Krautrock

Edited by David_D - 8 hours 23 minutes ago at 09:25

Yes...logically it could be conceived as an umbrella term..

During the late 60s it began as a movement to make a new Germany. The German youth rebelled against the old Germany..to the extreme measures of burning down buildings in Berlin.

Imagine being a teenager and waking up to the realization that your parents were once Nazis..

They wanted to build a new Germany and they resented the fact that their parents were quiet about Hitler and the Jewish people. They wanted honest answers not lies or resistance to their normal inquisitive nature. A situation that the American youth never dealt with short of your grandparents being slave owners in the South.

The music labeled as Krautrock by a British journalist or DJ, ( can't recall?), contained a wide variety of genres. Electronic Music, Space Rock, Jazz Rock etc and it all ended up being classified under one term.

Back in the 70s I recall people in the states acting confused about Tangerine Dream being labeled part of Krautrock. It probably all fell together under a term because it had not been planned as a marketing process. Because it derived from a movement invented by a rebellious German youth.

Though several Krautrock bands were signed to American record labels such as United Artists, Passport, Billingsgate, Atlantic Records etc....sales were obviously not accommodation to the investment in the U.S. Tangerine Dream had success in soundtracks beginning in the late 70s and throughout the 80s...but short of that most of the German bands seemed unheard of or unwanted in America.

Lewian wrote: ^ I think that originally the term Krautrock was used in a somewhat derogatory manner (by the anglophone press), and probably applied to everything German and rock with little respect for genre differences (the word "Kraut" says nothing about music). But some in Germany and elsewhere embraced it to refer to the movement you mention, starting to employ some musical criteria as well when it came to classification (Tangerine Dream are not Krautrock now on PA, and probably haven't been listed as Krautrock in many places in the last 40 years; they can be counted into the "movement" though if there ever was a well defined one).

Yes!! Interesting insight on the subject matter!

Two of my favourite bands, Germany's Triumvirat and The Pink Mice, are from the place and era that the term krautrock came from, but are not so, being Symphonic Prog groups embracing classical music in a more direct way.....and I concur as has been pointed out that the term krautrock was initially any German rock music of any type, but then evolved into what it is known as today.

Jacob Schoolcraft wrote: presdoug wrote: Two of my favourite bands, Germany's Triumvirat and The Pink Mice, are from the place and era that the term krautrock came from, but are not so, being Symphonic Prog groups embracing classical music in a more direct way.....and I concur as has been pointed out that the term krautrock was initially any German rock music of any type, but then evolved into what it is known as today.                     Peter Hetch is a brilliant keyboardist! My favorite Pink Mice album is IN ACTION. I have the 2 on 1 cd released years ago. It has a glitch or perhaps the original recording had a defect and was never corrected. It's a whole of 3 or 4 seconds. It's never been properly released and it would be nice if Esoteric did it. The first 2 Lucifer's Friend albums were decent...but the most progressive sounding is Where The Groupies Killed The Blues. Back in the 80s I heard a bootleg cassette tape of Lucifer's Friend performing live in the 70s. They had a piano on stage and they played Rose On The Vine, Prince Of Darkness, Mother and also tracks from their first album. The sound quality was good and the band were tight. Supposedly it had been recorded in a club in Germany. However it is written that Lucifer's Friend didn't do much touring or live performance...unless of course they mixed a fake audience in not unlike Omega did in the early 70s or perhaps Kayak on Witness...

Thanks for your reply; he really is a brilliant keyboardist! I guess I prefer The Pink Mice more than the Lucifer's Friend recordings I have sampled....thanks for the reference to Where The Groupies Killed The Blues being the most progressive of theirs...I don't believe I have heard that one, and I will search it out....I would love it if Esoteric would do those two Pink Mice albums, and wish they would tackle the early Triumvirat recordings, too, and Helmut Koellen's overlooked solo album, which has never seen the light of day on cd by anybody....I love the Esoteric cds that I have in my collection, they sound so good!