A recent thread on the Electrical Audio forum keyed me into an available download of the recent BBC documentary entitled Krautrock – The Rebirth Of Germany. As an avid fan of German progressive/experimental music from the late ’60s and early ’70s, it offered fascinating insight into the lives of many of the musicians commonly linked under the heading of “Krautrock”. Whereas Julian Cope’s epic tome Krautrocksampler gave us biographical accounts of German bands both big and small, this documentary featured many of the musicians giving firsthand accounts of their experiences. If you, like myself, hungrily devour everything you can related to bands such as Faust, Can, Neu! and Cluster — this is a must-see film.
The viewer gets the sense, while listening to folks like Michael Rother, Edgar Froese, Moebius and Roedelius, of how laid back and unpretentious the “scene” was, if you could even call it one. All these bands were from different cities in Germany, so they rarely played together and barely knew each other. There was no competition and no drive to make it big, these folks were just reacting to the state of their country and releasing everything inside them through music. You laugh along with Holger Czukay as he recounts his experiences with Karlheinz Stockhausen and the introduction of Damo Suzuki to Can. You learn about the commune Amon Duul belonged to, and the murderous rampage some of its members went on. You realize you fucking hate Brian Eno, that stupid piece of shit.
The least interesting story, of course, is that of Kraftwerk. Too much attention is paid to their ability to transcend the Kraut movement and find success outside of Germany. So what? That wasn’t the point of the movement, why does it need to be highlighted? I wanted to hear more interviews with Klaus Schulze and see footage of Faust performing in the early ’70s with their fucking pinball machines. Hell, I wanted to hear more about Popol Vuh than the obligatory Werner Herzog connection story. There’s amazing footage of Florian Fricke and Holger Trulzch floating around the internet, and Daniel Fichelscher must have countless stories.
One small problem I had with the film is, if you’re going to talk about Klaus Schulze as an electronic composer as well as the drummer for Tangerine Dream, why not take the next logical step and introduce the Ash Ra Tempel / Komische Kuriere plot to the documentary? They too were recorded by Conrad Plank, who seems to be a common thread joining all the other bands featured in the film. Hell, their story deserves its own documentary. That’s the only reason I can think of for not including Gottsching and Co. to the story — the complexities of their story would blow everyone else out of the water.
Someday, someone will create a proper archival documentary detailing the entire experimental music movement that occurred in Germany during the late ’60s and early ’70s. Hell, someone should transform Krautrocksampler into a screenplay. So many amazing stories begging to be told, so many uninformed music fans could appreciate this unique and wonderful era. Before the BBC catches wind of this, you should make it your business to download the entire film and enjoy it. It runs for about an hour, so make sure you’ve already got a good buzz on before you press play.
Auf Weidersehen.
