Peter Beasley wrote:24db wrote:with respect...who gives a monkey's about Pink Floyd?...they might be famous but why do they get so much credit for using synths...Compare that to TD who were genuine innovators and they get airbrushed out of most histories...
One exception to this was the review of 'Ricochet' by Miles in New Musical Express, where he declared that TD had far surpassed the Floyd in their use of electronics (comparing it to the recently released 'Wish You Were Here').
National Rock Star said roughly the same thing, however that was something like 33 years ago.
if we take a more up to date book, something like
'Analog Days': the invention and impact of the Moog Synthesizer, you'll see that TD is credited 3 times in the index, whereas PF gets 6 (8 if you include DSOTM), Emerson 23. If you add the total amount of coverage on TD in the whole book it probably comes to about 7 or 8 sentences....if that.
Now, it's obvious that people like Keith get mentioned more times for several reasons..not all of them musical, he was very popular in the States...and perhaps cos he was friends with Bob Moog (btw this month sees the 75th anniversary of Bob's birth...we should mark the occassion!!!!!!!!!!!).
Now I'm sure some ex-TD fans will just say,
'oh well, it's because TD don't play the great improvised stuff of past days, Chris Franke, Moog, analog..blah blah' however this air brushing of TD out of EM's history started years ago. The famous South-Bank programme being one of the more famous examples, they did a whole TV programme on EM in the 80's and managed not to mention TD once or KS or...etc etc.
Perhaps if TD and Klaus had pranced about with a ribbon controller at the front of the stage going 'WooooOOOOOOoWOOOeeeEEEEEeeeee" for 15 minutes in each gig then perhaps they'd get mentioned more often. Then again...perhaps not
The recent DVD on Kraftwerk (which I think is great on German rock, but oddly, perhaps not too good on Kraftwerk) totally dismisses TD after Phaedra. I knew there was a reason why I don't buy 'the Wire'
Opinion dressed up as fact, get two people to say the same thing and it's set in stone. I can forgive people like Julian Cope for saying that TD sold out after Atem, because at least he's a fan, totally OTT perhaps, but enthusiastic as hell. For all the flaws in his book, and there are many, it gave the whole of German Rock (Krautrock? what a terrible term!) a boost in the consciousness of joe public (Hell Mojo ran a multi-page article on it, with Krautrock/Kraftwerk on the front cover)...Krautrock was cool again, well, until the musical eye moved on.
Cards on the table...TD aren't seen as cool...sorry and all that, they might have made the headlines for a few years (going by the shelf space for my cuttings...let's say 1974-76) but the UK press had basically packed up it's collective ball and gone home for tea by the time of the UK 1978 tour (by degrees I mean...they were still mentioned of course, but the heavy coverage was over). Punk happened and the UK press wanted to talk about people spitting on grannies (I've said sorry, so get over it!)
...anyway still not a bad 15 minutes of fame. However...journalists these days, especially with the advent of the net (collectively) should know better, and as has been mentioned before 'they need to turn their brain on at the same time as their PC'
I seem to recall a quote from somewhere saying 'TD, if you've heard them, then chances are you'll love them'...perhaps that's about as good as we can expect? that people who have actually listened to the music (whatever era or whatever tour or album) that the music matters to them, and the rest of the world will (by and large) ignore it, concentrating on the 'here today, gone tomorrow' nature of pop. Musical fireworks.............WHIZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz...Bang!!!!..."Oh, it's finished, shame that'