MINIMUM MAXIMUM

Well having never been particularly warm to Kraftwerk's oeuvre in general past the first two albums, I always had shunned their concerts especially in the light of their strong influence on New Wave groups that I hated so much in the early 80's. So I waited and waited for a chance to see concert film footage, certainly not being appealed (Burt rather appalled) by their videoclips of the time. Now that this DVD finally hit the shelves of my library, I finally was able to give them a shot. And let's face it, I was certainly not surprised or even deceived (since I did not expect much from them) and actually got exactly what I expected: a bunch of pre-New Wave electro-pop with extreme minimalism.

So this double DVD is a full concert of their better-known material from their later 70's album through the earlier 80's. Crazy that in the first decade of the millennium, this group would go through painstakingly throughout the motions of this soulless electro pop where everything is already pre-recorded and whatever is not is rather uninteresting. I guess their public is the one that grew in their teens and pre-teens with this simplistic debilitating and decadent music. And the ultra sophisticated and futuristic looks of the time look plainly dated, outdated and a bit fascist, to dare say it. Actually the set list start rather well with a track from their best album Man-Machine, but the quality quickly drops as each new track is unable to catch whatever excitement there might have been in those albums at the time of release. All of those "classics" TDF, Radioactivity, Autobahn, Trans Euro Express are played without much distinction and visually speaking if it was not for the video mumbo-jumbo playing behind them, you'd swear that this was still the same track and would fall asleep. I do not think I ever used the FFWD button as much on an album DVD or CD.

Clearly most of those "hits" are played with cold technicality and complete lack of emotion. You might want to answer me that this was precisely what Kraftwerk was about, but in this case, I am sure that the concerts of their prime held much more energy and served some kind of purpose. But in the case of this DVD, only nostalgia on the part of the fans and probably financial reasons got this "monster" brought back to life. It is not usual to talk of dinosaur when talking of electro-pop groups, but I think that here these guys are probably as dead and as useful as a Fortran programming card. Can't believe the public (my generation really) can still buy such hollow and shallow music; and pay good money to see such an anti-thesis of intelligent music. But then again is this not what Kraftwerk were all about?