Christiane F.

So, yeah, the semester has started and I haven't had time to post anything. But I've been reading one of the two books on Bowie and Berlin -- still waiting on the German one -- and I've been considering investigating the connections between Krautrock, David Bowie, Brian Eno, and Iggy Pop. With Bowie, I wasn't aware that his fascination with fascism began not too long before he moved to Berlin and that he became a bit more careful about the topic after actually moving to Germany and meeting German people... well, cutting down on the cocaine might have helped too. In any case, it is interesting that Bowie lived in Berlin for three years but never really collaborated with any of the German musicians. He didn't seem interested in Krautrock musicians who actually were from Berlin (like Tangerine Dream, for instance), and why it never came to a collaboration between Bowie and the musicians from Cluster, Harmonia and Kraftwerk is up for debate. Apparently, his record company wanted him to make albums that sold better, and working with German musicians seemed less commercially promising. Bowie and Kraftwerk name-checked each other in their songs "Trans Europe Express" and "V2-Schneider," and there are clearly musical influences of Krautrock on Bowie (interestingly, less influences of Bowie on the German scene). One example would be the German lyrics of "Heroes" in the excellent German movie Christiane F -- Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo about a 13-year-old heroin addict in Berlin -- the movie also features Bowie in a small role as -- David Bowie. In the movie, Christiane is obsessed with Bowie, and having to sell his records is shown as the low point in the teenager's addiction. But let's check the facts -- was Bowie maybe more obsessed with his own construction of "Germany" than vice versa...?

The Sophomore Slump?

In many ways I'm still trying to figure out what I actually want to say about Krautrock although I have written two articles on the subject, read everything I could get my hands on, and of course have listened to hours and hours of the actual music. I'm reflecting on this as the paperback version of my first book is on the way (which will be out some time in September). My book was on the racial politics of blues music in the 1960s, and in discussing "white" appropriations of "black" blues, I moved from being somewhat of a fan to somewhat of a hater to a hopefully somewhat balanced view of "white" blues. The jury is still out on this, as I've had different kinds of reactions to my book, but in some ways, after spending so many years on the dissertation and the book manuscript, after publishing articles in some of the best journals I could have dreamed of publishing in (the American Quarterly in particular -- I still can't believe I did that!), after getting a tenure-track job in an excellent program at a nice university, after getting Green Cards for me and my family, I really feel like I'm "done" with the topic of blues music in the 60s and I'm ready to become fully immersed in something else. Still, I'm worried I'm in the middle of a sophomore slump.

Talking about Krautrock has become a more "positive" project, as I'm less out to "expose" problematic forms of identity construction and more interested in showcasing a music and national identity construction that I'm "fond of." The questions then become more about how my project connects to my academic field -- American Studies -- and what exactly I want to argue about Krautrock. Having even more academic freedom than I had in moving from dissertation to book also poses different challenges. For a while, I thought of writing a trade book about Krautrock, targeting a non-academic audience. I have moved away from this idea a bit, although I'm still interested in writing something less inscrutable than an academic book. This blog might help me develop something like that. The three months I will spend in Germany next spring will hopefully too.

Going "home" to deepen my understanding of Krautrock shows another difference between my current project and my first book. While there was some reflection on listening to blues as a teenager and while one of the chapters of my book dealt with Germany (which also meant that I traveled back to my home country to conduct archival research), the personal connection with Krautrock is much more immediate. I have already learned this in different ways. Looking at old music magazines at the Pop Music Archive in Bremen last summer, I came across an issue I had owned when I was ten and that I had read so often that I still remembered every image in it. Also, although I didn't really know or listen to much of the music I now study when I was younger, I was the singer of a band in Hamburg for a few years before I moved to the U.S., and the music of this band (even my own contributions) have some striking resemblances in particular to the music of Krautrock group Can. Why that is when none of us was even remotely interested in any Krautrock at the time is still something I would like to find out.

German Humor in Response to Brazilian Questions

A postscript to my last blog on Kraftwerk...

Kraftwerk, Techno, Hip Hop

It wasn't just David Bowie who was influenced by the German bands of the 1970s. Post punk, electronica and indie artists have been inspired by everybody from Faust to Can and Kraftwerk in particular have left their imprint on techno and early hip hop. Although Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter were not too pleased when they found out that Afrika Bambaataa had used their songs "Trans Europe Express" and "Numbers" without permission, we should be thankful he did. Equally drawing on George Clinton's electro funk and Kraftwerk's Teutonic robot music, hip hop pioneers created a genre that is still with us today, more than three decades after its inception. The video to "Planet Rock" has some kick-ass dance moves too.

Bowie & Berlin

Although I've been researching Krautrock for about two years now, there are still many loose ends and much music to explore -- quite amazing, for instance, the underwater music of Jürgen Müller that has just very recently come to the surface (pun intended): http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15696-science-of-the-sea/  -- and in the last few weeks I have been listening to a lot of Ton Steine Scherben, a group from the squatter movement I disliked when I was younger but that I have become very fond of, especially their less agitative but nonetheless deeply political album Wenn die Nacht am tiefsten ist.
I have so much more to say about the Scherben but I also wanted to mention that I've been listening to a lot of David Bowie. Strong connections exist between Bowie and Krautrock groups Kraftwerk, Neu! and Cluster. Some of Bowie's best music was heavily influenced by Krautrock as was the music of Iggy Pop and Brian Eno -- there are collaborations between Eno and Cluster (and Eno and Harmonia). Bowie recorded two albums in Berlin and one other that also, at least in spirit, belongs to the Berlin Trilogy. Heroes was named after the Neu! song "Hero" and name-checks Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider on "V2 Schneider." Low has instrumentals that would have made Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother proud. And Lodger, while not recorded in Berlin, owes much to Krautrock as well. Just one example: "Red Sails," which completely rips off Klaus Dinger's Neu! beat. See examples below.

Of course Bowie is fantastic but Neu! deserves some credit as well. I've been spending an entire month with them and I will get back to the details later...

Can and Kraftwerk and National Identity

Since I write academic texts I try to find arguments. The argument I've developed so far over two academic articles -- one accepted and one submitted -- connects Krautrock with questions about German identity. Krautrock oftentimes is an attempt to develop a new/different German national identity from the "rubble" of World War II. If we take some of the best known groups, we can see how this is done differently but with a similar goal. The goal is to move away from the Nazi past. Kraftwerk do this by ironically playing up their German identity -- they are the robots.


Can had a different strategy. They employed an African American and then a Japanese singer (Damo Suzuki). They incorporated elements of music from around the world. They confronted the German past through becoming international.


Both Can and Kraftwerk moved away from blues-based African American and Anglo American music. This is also true for Neu!, of whom I have a lot more to say soon.

"Krautrock"?

Let's start at the beginning... in the beginning was the word, and the word was krautrock. The term itself is heavily contested. Someone in the UK came up with it. It doesn't really matter whether it was radio DJ John Peel or somebody at the New Musical Express -- the term has stuck even though most musicians associated with it don't like it and even though the German music press didn't use it until 1974. Kraut of course comes from sauerkraut and it's a not-so-nice term Brits use to call Germans -- in the same spirit of labeling all Americans yanks. In German, kraut can refer to many things, among them herbs, weeds, drugs... all said, the term is now used in reverent tones by U.S. music publications like Pitchfork and has even gained some acceptance in Germany... blame it on Julian Cope and his seminal but flawed book Krautrocksampler.


I'm starting this blog to exchange ideas about Krautrock -- and all its related styles, from kosmische Musik to Deutschrock -- so anybody else who is interested in this topic is welcome to chime in. I will have more to say about Neu!, Kraftwerk, Can, Cluster, Faust, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul II, Popol Vuh, Ton Steine Scherben, La Dusseldorf -- and I will figure out how to use the umlaut on here -- but I just wanted to get this blog rolling.