MUSIC: Krautrock Concert

Krautrock Concert at the Ford

The Ford Amphitheatre is nestled in the hills of Cahuenga Pass, one of several venerable outdoor performance venues in my city so lavishly appointed with entertainment delights.  I see local groups sponsored by the Cultural Affairs Department of the city with other cultural groups here.  The audience is welcome to bring picnics or buy dinner boxes and dine alfresco on terraces beneath beautiful old canyon trees as the sun sets.

I enjoyed a nice Pino Grigio and a boxed salad next to a fountain falling over mayan-shaped bricks while the twilight made its long slow way over the arching branches above me.

The young hip audience brought a few other less traditional items to enhance their listening pleasure, I noticed. Rather surprised no one seemed worried about getting busted; it’s a very public family-oriented venue. They danced in their seats, rising up like a wave when the last cover band began the Kraftwerk set.

 During last night’s performance, of “cosmic” German alternative music, a large full moon rose over the tall trees, soon disappearing into the waiting sea a few miles away.

“Krautrock” styles began in the late 60’s and early 70’s in Germany, and is a seminal modern popular movement which influenced house, ambient, New Age, and industrial music styles.

The only band I recognized was Kraftwerk, whom I had loved immediately when I first heard them.  I went because it was billed “cosmic”, and I thought it could be an intriguing contrast to the Ring Cycle and its themes which I saw at the Dorothy Chandler in 2010-11.   The cynical clashing energy of 30’s cabaret Expressionism and the smooth evil of  The Threepenny Opera have given way to a numbed alienation, muffled and worn, yet with visions of transcendence gothic romantic emotion. Very intriguing, as is the use of electronic instruments.

Krautrock and ambient music features echoes, crescendos, extreme dynamics, vibrating and reverberating non-musical noises, mechanical or electronic tools or motors, for instance.  I hear little regular rhythmic pattern, and limited vocal or traditional use of the voice; Kraftwerk chants robotically.

Did anyone find that numbing mechanistic quality more so because all the bands were simply “covering”,  another step toward modern zombie-ism?

Independence is a partial recitation of the Declaration of Independence and a mix of the Star Spangled Banner. It was first performed in Germany 30 years ago, which must have been early 1980’s.  A long time ago, when one recalls that the Berlin Wall didn’t come down until November, 1989. I found it quite haunting, realizing that and listening to Lorenz’ stylistically and historically meaningful expression.

The Creator Has a Master Plan, a cover of a cover!, sounded like the beginning of time as swelling blooming energies coalesced and divided, rather like listening to a lava lamp.

Vitamin C and Computer World take an amusingly ironic tone, celebrating a kind of numbed anxiety that smiles and chuckles quietly and darkly at the post-industrial plight of modern man.  

Annoyingly long set-ups required for the many bands and their electronic instruments cut the last performance short. A gargantuan monster tangle of cable and wires was heaped onstage testified to the complexity of the event. Technicians ministering frantically over it as if to resuscitate dying seaweed. I think I was the oldest person there, and I think everyone knew everyone there but me.  Two young people sitting with me chatted with me, one of them clearly enjoying it that I said I was a Kraftwerk fan.  Where do all these people come from?  They live in LA, sure, and what a view of how grand the artistic rainbow of this place arches.