NEU! '72 LIVE! IN DÜSSELDORF

I'll agree with Bryan's assesments that this is boring improvs but also that the sound quality is atrocious. If you want to investigate what they sound like , you might want to try on the same label Captain Trips the La Dusseldorf/Neu! album which is much more interesting and even at time rivetting. this one however is plainly boring and is to be avoided at all costs.

What happened to that 0 star rating?

This album is not essential, nor does it garner the emotion of their studio albums, but it is worth getting a hold of, for a cheap price, if you are a rabid Neu! fan. This is not atonal crap, or whatever the others were using to describe it, and it is not of the highest fidelity being that it is LIVE! This should not be attained before other Krautrockers but do not shy away if you hold this duo to the highest esteem.

I love Neu! (1,2, & 75) and this would be rated as a 2.5, maybe a 3 on a good day. The tracks are basically improvs that go on for about an hour, with one track going for 39 minutes and it sounds as though it should, given it was '72 and the band is Neu! I am giving this album a 5***** rating, not because it is actually that good, but to put some weight in the right direction so to off set some of the unfair criticism above, and probably below as time should have it. I wonder if the people who rate it so low have even heard the album at all, and if they have, how much of it. Maybe the problem is that they have never heard live recordings from bands of squalor like these guys in their heyday. I do not know, and since they have already rated it I do not care, but yet again, if you think you are a big enough fan of Neu! to complete the discography, this is not a bad addition, and yet again, I like this album a lot and have listened to it many more times than once.

No this is not crap this is not the best recording by Neu but is it way way better than 75% of the mush that people cream off about. Neu's studio output is essential , and this is pretty good. When the histories of prog are finally written bands like this will be seen as the real heroes of the hour. This is a Teutonic Master Band applying itself to its musings, it has more in common with modern classical music than the te4chnical masturbation of bands like YES. It is a pretty poor production and recording and that dosn't help. The right place and the right mood are essential to appreciate what is being attempted here. Of course they are very young a distortion that is the bane of popular music. Bands like this need many years to raech perfection, these recordings are still very much the work of young men with relatively scant experience and so often they screw up. When it works it is wonderful. In the studio they were able to edit out a lot of the false experiments the failed attempts and so the studio lps are way better. This is no were near as bad as much of the 80's and 90's industrial output and it compares very well with the best of that. It is not as dark as most music at the fringe and that is good for both the listener and the disappointed listener who doesnt yet get it.

The only live document from the Krautrock heroes of Neu! has achieved a certain notoriety among fans, both for its iffy (i.e. nonexistent) production values and its questionable legality. The album was released by Klaus Dinger more than twenty years after the band's final breakup, probably for a quick fix of ready cash, and certainly without the approval of his ex-partner Michael Rother.

And it isn't, strictly speaking, a concert recording at all, but rather a "non-public test" (in Dinger's words) for an upcoming set of gigs, captured in less-than-glorious low fidelity on strictly non-professional equipment (a cheap audio cassette player, I'm guessing).

First, the bad news: the sound quality is undeniably atrocious. The bass guitar of guest-star Eberhard Kranemann (a comrade from the early days of KRAFTWERK) tends to overwhelm the other instruments, and Dinger's drum kit might have been played in a different building altogether, across a busy street. The louder the music, the greater the audio distortion, and in what sounds like an empty warehouse the trio could be very loud indeed.

It was all part of Klaus Dinger's proto-punk, audio vérité aesthetic, which means you can expect a lot of more or less dead air between the moments of actual performance. That irritating scraping noise, by the way, was likely a microphone dragged across the concrete floor while the instruments were being re-tuned.

But the album hardly represents the bottom of the Krautrock barrel, as some reviewers have said. Despite all the cosmetic shortcomings, you're being allowed privileged access to a Neu! rehearsal...and you're complaining? Never mind the poor sound or the lack of structure or the time spent searching for that elusive one-chord groove. Enjoy instead the rare experience of being a fly on the studio wall while two Krautrock legends struggled to find their muse. Whether or not they succeeded is beside the point.

Maybe the belated release of these tapes was Dinger's desperate attempt to 'beat the boots', following the example of FRANK ZAPPA's anti-bootleg campaign. The difference was that Zappa marketed the material himself, rather than selling it to the first outside bidder with an open wallet. As an officially sanctioned album it would have tarnished the band's impeccable legacy. But as an only semi-legitimate, untouched portrait of a Neu! practice session-in-progress it's well worth investigation by Krautrock completists. Call it a two-star treasure to die-hard collectors, with another star added for raw documentary appeal.