Organisation; or the Hippy Secret Life of Kraftwerk

So I hear from Jeb that finally the Kraftwerk box-set is go, which is great news!

Of course the first 3 albums (actually 4 if you include Tone Float) are not available - cue people moaning or speculating about it - ones that probably didn't hear Tone Float or Kraftwerk 1 or 2. How do I know this? Well listen:

Yes that's Florian on flute, Ralf on organ (you only see his hands sadly it seems) and other members of Organisation making various noises. Yes Tone Float and Kraftwerk 1 sound like bad porn jazz hippy freak outs...this is the secret that Kraftwerk keep quiet about...eventually due to members leaving/coming and going they were left with the core 2, Ralf and Florian by album 3 and that's when it starts to get interesting - no drummer means the drum machines and they start ditching the instruments for more synthesisers. It's obvious that Florian plays the synthesiser like a flute, hence that totally different sound and use of synth lines which became revolutionary - after Autobahn though ;-)

I have the 2 CD Bootleg set of all of those albums, and a copy of Tone Float...rumours are they might re-release the first 3 Kraftwerk albums, it's not really worth the money unless they include the live performances or video of the 1975 performances, for example, because it is a totally different sound, if not band. A little bit of Kraftwerk 2 (Kling Klang) and Ralf und Florian, the 3rd LP is interesting cos you can start to hear what gelled in Autobahn, the roots of something like Kometenmelodie (one of my favourite Kraftwerk tracks, and the live version I have is amazing) where electronics and those long passages started falling into a groove...but Tone Float, K1 and K2 are early days and you will be disappointed, unless hippy krautrock freakouts that make Neu! look like sour-faced funk merchants are your bag, in which case I have a 2CD bootleg I can sell you...

Listening back via YouTube I suppose I'm being a little harsh; Kling Klang, later versions/album version of Ruckzuck and a few others had the same repetitive trance-like state used in Autobahn or Franz Shubert / Trans Europe Express...but for every one of those there is a Strom (guitar 'deconstruction' of the most embarassing and dated sort), that 60's rock drumming on the likes of 'Truckstop Gondolero', the porn-funk of Organisation and the sound-effects radiophonic experiments of 'Von Himmel Hoch'. Hmm. So in short if you like Kraftwerk you're very likely to go 'what the fuck is this?' - and even if you don't like later Kraftwerk but get that sort of trancey-zen krautrock hippy almost progness (Can et al at their more extreme), the weird noisy bits and electronics will annoy you. Tis a no win ;-)

The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain at the Proms

On Tuesday I made my first ever trek to the BBC Proms to listen to silly ukelele music and nearly 1,000 people play Ode to Joy, as you do.

Yes I was at Proms 45 to hear the The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain - an 8 piece band, they've been going for24 years doing frankly ludicrous and humorous covers on the most unlikely of instruments - the ukelele. I'm sure they in part are responsible for the current UkeTube trend of recording unlikely covers on ukeleles and resurgence of interest in the Ukelele (a 19th century hawaiian instrument, fact fans!) taking it out of the George Formby and into the 21st century.

The set was great, they played the regular set (I bought Live in London #1 and Anarchy in the Ukelele DVD and the Live CD closely matched what they played) - they started with their cover of Anarchy in the UK - strange to hear the whole audience sing along to a Sex Pistols track in the Albert Hall - the aforementioned Ode to Joy where nearly a 1,000 ukeleles (you can do a Where's Wally on me and John with that pic - hint I'm wearing my Berlin crossing tshirt) brought by the audience played along and they did their excellent covers of Wuthering Heights, Psycho Killer, Teenage Dirtbag (loads of blank faces on that one while I was merrily singing along), Pinball Wizard and a great cover of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries going into Hawkwind's Silver Machine which had John in stitches.

Best moments for me were the heckler who shouted 'Judas!' after one of the band said 'We were rather hoping at this juncture to perform a traditional English piece of music...but we'd thought we'd give em a rest in fact do a classic English rock song ' (he'd been talking about Black Sabbath earlier so maybe it was also a request LOL) and the part where they played their medleys, which are basically mashups, singing one song on top of another, Humph style - they've been doing the '4 Chords' thing years before that became an internet sensation.

They were doing Melange (which I've posted below) which includes Angels, Sympathy for the Devil, Heroes, You Sexy Thing, Waiting for My Man, If I Was a Carpenter, Hey Jude and others - and the whole Albert Hall started waving their ukeleles lighter-style. It was a wonderful moment.

You can still hear the live broadcast at Radio 3 until next week, and hear a program about the UOGB (as they are to their friends) here but here are a few MP3s from the 'Live in London #1' CD which I heartily recommend buying.

• Melange (includes Sympathy for the Devil, Heroes,You Sexy Thing, If I Was a Carpenter, Hey Jude and more)


• Life on Mars (simultaneous segue - Bowie, My Way, Born Free, For Once in My Life


• Wuthering Heights

Sesame YMCA

Wut it says on the tin.

Jon Stewart sings! With Sesame Street!

Inspired by bob djbc who's friends with one of Mighty Mighty Bosstones who also appear in the Elmopalooza special :-D Just watched it and it is great, not too sure about the Jimmy Buffett and the Kenny Loggins, but the other music bits are great and touching in parts.

Hey it's Sesame St! It rocks!