1,251.) Wed May 6, 2020

RIP Florian Schneider (1947-2020)

The Song of the Day is:

Kraftwerk – “Computer Love”

From the album Computer World (1981)

Another lonely night
Stare at the TV screen

I don’t know what to do
I need a rendezvous
Computer love
Computer love

Emil Schult – Karl Bartos – Ralf Hütter

Rest In Peace, Florian Schneider. As one of the co-founders of the German band Kraftwerk, he was one of the most impactful musicians who ever lived. He spent 40 years as a member of the group that he founded with Ralf Hütter before his 2008 retirement. The group has been repeatedly nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but have been denied thus far because most Americans don’t realize their importance. Krautrock does not hold much import with many Americans. It is hard to step back and picture a world without electronic instruments. They are everywhere now, from our pop music to jazz and film scores. In the sixties though, when Kraftwerk got their start, electronic instruments were still just in their infancy. At the beginning, Schneider was playing flute, guitar, saxophone, violin and percussion for the group, while Hütter played organ, bass, guitar and drums. The group was generally a four-piece, though there have been a lot of personnel changes in the other two positions. It’s easy to imagine that the guys of Kraftwerk were just recipients of new electronic instruments as they rolled off the assembly line, but in fact they were engineering and inventing them themselves. There were some preexisting instruments, such as Moog synthesizers and drum machines which the band would modify, but make no mistake, these instruments were large and clumsy. These were not the simple keyboards of today, but no doubt when these these synthesizers caught up to the group, they were quick to implement them to their live show. They released three albums between 1970-1973 which found them trying to catch their footing. However their next five albums, Autobahn, Radio-Activity, Tran-Europe Express, Man–Machine and Computer World, are all groundbreaking masterpieces. Though they have a dedicated following, they really are a musician’s band, and literally a generation’s worth of musicians took influence from their work. David Bowie was one of the first artists to really take notice of their work, and his “Berlin period” reflected that. He even named a song in honor of Florian Schneider on his “Heroes” album, “V-2 Schneider”. Later, acts such as Giorgio Moroder, Depeche Mode, Björk, Devo, Aphex Twin, Nine Inch Nails, Gary Numan and Soft Cell would expand upon their sound. Their music was also sampled or interpolated in songs by Afrika Bambaataa, New Order and Coldplay, who liberally borrowed from today’s song “Computer Love” for their hit “Talk”. Kraftwerk has continued to tour without Schneider. It’s been reported that cancer was the cause of Schneider’s death.