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The theme of the preview program is… weather! Bob, in fun-fact mode, informs us that the windiest city in America is not Chicago but Dodge City, Kansas! (NOTE: The XM site will prompt you to enter a username and a password. For the former, enter press1 [that’s the numeral “1” after “press”] and for the latter, enter xmr0ck5! [The exclamation point is part of the password, and the “0” is the numeral, not the letter “o,” while the “5” is the numeral, and not the letter “s.”] The audio will take a little while to load on your media player, but it’s worth it.) April 19, 2006 More Rock Snobbery »
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Kraftwerk. Acutely German, acutely secretive inventors of “robot rock” (their preferred term), a highly mechanized dance-pop heavy on synthesizers, vocoders, and lyrics about robots, computers, trains, and bicycles. Founded in Düsseldorf in the late ’60s by the KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN-influenced art students Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, Kraftwerk effectively invented electronic pop music with their five albums released between 1974 and 1981, Autobahn, Radioactivity, Trans-Europe Express, The Man Machine, and Computerworld, all the while toying with Teutonic stereotypes by appearing in photographs as waxen, short-haired, emotionless mannequins. Hütter and Schneider have since become semi-recluses, infrequently releasing albums and playing live, though it’s said that they beaver away at their Düsseldorf studio, KlingKlang, on a daily basis.