Nakano Sun Plaza, Tokyo, Japan
7th September, 1981
Kraftwerk – Numbers
Kraftwerk will begin a short 8 date tour of the USA in September 2016, taking in North Bethesda, Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix, San Diego and LA. After coming back to Europe for a few weeks break they start an 8 show residency in Bilbao, Spain promoting the catalogue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, on each respective night. In November they return to North America for two dates in Mexico City followed by dates in South America visiting the capital cities of Argentina and Chile.
The release of Computer World in 1981, was an album that explored the consequences of living in a society dominated by technology. This was in a time pre PC's, Laptops, the Internet and Mobile phones etc. Their music had not only been highly influential but the subject matter of this record was prescient in envisaging a future society highly dominated by technology.
35 years ago, Kraftwerk toured Japan in the first half of September 1981. This is the best quality show from that time, it's incomplete and missing the magnificent 'The Model' but is still an excellent audio document from the Computer World tour. There are also many audience recordings available from this tour and another FM broadcast, a 42 minute recording from Utrecht later in the year. It has three of the missing songs from this show: The Model, Radioactivity & Pocket Calculator but no 'Hall of Mirrors'.
This source ripped from the silver disc bootleg 'Numbers', released by Radioactive Records in 1992, has superior sound quality and is a massive upgrade. It’s worth checking to see if you have this one and not the inferior title ‘Virtu Ex Machina’ whose lack of clarity and muffled sound made me bin the cdr copy I had. I was initially dubious about downloading this thinking it would have the disappointing quality of the earlier title. For those without any Kraftwerk in their collection, start here you won’t be disappointed.
01 Numbers / Computer World (6:21)
02 Computer Love (5:36)
03 Home Computer (4:49)
04 Neon Lights (8:15)
05 Autobahn (Part 1) (13:17)
06 Autobahn (Part 2) (4:18)
07 Showroom Dummies (5:35)
08 Trans-Europe Express (9:18)
09 The Robots (7:05)
10 It's More Fun To Compute (8:00)
Running time: 72:34
The group:
Ralf Hutter
Florian Scneide
Karl Bartos
Wolfgang Flur
Silver disc rip of ' Numbers' a reissue of the very rare Japanese release, now on a different UK label.
I sense a great disturbance in the blog, as if dozens of recorded voices suddenly cried out in terror and were silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
ReplyDeleteI am also really bummed out about it and hope it stops happening.