European Me – Nummer zwölf

Tour De France Etape 1 – Kraftwerk

By SWC

Kraftwerk are I think Germany’s first entry in this series, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure if any other German acts will feature, which will probably be a massive insult to Dirk and Walter.  I know that Badger has at least one Die Toten Hosen record somewhere so perhaps, that will get an airing later on.  Saying that, if there is a better, more influential and frankly more awesome German act that Kraftwerk, I would genuinely love to hear them.

Kraftwerk as I have sort of hinted a few lines up, are legends.  They practically invented dance music, they definitely invented the slightly insultingly titled Krautrock and the set the scene for Robot pop, something that was copied, and taken to a new level years later by French geniuses Daft Punk.  I could have picked one of about twenty tracks of theirs to feature here but  I took the easy route because wonderful as it is, I don’t think anyone wants to hear all 22 minutes of ‘Autobahn’ and everyone in the world already knows about ‘The Model’ – although the Ride cover version of that might feature later in the Cover Me Series.

“Tour De France” first came out in 1983 and was a minor hit for Kraftwerk (it peaked somewhere in the 20s).  I first heard it about ten years later when I was sitting in the lounge of my friend Martin’s house drinking sherry.  Seriously that’s how I rolled when I was 18, he had proper sherry glasses and everything and it was in the slightest bit pretentious.   It is brilliant because of its use of samples, it is full of mechanical sounds and voices all to do with cycling and it is as fantastic as I hope that I have made that sound.

Etape 2

Etape 3