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Wednesday, October
18
Showtimes: 10:30pm
Admission: FREE
reservations are not necessary
long story short,
Once, Rock and Roll had a brief affair with electroacoustic, improvised,
and pantonal instrumental music. Join us for an earfull of their
progeny, Krautrock.
Time Permitting, we'll be playing recordings from:
Amon DŸŸl
Ash Ra Tempel
Brainticket
CAN
Cluster
Faust
Guru Guru
Kraftwerk
La DŸsseldorf
Neu!
Popol Vuh
Klaus Schulze
Tangerine Dream
- and others...
long story longer
Music historians can never really agree, but, one could say early
American Rock and Roll was heavily influenced by 19th-century
romanticism. Then modernity cut through the middle of the century.
By 1969, a man had just walked on the moon, ARPANET- the predacessor
to the internet was created, the UNIX operating system was created
in the back corner of Bell Labs, the Woodstock music Festival
took place in upstate New York, The Beach Boys released their
epic Pet Sounds Album, The Manson Family went haywire,
Cold War Nuclear posturing had the world pretty much totally freaked
out, students of the world went haywire protesting cold-war effects
like Vietnam, The Beatles gave their last public appearance, LSD
was everywhere.
Just about everybody involved with the events described above
grew very long hair, (except perhaps the Astronauts- but the rocket
and computer scientists, for the most part, all had long hair).
The Global Village rocked hard.
By 1969, television had become omnipresent in the modern world.
In Germany, there was some strange kind of freedom emerging, perhaps
paridoxically reacting to the constraints and sobriety of history-
or perhaps because Germany had little direct involvement in the
excitement and fury of the emerging modern world, as the first
generation of Germans after the war were coming of age. The Germans
were perhaps somewhat isolated, reflective, yet aware.
Krautrock happened.
"Krautrock is an eclectic and often very original mix of
Anglo-American post-psychedelic jamming and moody progressive
rock mixed with ideas from contemporary experimental classical
music (especially composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, with whom, for
example, Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay of Can had previously
studied) and from the new experimental directions that emerged
in jazz during the 1960's and 1970's. Free of American and British
conventions of song structure and melody, the Germans drove the
music to a more mechanical and electronic sound." -- wikipedia
Krautrock Dissappeared.
Perhaps it was culture shock. Like most changes, perhaps modernity
came on too fast. Influences of Krautrock permiated rock and popular
music for decades after the 1970's, only to re-emerge in the late
1990's in fragmented forms: post-rock, avant-jazz, microsound,
math rock, to name a few sub-genre's.
Come listen to selected recordings, played in full glory at Monkey
Town.
Recordings selected and played for you by .ike and Troy.
Links:
TONS of Krautrock Stuff: http://www.phinnweb.org/krautrock/index2.html
Wikipedia on Krautrock: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krautrock
Tangent on Roots Rock (Pre-Requisite Listening?): http://thehound.net/
A Great Taste of the Music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdem4XtCyUI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpkO079jRHs
Above Photo: members of Kraftwerk, Ralf and Florian,
in their studio. (Pre Man-Machine Era Kraftwerk constitute fundamental
Krautrock recordings). |
