kraftwerk - utrecht december 1981

For no obvious reason today's listening started off with part of a Kraftwerk concert from 1981.

This isn't the whole show, sadly, but it's a soundboard recording, which is terrific to have from 1981. Kraftwerk undertook the Computer World Tour across the summer of 1981 but they also played handful of gigs in Germany and the Low Countries in December '81, four months after the main tour had finished. I seem to recall reading something years ago that said these gigs were scheduled at very short notice as the band wanted to road test some major upgrades to the Kling-Klang studio that had been necessary due to wear and tear incurred on the big summer tour. 

 

Whatever the reason this soundboard from Utrecht sounds significantly different from other recordings I have heard from the Computer World Tour. For one thing the band sound more 'live' than at any point since 1975. There's a clear sense of four guys actually playing this music, wrestling with the technology, trying to keep the machinery under control. Ralf and Florian's vocals are noticeably more animated, the drumming is more forceful (and at times actually sounds like Wolfgang is hitting those delicate metal pads really hard) and everything has a far more immediate feel about it.

 

Some songs are rearranged slightly - "Autobahn" is now cut to 12 minutes, but a very busy 12 minutes with Ralf and Florian seemingly improvising and almost scat singing towards the end, which is very unusual. "Radioactivity" is mid way between the slow, stately, measured original (and this was how it had been performed during the summer 1981 dates) and the faster, more urgent Mix version that came at the end of the 1980s. The drumming is especially different.

 

It may have been rather weedy on the album, but this live "Pocket Calculator" rocks. Really. 9 minutes long, it's a stomping powerhouse performance. And we get the only live outing for "Metropolis" until the Katalog shows of the current decade. It's a cracking performance too.  

All in all, one of the very best Kraftwerk live recordings in existence.