On a day like today, October 3 in 1976, Kraftwerk performed for the first time live in Zürich.
It was Sunday afternoon at 16:30 and the Volkshaus was opening its doors for what would be a historic show. 30 minutes later the first live concert of Kraftwerk in Zürich would start.
The musicians of Kraftwerk no longer played electric guitars or drums, nor did they have long hair or the hippie look of the 70’s. Quite the contrary, now they had short hair and wore a suit, shirt and tie. And the instruments were almost entirely electronic.
Unfortunately there is no recording of that concert, but…
Kraftwerk live at Volkshaus Zürich (Photo Ueli Frey)
…the previous day, on October 2, Kraftwerk had performed live at the Palais des Expositions in Genève. And there is an audio recording of that show. It’s incomplete, but of relatively good sound quality. So listen below to the audio recording of that concert.
Regarded as pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk began in 1970 as a duo consisting of Ralf Hüttler and Florian Schneider. At first they were part of the West Germany’s experimental krautrock scene.
Later Kraftwerk evolved towards a purely electronic sound, including synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders. In 1974 Wolfgang Flür joined the band and Karl Bartos joined in 1975.
The music of Kraftwerk influenced numerous musical styles such as new wave, synthpop, darkwave, electro, techno, house, hip hop… Some press rank them internationally as the most influential music group of all time.
Watch below the latest Kraftwerk live show in Switzerland. It was on May 11 this year at the Arena in Genève.
