Kraftwerk

Started: 2025-04-21 20:16:10

Submitted: 2025-04-22 22:39:28

Visibility: World-readable

Seeing a legendary German electronic band at a legendary venue

Legendary German electronic band Kraftwerk staged a tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their album Autobahn, including a Friday night performance at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. (Only one of the original members is still in the band; he's pushing 80 but he's still performing.) I wasn't sure I'd ever get the chance to see them again so I headed to the East Bay for the show. I got a seat in section 9 on the reinforced concrete benches forming an amphitheater around the open-air stage. (The last time I went to a show at the Greek Theater the lawn above the bench seats was packed; this time the lawn stayed mostly empty and the two seats between me and the aisle remained vacant throughout the show.)

At the Greek Theater waiting for Kraftwerk

A few minutes after 20:00 music began playing what I'm going to interpret as a prelude while the giant LED screen at the back of the stage showed a quartet of large blocky animated figures mirroring the four keyboard podiums at the front of the stage. (It wasn't strictly pixel art because each square was outlined in thin yellow line, and each line was individually addressable; lines between squares would appear or disappear to distinguish legs or arms or head.) The figures moved slightly as they appeared to play the music, matching what I expected we would see on stage for the body of the concert.

Prelude to Kraftwerk at the Greek Theater

After a few minutes of music the band walked out on stage, wearing matching body suits outlined in lines of glowing color-changing LEDs forming a grid around the torso, legs, and arms. When the band members emerged their outfits all displayed the same color, a bright green matching the rest of the stage. Throughout the concert the colors changed. Usually the outfits all showed the same uniform color, but for some songs each segment showed a different color, leading me to conclude that each segment was individually-addressable (and I briefly wondered about the electronics on the suit that would drive the LEDs, and the control system that would sequence the colors in the costume to match the staging at any given moment).

Kraftwerk plays Numbers at the Greek Theater

The band took their places behind the keyboards mounted on podiums at the front of the stage and the music transitioned into the song Numbers, counting to eight in German while the numbers appeared on the screen. From where I sat in the audience it was hard to tell what the band was doing on stage; they spent the entire show standing behind the podiums apparently poking at their keyboards. There was no obvious separation on stage between the melody or sequencers or percussive elements in the music. Their technology has advanced from the synthesizers they were using in 1975 but they still sounded the same.

Kraftwerk at the Greek Theater

Each of the songs had its own animation on the screen behind the stage, coordinated with the small LED screens around the platform where the band stood on stage and the colored lights illuminating the portico at the back of the stage. One of the songs early in the set showed side-scrolling blocks of color and texture, like a computer's fever dream, that reminded me of reminded me of a broken LCD screen (in a manner that I found slightly triggering, because that picture of my broken laptop LCD is 20 years old but I still remember it).

Kraftwerk visualization shows the Bay Bridge

One of the songs picked up clip art of landmarks from the Bay Area, starting with a shot of the Bay Bridge with a flying saucer animated over it, then cutting to a picture of the Greek Theater itself (in daylight, without any people in the audience, or any equipment on the stage), which was weird to see on a screen inside the place depicted on the screen.

Kraftwerk waveform visualization

Another song showed an waveform, synchronized with the music, crawling over the screen on the stage. It reminded me of the last time I used an analog scope (at least 25 years ago) without setting up the trigger properly so the waveform moved across the screen and superimposed itself on earlier images of the same wave. This, too, was almost hard to watch; and I had to imagine that all of the electrical engineers in the audience were having the same experience (and because this was Berkeley, and the audience skewed older, there must be a higher-than-average density of electrical engineers in the audience).

Kraftwerk plays Autobahn

Then Kraftwerk played the song they named the entire tour after, Autobahn. This is the one Kraftwerk album I've listened to extensively, and it was great to hear it here. The animation that played on the screen behind the stage showed a computer-animated scene of a four-lane divided highway with a classic Volkswagen Beetle and a Mercedes.

Kraftwerk on the Autobahn

A couple of the songs (Models and Tour de France) showed what looked like archival footage of their subjects on the screen. The song Radioactivity included an interlude with the names nuclear disasters.

Kraftwerk plays Radioactivity at the Greek Theater

After a few more songs, the members of the band left the stage one at a time, taking their bows while the audience applauded and the music kept playing. After the last person left the stage I waited until the house lights came up, then joined the crowd filing out of the amphitheater and walking across campus to the BART station to head home. (I ended up riding in the same BART car as a group of boomer Germans who were very excited about the show we had just seen.) I was glad I took the opportunity to see the current incarnation of a legendary electronic band live in Berkeley.