Punctum, please take yourself over to the DYWM thread when you have a moment, I’d like to hear your thoughts on The Model’s ‘prequel’

and a dude here http://www.metafilter.com/69140/Early-Kraftwerk-YouTube remembers it being used “kids drama series back in the late 70s about a gymnastics club on the BBC”

one thing’s for sure — it was definitely used on some sport-themed kids drama!

my entirely unreliable memory is of a serial called “King Cinder” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398500/ using the outgoing crunch/hiss section of Autobahn as the theme.

As with “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” there are some records which seem too big to be accommodated in any chart, and their appearance resembles that of the emperor venturing forth from his remote citadel to wander, briefly and amused, among the citizens beneath. Indeed there are certain acts whom I’d deem “above” the charts in the same way that, say, Garbo was “above” cinema.

Like Garbo, the subject of Kraftwerk’s (then) four-year-old song remains at a kept distance, remote, untouchable and never touched. “I’d like to take her home that’s understood” but the plaintive, weeping sadness of the high synth motif indicates that such desires are doomed to remain in the abstract tense. In their role as passive observers – even though, musically and philosophically, they influenced nearly all pop which succeeded them, maybe more thoroughly and comprehensively than even the Beatles – Kraftwerk may be gazing upon the subject of “Dancing Queen” (“And she has been checking nearly all the men…/She’s looking good, for beauty we will pay”) with sorrow but also compassion and a touch of self-regret.

When we get to the final (and key) couplet of “I saw her on the cover of a magazine/Now she’s a big success, I’d like to meet her again” we also realise the song’s prescience in that it could be considered a belated sequel to “Don’t You Want Me” – the deposed and disowned Svengali who can only view his creation in common with millions of others, never directly. Or the dispossessed loner sitting and slowly dying behind his computer screen.

“Computer Love” was the second single from Kraftwerk’s 1981 album Computer World – a record which, together with Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing, pretty much laid down the Ten Commandments of New Pop – and with the track order reversed had briefly appeared in the Top 40 that previous, deserted summer. But “The Model” – one of the key New Romantic-inspiring anthems – continued to be in demand in clubs, and combined with the Human League’s assiduously vocal championing of them as key influences, this led to “The Model” being given prominence on the double A-side and the record, justifiably, becoming Kraftwerk’s first (but sadly, to date, their only) number one. It was a keys to the kingdom moment in pop, and as a single the pure grace and line of these songs make such ambulance-chasing exercises as the Mobiles’ “Drowning In Berlin” appear even sillier than they already were. When the League’s original 1978 Fast Product single of “Being Boiled” was reissued and entered the top ten a week after Kraftwerk it felt as though the postponed revolution was now determinedly under way.

However, I still think “Computer Love” the sadder and superior song. Absurdly inflated with well-meaning pomp by Coldplay, the warm chill of the original remains resonant. The keyboard melody strokes like an unseen hand reaching out of the PC screen, to try to alleviate the monotone suffering of the protagonist – “The lonely night,” “I don’t know what to do,” “I call this number” – with at least a simulacrum of reassurance. The song in its full album-length form lasts for nearly eight minutes – and it has to because, like all Kraftwerk songs, it is so patient and methodical in achieving its aims – but it never becomes dull; the keyboard lines and drum machines gradually shift in and out of phase with each other, reinforcing and deepening the connection, as though a million lonely computer users are tapping out messages to be sent to each other’s bottle of an email inbox. The melody cuddles and caresses, the movement and animation increase (so gradually)…and then you realise that this vision was foreseen in 1981, when hardly anybody had a computer. Was there ever a more human pop group than Kraftwerk? Shouldn’t Joe Meek have survived to see his dream fulfilled? Wouldn’t Brian Wilson have been flattered nicely by their tactile tributes?

And twelfthly (pace Morley in Words And Music), Kraftwerk succeeded because they know that all true experiment has to come from deep, deeply within; beyond the wires of their instruments and appliances because even these had to be designed and imagined by a human mind and inspired by the most human of hearts.

I managed listen to “Autobahn” in its entirety around the same time I got “Computer Love” as well as “The Man Machine” and “Trans-Europe Express”, so virtually a full back catalogue of Kraftwerk for under £15 (bargain!).

What I found amazing was something Tom touched on; the vastness, that expanse of sound from a small space. I remember seeing a documentary about ELP on tour in the States, with a huge array of keyboards, organs, echo chambers and delay units, being dragged around from city to city along with what must have been THE WORLD’S LARGEST DRUMKIT and enough guitars to sink a battleship. Compare that to Kraftwerk on tour with what is essentially 4 small boxes on trestle tables! Yes, there must be more stuff happening backstage, but the philosophy is economy and clean-ness (not cleanliness). Just the one hook. Let’s just say enough to get the point across. We’ll all dress the same and have the same haircuts. One day, we’ll stay at home and watch TV while robots go on tour in our place. Won’t that be great?

For some, OMD and The Human League do it better, but without the boys from Germany, we would still have electronic music, but it would have taken the dystopian industrial path, the Normal path, the Cabs path without exploring the shiny pop path at all. We have to be thankful (as do a myriad of artists, Coldplay notwithstanding). I’m glad they got their #1.

Yes, totally: the Autobahn album and Queen’s A Night At The Opera were the first two new albums I played on my first proper stereo system, a Xmas present from my Dad in 1975. And as an introduction to the concept of stereo sound, the album version of “Autobahn” is about as perfect as it gets.

I once had a schoolmate regale me with the out-of-body experience to be had listening to Vangelis on headphones while lying on the floor.

I once had to field a couple of excited schoolmates who came bursting into my study with a copy of Tangerine Dream’s Rubicon, demanding that I play it immediately for them. We listened to an entire side in silence – theirs reverential; mine politely masking boredom and irritation.

As the side finished, one of them sighed deeply and began the analysis.

“You know, I actually felt scared during that final section.”

“Yes, yes, me too”, chimed the other. “It was like I was…. drowning.”

“Yes, like drowning! That’s exactly how it was!”

Meanwhile, as I approached the trusty Garrard SP25 Mark IV, I realised that the whole album had been playing at 45rpm….

Mike’s comment about the success of The Model being a little baffling is kind of how I recall it. There really doesn’t seem to have been any one particular underlying reason for it suddenly going to Number 1.

Unfortunately not as this would be discrimination against our increasing amount of unemployed readers.

Moving swiftly on to the record under discussion… It wasn’t generally the done thing to make a grand entrance to an RHC Stomp night, but around that time there were four girls who came in wearing identical shirt/trouser combos with a pocket calculator in the shirt pocket, as in the latest Kraftwerk “look”, and got a round of applause.

The thing I most loved about this one was the subtlety of the beat, as if the electronic drums were being hit with brushes as opposed to drumsticks. It makes the whole affair, in the word used twice upthread, “gentle” – you can imagine the fat, indeed phat, beats that some acts would have given it. (Kraftwerk themselves elsewhere – I played The Mix version of “The Robots” to a 13-year-old who’d never heard it, and he took on a severe twitch in his seat – enjoying it, mind.) The German accent has an arch quality of detachment that goes well with the subject matter.

Anyone else remember the joy of sitting between speakers or wearing headphones and hearing “Autobahn” for the first time, as they explore the possibilities of stereo in pop? Typical of them that when you see clips shows, the ‘Werk are featured not on TOTP, The Tube or anything like that, but “Tomorrow’s World”.

Much as I might tip my hat to Kraftwerk, I also carry a vague sense of guilt at never having fallen for them as hard as the critical consensus tells me I should. And I can’t help feeling that people read more into their work than is actually there, Peter Sellers in Being There style. Yes, OK, so they like computers. But let’s not credit them with too much clairvoyancy.

“The Model” is an OK little pop tune, but it’s not a particular favourite and even in early 1982 it was beginning to curl a little round the edges. But as others have commented, 1982 was the year when Kraftwerk’s influence made itself most keenly felt, with the arrival of “Planet Rock” and the paradigm-shifting glories of electro-funk.

And MY GOD, did that stuff rock my world. The day I brought home 12″ copies of “Planet Rock”, “The Message” and Arthur Baker/John Robie’s brilliant cover of Eddy Grant’s “Walking On Sunshine” (as credited to Rockers Revenge) was every bit as personally significant as the day I brought home The Damned “New Rose”, just under six years earlier. My student housemates thought I’d lost the plot, just as my schoolmates had done with punk rock…. always a good sign!