 40s-50s stuff is unspeakable.

[Mac]

Alas, I can't get Schlager TV to work. But Das Hokey-Pokey is great.

On a quick look at YouTube, this is the closest thing I can find to the schlager examples in the documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYeGfffEd80

But that's really not so bad, not any worse than a lot of American pop of the same period. I suppose they used the worst stuff they could find in the movie, but imagine this with much less musicality, worse clothes, and much more smiling and dancing.

[Mac]

I only had time to listen to one of your examples, godescalc, before I ran out of lunch hour, but it's not bad at all, for the kind of thing it is--just basic pop music. I guess schlager evolved like everything else.

Now that I think of it, "Autobahn" must have been fairly popular here, because I heard it on old-fashioned Top 40 radio in a small town in the '70s.

[Craig]

This is musical terrain I did not know existed.

[Mac]

The TD and Kraftwerk examples here should be enough for you to decide whether it's of interest to you. TD's work has a mysterious quality that I like. It has something to do with the sci-fi associations of synths, I think.

I missed your 12:54 comment earlier, godescalc. Yeah, I guess that's the kind of thing that's in the documentary.

[Janet]

Even I know "Autobahn." I think it was in the top 10 for a while.

AMDG

[Mac]

I mentioned that I don't care much for most of the bands (if that's the right word) in this category. That's not entirely fair, because I haven't heard much of any of them. It's just that what I have heard didn't attract me--seems to be a lot of hippie excess--aimless jams, boring and dated avant-garde-ness, etc. But who knows, there may be some good stuff there.

One thing that really strikes me in listening to Kraftwerk is how some of their basic sounds were put to very different uses by people like Ultravox and Rupert Hine.

[Grumphy]

Bahn, Bahn, Autobahn - we used to laugh at it when I was a teenager, in England.

[Mac]

That's because it's funny.

According to the documentary, it was the English who stuck these guys with the "Krautrock" term.

[godescalc]

Germans don't call themselves Krauts. It would be like the French coming up with a genre called "frogrock", you'd know it wasn't a homegrown nickname.

[Mac]

Right, I meant the English as opposed to the Americans. I don't know when the term made it over here. I didn't hear it until many years later, probably in the late '90s. But then I'd never heard of most of the bands, either.