Finally Vivid is here! The harbour looked amazing with all the illuminated buildings and light sculptures but the pouring rain… what a pain in the…
I met pbot at Circular Quay – he had flown all the way from San Fran for this special event. He was hyped in his reserved, jet-lagged, electro way. We met up with Dave, Dan Aikido & JRMY (via NZ) at the wet Opera Bar for a quick pre-show snack.
The show started exactly on time at 7pm. Those late comers into the Joan Sutherland Theatre at the Opera House are soooo annoying 
By awesome co-incidence our friends were sitting right next to us, which made seeing the first Kraftwerk show even better! We put on our 3D glasses and enjoyed the show. Each show has a different “collectible” pair of glasses of each album’s artwork. There was cheering and woohoo’ing as the pioneers of electronic music did their thing. The 3D visuals were cool and really added to the experience. There were two little kids sitting in front of us – their parents must have thought this would be a once in a lifetime experience for them, better than Yo Gabba Gabba! After Autobahn (1974) was played in it’s entirely, a Kraftwerk “greatest hits” package was played – this was great – all the classics! We filed out an hour and a half later and realised we are going to do this another seven times over the next four nights!
The second show Radio-Activity (1975), started exactly on time at 9:30pm. This time our seats were amazing – about 6 rows from the front on the left side in front of Ralf! It’s like when you want to be on the side where John Taylor will be at a Duran Duran concert ha ha ha. The crowd seemed even more enthusiastic down the front with more shouting out and woohoo’ing. The somewhat older lady I was sitting next to was also going to all eight shows and said she was glad she wasn’t the only nutcase doing that Radio-Activity was a pretty short album, so the greatest hits package commenced to more woo hoo’ing and people wanting to bust out some electro moves in their Opera House seats. The second show came with a surprise encore – the Expo remix by UR (sorry pbot, you missed that one). I decided to check out the merchandise stand… only one person serving hoards of cashed up Kraftwerk fans, the poor guy. I bought a red tote bag (I couldn’t resist). We happily left part two of the Kraftwerk experience searching for food in the pouring rain. We ended up catching a bus to BBQ King in Chinatown for a delicious midnight supper.
Bring on the next 6 Kraftwerk shows!!
A concept eight years in-the-making since their initial invitation from the Venice Biennale, Kraftwerk have collected three decades of their most innovative music into an audiovisual exhibition that has redefined traditional concert motifs. Celebrating eight studio masterworks across four evenings – Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986), The Mix (1991) and Tour de France (2003) – this groundbreaking new performance series explores each album chronologically alongside their most iconic moments and artwork, creating the definitive Kraftwerk retrospective.
Renowned as the pioneers in electronic music history, these self-described ‘operators’ have influenced artists as unique and varied as David Bowie, Daft Punk, Kanye West, R.E.M, LCD Soundsystem and Joy Division. Following its international debut in April 2012 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and residencies at Düsseldorf’s Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and London’s Tate Modern, KRAFTWERK – THE CATALOGUE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 now invites Australian audiences to explore one of the richest histories in global sound, image culture and popular music.
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