alt Hacker NewsKraftwerk's radical 1976 track
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If you like Kraftwerk and you're not aware of this book, I recommend it:
"Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany", by Uwe Schütte. It's packed with details of albums, songs, tours, equipment, and people.
The anti-nuclear message in "Radio-Activity" certainly came later and was repeatedly updated, right into the Fukushima era [2011], but this was not the original sentiment [1976]. From the book:
"At the time, Billboard magazine featured the most-played singles by the large network of radio stations under the heading 'Radio Action'. The band seemed to have misread or misremembered this as 'Radio-Activity'. 'Suddenly,' remembers Wolfgang Flür, 'there was a theme in the air, the activity of radio stations, and the title of 'Radioactivity is in the Air for You and Me' was born. All we needed was the music to go with it. ... The ambiguity of the theme didn't come until later.' Radio-Activity was intended to celebrate radio broadcasting as a convenient, easy and democratic means to listen to music and news."
I remember thouroghly disliking The Mix (1991). The changed new versions of the old songs were all worse, not better, and especially egregious was the change of Radio-Activity from an etherial hymn about radio communication, to an overtly political activism song about nuclear power.
I love Kraftwerk, but contributing to anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany hasn't been a major success. If only more European countries had followed the French example and developed substantial nuclear fleets.
The original version is quite different from the version performed today. The original lyrics refer to the pun of "radioactivity" versus "radio activity", meaning, activity on the radio.
The new live version refers almost exclusively to the former meaning, and adds "stop" to turn it into a protest song.
I've seen Kraftwerk live twice, at London's Albert Hall and Berkeley's Greek Theater, both times absolutely amazing. Highly recommended.
I've often thought they would be the ideal band to perform inside the "Sphere" in Las Vegas.
If the suggested political impact of this music is to be believed, the music might be one of the biggest environmental disasters of all time.
Germany has been pretty widely criticized for decommissioning it's nuclear power program, only to replace it with Russian oil.
Ruckzuck is way more interesting and ahead of its time (1970).
P.S
Also check out Ashra - Deep Distance (1976).
Saw them last year in Seattle. One of those bands I never thought I'd get the chance to see (I'm 54), but thanks to them they are still touring and making great music.
It was an amazing show, and incredible night.
Fun fact, these "radicals" were behind one of the longest running copyright lawsuits in European history, one that started in 1997 and ended this year https://ra.co/news/85004
Only related in awesomeness but whenever I see VLC’s icon I think of Kraftwerk.
Kraftwerk sounds novel even today, I can’t imagine how it must have sounded 50 years ago.
It’s a shame they were so anti-nuclear. Best song on that album was Ohm Sweet Ohm.
IMHO Autobahn is still their best.
The Electronic Harpsichord, same year. must have been an interesting time.
I have been extremely lucky to get an invitation to their concert in Kiev, Ukraine, many years ago. Three of the original members still alive and kicking. It was incredibly awesome.
The concert itself was a gift from Victor Pinchuk, one of the Ukrainian oligarchs and renowned patron, to the city. Previously he also sponsored a full-blown Elton John concert on the main city square which I also attended.
Totally Rad.
One of the things whose non-existence I'm mildly surprised by: a mash-up between Kraftwerk's Radioactivity and Imagine Dragons Radioactive. Sure, they're extremely different songs melody-wise but that never stopped people from successfully mashing up songs before, and the underlying beat is almost the same but reversed, which is kinda interesting[0][1].
Also, has anyone ever compared the cultural context and zeitgeist of both songs? Probably would be a fun high school assignment, haha. Kraftwerk's song came out in the same decade that the Club of Rome published its Limits To Growth report[2], so when fears about humanity's future really started to become A Thing that was impossible to ignore. Later versions of the song turning it into a protest song encapsulate Cold War fears for a nuclear apocalypse of the time (presumably, I wasn't really around yet back then).
The main audience for the Imagine Dragons song was a generation fully born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. One that grew up playing the Fall Out games. It also came out in 2012, right after the 2008 crisis kick-started the "oh the previous generation will leave us with nothing huh?" Doomer mentality among millennials and Gen Z kids. Remember the media going nuts over the "Ok, Boomer" expression for a while? (which still feels like the media intentionally dividing a community to stop it from actually fixing things me, tbh, but let's not get too side-tracked)
In that context, when put side by side the ID song almost feels like a Doomer generation follow-up and implicit critique of how nothing seems to have actually be done about to prevent the impending apocalypse that the Kraftwerk song's generation was supposedly so worried about, turned into a fantasy about living in that post-apocalyptic planet.
It's "vibe" is weirdly hopeful too, especially compared to the Kraftwerk song as well. Instead of fearing an apocalypse, it's set after one and embraces living within it.
At least, that's how the two songs come across to me, which probably says more about me than anything else. Apparently Dan Reynolds, main singer on ID and one of writers of the song, has said that in retrospect after almost a decade, he had realized that it was actually about him "not giving up hope after losing faith in Mormonism."[3]. Which makes sense as a personal experience of going through feeling doomed and figuring out how to survive and embrace living on in a "post-apocalyptic" world on a personal, social level.
I think that's what annoys me about the Kraftwerk song's status as a protest song, and a lot of other music from the same era: it doesn't feel like it's insisting on a better future. It's passive late 70s, early 80s pessimism.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3viBe2Q0P8
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyXeJZJUFHE
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_%28Imagine_Dragons...
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saving you a click: it's Radioactivity
I read once that they wanted Autobahn to be longer but sadly the limitations of the LP was 23 minutes. If only they had access to the CD! What could have been.
Still as it was it must have been a tremendous shock to the hippies of the era. It was the sound of the future.