Michael66 wrote:The British media once again showed their talent of giving any subject related to Germany a Nazi angle.
Yes. of course the parent-generation of the musicians portrayed had a past in Nazi Germany. And if you ask those musicians questions about the relation of their music to Germany's past, of course they'll courteously give you answers (even in their best English). But it's the kind of questions a producer of such a documentary asks that sets the tone of what the documentary will look like in the end. And that interviewer certainly had an agenda of what kind of spin to the topic he wanted in his documentary.
There is something I understood today about Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk really only got famous, especially in the UK, because they communicated a kind of post-war, tamed Nazi aestethics in the way they portrayed themselves (talking of themselves as "Maschinen-Menschen", "Musik-Arbeiter", the way they looked on their record covers). That's playing exactly towards the expectations of how a German musician should look and behave like in the eyes of the British music press. And Kraftwerk gave their foreign listeners (intentionally or unintentionally) what they wanted: Looking a bit like the psychopaths of the past, this time not dropping bombs, but firing hypnotic machine beats.
Edgar and friends just didn't get the same attention because they looked like commonplace hippies at that time. Nothing pleasantly creepy about those TD guys.
Nice theory, but utterly wrong...IMHO. People bought the music because it was good AND...more importantly it was POP and had lyrics. However there was a time when they weren't cool...believe me at my college if you said you liked them they would have laughed in your face. They had solid sales, but nothing fantastic. Their real break...and it was a fluke was that when they released Computer World and the record company needed a B side they slapped The Model on it. 99% of the Radio stations then played the Model thinking it was the A side, because it was more Radio friendly. If Kraftwerk had released a single with both cuts from CW then chances are they wouldn't be as well known in the UK. The Nazi symbolism and humour was missed by most of the kids who bought it, WWII was ancient history to them, only known from Dad's Army. ....then and only then did the UK press buy into the whole Kraftwerk are cool thought process. Kraftwerk then went back to the Kling Klang studio and basically went into hybernation, and the myth (and it has to be said a fair bit of nonsense) started to build.
TD didn't become more famous because they aren't pop, write songs and didn't have catchy melodies (by choice)...and you couldn't dance to it!. Neither did they want chart success. Franke is on record saying that if TD had a big hit in the charts it would have killed the group.
Both groups are brilliant, as different or as similar as your ears and brain want them to be.