A Million Poppies

For French novellists of a certain generation, the First World War was nothing short of the destruction of civilisation, but they all dealt with it differently. Roger Martin du Gard’s classic, Les Thibault, literally shatters into pieces on the outbreak of the war with the death of the younger of the two brothers at the heart of the novel cycle. Jacques, a revolutionary pacifist, dies an agonising and anonymous death from his injuries in a plane crash in the opening days of the war. The older brother, Antoine, a doctor, succumbs to a gas attack towards the end of the war but main action ends with the death of Jacques – Antoine’s death is a mere epilogue and the novel cycle peters out in a series of increasingly despondent diary entries.

Georges Duhamel omitted the war altogether from his 10 volume family saga, La Chronique des Pasquier. Duhamel wrote extensively about his own experiences in the war as a doctor but maybe it was all too raw to be transcribed into fiction.

Amongst the writers of the great French novel cycles, only Jules Romains tackled the Great War head on, in the 15th and 16th volumes of the 27 that made up Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté, a grand generational sweep, with a vast cast of characters, through which the lives of two friends, writer Pierre Jallez and politician Jean Jerphanion, act as constant threads of reference. This modern tapestry covered a quarter of a century from 6th October 1908 to 7th October 1933.

The two war volumes focus on the titanic and brutal battle for the French city Verdun, which lasted nearly 10 months between February and December 1916, with nearly a million casualties and 300,000 dead.

Volume 15, Prélude à Verdun, through a series of short TV-like scenes, shows a war that has got bogged down in its second winter, disillusionment at the front and the politicking and scheming in the officer ranks and the French High Command, ensuring that the initial response to the colossal German assault on Verdun was sluggish and ineffectual. The volume ends with the ominous opening salvos of the German attack.

Romains places his fictitious characters amongst but at a slight distance to historical ones, so we meet, for instance, the fatuous, self-serving and self-satisfied General Duroure, not quite in the inner circle of the real French generals, Joffre, Langle de Cary, Herr and Pétain.

For Duroure the war has provided an unexpected boost to his moribund career and he is enjoying his war (with its daily horse rides), apart from the niggling worry that he’s not being taken seriously enough. Things nearly go seriously awry when a plan of Duroure’s to put the wind up a couple of visiting parliamentarians from the Army Commission by eliciting a retaliatory shelling from the Germans comes a little too close for comfort. Duroure is offered the command of Verdun, but declines – so Pétain steps in to save the day.

Jerphanion is a relatively low-ranking officer on the front, closer to his men than to the officer class, realising that this is no longer the short, sharp war that was promised. The Prélude sees his regiment largely away from the action, but by the opening of Volume 16, they are on their way to Verdun.

Another of Romains’ central characters, Clanricard, is a mild, earnest and principled Parisian teacher, is stationed elsewhere on the front. We see him managing by subterfuge to avoid carrying out an order to attack from headquarters that would have resulted in the futile massacre of his men.

All of this relatively low level activity changes with the final words of the novel (apologies for the rough and ready translations):

“On the 21st, at about 7:15am, the cold was sharp and the daylight already clear. The people of Vauquois heard a noise as if the horizon to the East was being ripped apart, as if someone had plunged a knife into the canvas of a tent filled to bursting with water; and a massive rumbling sound started to flow towards them, remorseless, growing louder by the second.”

This was the German bombardment, raining down on the French positions at Verdun as they hurled artillery at them to break this symbolic but difficult to defend crook frontline.

The second novel of the war pair, Verdun, takes some of Romains’ characters into the hell-hole itself.

Every writer looks at war differently and the sheer industrial scale of the horror in the Great War triggered an outpouring of work, much of which remains widely read today. Romains and a number of his contemporaries haven’t fared so well. This relative obscurity is unmerited, in my view. The War is where Romains’ unique perspective, “unanisme”, really comes into its own.

Romains was a clearly out of step with literary fashions in the early decades of the 20th century. The prevailing trend in novel writing in France had already rejected the social realism championed by Zola, for political as well as literary reasons. Arguably Zola’s approach which treated people as components of Society with predetermined fates dehumanised them and diminished the role of the individual (although if you read Zola you will know that his characters often leap off the page). The individual was back at the centre of things by the end of the 19th century and in French literature this would continue all the way through Dadaism, surrealism and existentialism.

Romains went in the opposite direction. He was interested in how groups of people looked as though they behaved as a single entity (hence “unanisme”). A precursor to the hive mind, perhaps. Romains would have been fascinated by Twitter.

It’s not hard to see how moving armies of men can illustrate this idea. Verdun contains some vivid depictions of the fighting itself. But the novel is just as compelling for its descriptions of the chaos inherent in the supposed mechanics of warfare.

In one scene, Jerphanion’s regiment is trying to march to Verdun along the only main road, jammed with vehicles and civilian refugees fleeing in the opposite direction:

“looking closely, you would be convinced that the crush of people, in principle, was being tugged in two directions. But as they crawled away from each other, these movements got hooked onto one another at protruding edges, braking and holding each other back. There were vehicles of all types; an automobile would try and get past a horse drawn vehicle but find itself nose to nose with another automobile coming in the opposite direction. Every time a space began to open, a cart packed with sheep would fill the space…[it was] like those pointless trails that you see ants make, going backwards and forwards along the same strip of earth, feverishly picking up grains of sand only to drop them a couple of centimetres further on…and perhaps, in fact, if a long-sighted, eternally optimistic god had leaned over Route Nationale 3 that day, he would have marvelled at all the busy activity he could see.”

Carry On, Carry On…As if nothing really matters

Rock as theatre, rock as music hall, rock as opera.

I always think of a compilation tape (sadly no more) where this song preceded the title track of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, so the two, the one baroque, colourful and melodramatic, the other grey, solitary and and introspective, were joined by a scramble of radio signals and a snatch of orchestral strings, a kind of extreme dislocation that nonetheless sat within a coherent universe.

But the first time I heard it was on the black transistor radio I got for my 10th birthday, with a screen showing the frequencies running along the top, two dials to the left that were resistant to the touch (one being the on / off switch that clicked satisfyingly, the other, the tuning button that wasn’t going to give way without a fight) and a soft brushed aluminium overhang to the screen that allowed me to make notches to show the position of the radio stations.

It was a “blow you away” kind of song; an extravagant yet disciplined piece – ambitious and unapologetic. No wonder so many people voted it their favourite song over the years. It didn’t spurn the familiar rock tropes that audiences had come to expect, but it made you wait for them, made you look through a window onto another kind of music that you wouldn’t otherwise have dreamed could enter your world.

Wisely, Queen only tried that trick once. Having nailed it, a second attempt would always have fallen short. What makes Bohemian Rapsody unique? I think it is the way a dramatic tension develops that remains extraordinarily self-aware, multi-layering the points of engagement so the listener can choose how he or she responds to the piece – in a very classical, pre-romantic, before Goethe style. You are not being asked to become, identify with or even empathise with the central character; you can watch the proceedings, god-like. The structure becomes part of the story, not simply a bucket to dump the story in.

It’s what makes the song incredibly resilient, squaring up to Wayne’s World treatment and more recently shrugging off the indignity of becoming the spoken thoughts of a creepy one-eyed teddy bear in an advert for a package holiday company. And in the middle of all this baroque, Italianate passion and drama, is a rent in the curtain, the eye of a stoical, British kind of a resignation that has more than a passing connection With Wish You Were Here.

“Carry on, carry on”, Mercury sings, “As if nothing really matters”. The song ends, of course, with the musical equivalent of a shrug. What was that all about? Listener, you decide.

At the time, of course, the song raised all sorts of troubling questions for a young listener. Who was Scaramouche (clown character in the commedia dell’arte)? What did Galileo have to do with it? Why Bohemia (wasn’t that somewhere behind the Iron Curtain?). What was Beelzebub doing with a sack? All of which just added to the exoticism of the thing.

All of this in nearly 6 minutes. That was a long time at 45 rpm.

There was an album. One might be forgiven, though, for wondering if the rest of it was any more than a warm-up for that song. Not true – although that one song is like the main event in an evening of music and drama at your local theatre, there is lots of other stuff to look forward to.

Bohemian Rhapsody is the climax, but not the final track on Night At The Opera. That’s reserved for their rendition of God Save the Queen, which, in one of those infinitely intriguing examples of life imitating art, Brian May had the opportunity to reprise in real (whatever that means) royal company 27 years later. This track says: “Show’s over, folks. Please be upstanding. Then it’s time to go home to your possibly grey and uneventful lives.”

Queen were still trying a few things out at this stage of their career and what you get on Night At the Opera is a kind of vaudeville that doesn’t worry too much about mixing moods and genres. There’s contemporary standard heavy rock, 1920s jazz, as well as light entertainment styles that Queen were not the only band of the time to hold in mocking affection.

The proceedings open with an extraordinarily vitriolic blast – supposedly (although this was later denied) aimed at the band’s former manager.

Death On Two Legs (Dedicated To…) has some of the choicest insults you are ever going to hear on vinyl (“You’re just an old barrow boy…A dog with disease…You’re a sewer rat…In a cesspool of pride”). Then we swerve wildly from this outburst to the oh-so-British jolly stiff upper lip Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon. Then it’s back to the rock with a very 1970s paean to the automobile, I’m in Love With My Car (“Told my girl I just had to forget her / Rather buy me a new carburettor”). Tongue in cheek. Probably. We hope.

And then onto the other hit, You’re My Best Friend, with that Supertrampy keyboard. Then a folky, mid-tempo acoustic number, ‘39, that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Grateful Dead or even a Crosby, Stills & Nash album. Neat. Brian May described it as “sci-fi skiffle”. George Michael’s favourite Queen song, apparently. I can see why.

The first side of the album had seven songs, finishing with another of those musical hall japes, Seaside Rendezvous. As you stood up to buy an ice cream you probably felt you were really getting value for money. You would return to your seat, thinking: “that was fun”.

Side Two has both the high and the low points of the show. A bit of Queen still wanted to be Led Zeppelin in the mid-70s, hence the rather indigestible 8-minute plod-rock opener immediately after the interval (The Prophet’s Song). It is a blot on the otherwise excellent album; the only blot, really, but a large one nevertheless.

Fortunately, another of those extreme contrasts occurs, with which Night at The Opera is riddled – the next, Love of My Life, is a gorgeous Freddie Mercury ballad and mostly free of frills (apart from the harp twiddly bits) although Brian May has a kick at door in the end. The last song before the big one is Good Company – which completes a music hall trio in a style which is beginning to be a bit wearing by this point, so just as well it’s time for the main event. You won’t be disappointed.

Cried Off The 90s

Sandwiched on my list between 1970s German experimental rock outfit Harmonia and Half Man Half Biscuit are Happy Mondays, with their bad boy 1990s milestone, Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches. Only just 1990s but evocative of the rave culture of the time.

Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches prompted Paul McCartney to observe that Happy Mondays sounded like the Beatles during their Strawberry Fields phase. I think he intended it as a compliment.

While a new wave of hedonistic, scruffy experimentation gripped a music industry badly in need of a lift, chemical or otherwise, Mr & Mrs Duffer were well out of the groove. The 90s for us was about responding to atavistic evolutionary impulses. As the decade progressed, on the odd occasion where adult musical choices squeezed through a small chink between wall-to-wall Wheels on the Bus, Percy the Park-keeper or, latterly, the mellifluous tones of Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter, these choices were well outside the contemporary mainstream.

Thanks to my younger brother, I eventually reconnected with some of what was going on, but by this time the 90s were long gone. By now we were post-dotcom and looking at the next musical revolution, downloads, which irreversibly shattered the music scene into a kaleidoscope of fragmented mini-genres. With hindsight, the 1990s looks like something of a last hurrah for a world where blocks of musical colour could still move, Tetris-like, across a single discernible plane whose dimensions could still be codified and categorised.

I found myself watching a TV programme a few nights ago about those mediaeval prog-rockers turned 1980s baubles Genesis, with their quirky jack of all trades frontman Phil Collins, who declared at one point that he was just happy for Genesis to have been “the soundtrack to people’s lives” – and I was struck by the modesty and acuity of the point.

Some popular musicians may have more grandiose aspirations of universality for their music, but most of it has strong spatial and and temporal coordinates; bands like Genesis and Fleetwood Mac just want to see it handed down to the next generation. Sometimes, what the music reminds you of is everything, as Proust might tell you.

Further down the list, wedged awkwardly between The Traveling Wilburys and Trevor Pinnock are Travis, representative of another 90s musical phenomenon, that of the refusal of guitar-based beat combos to become extinct. What a remarkably resilient genre (fortunately).

There is something of the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser about Travis. This was a machine in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that invariably produced a drink that was almost, but not entirely, quite unlike tea. Travis, on the other hand, produced songs that sounded almost, but not entirely, quite like those of other bands. Not necessarily the same band every time – sometimes the Beatles (who doesn’t?); Manfred Mann (the 60s incarnation); Stereophonics (when they felt the need to get a bit shouty); Blur, Take That.

You can’t always be pushing the boundaries. What marks out Travis is a deftness of touch, a sense of humour, a self-assurance that could well mean they are the soundtrack to life for some.

Lacking these 90s lifetime coordinates, I’ve only really picked up on the standout tracks: Side; Beautiful Occupation; Turn; Driftwood; Why Does It Always Rain On Me; Tied to The 90s. Great, singalong tracks, but it wasn’t there, so it doesn’t mean that much to me. Oh Vienna.

Happy Mondays were even less familiar to me until Prince Suggs, who has now added the role of Popular Music Curator to his illustrious CV, included the track Loose Fit on his mostly soul / reggae / Motown – flavoured compilation recently. Which prompted me to give the album an airing.

I find the eclectic 90s mélange of styles, which is probably going to irk musical purists of all hues, great fun to listen to – heavy on both guitar and electronica, a lurid cocktail wrapped around with a vocal style that bears more than a passing resemblance to Joe Strummer, this is more Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster than Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser.

The album cover’s psychedelic colour tones offer a clue – there are a few surprises inside: Hammond organ, flute, accordion all putting in an appearance.

Loose Fit has a structural simplicity than lends itself to hit status – an irresistible hook straight from the opening 4 + 5 beat note clusters which then drive the rest of the song, philosophically descended from the direct motorik style of bands like Harmonia, but with greater modulation. It comes as something of a gear-changer at the midpoint in the album, as the tempo really lifts through the next few tracks: Dennis and Lois (embellished with retro ELO-style synth effects); Bob’s Your Uncle; Step On. Lyrically eschewing the standard pop banalities (I don’t even want to know what “twisting my melon” alludes to), these songs are the engine room of the album, the pace coming off with the ninth track, Holiday, and the tenth and final Harmony seemingly going for a Blur-like karma, but not quite pulling it off.

This album definitely still flies, but dips short of the jetstream. In the end, there is something that ties it very firmly to the 90s.

A Fifth of A Century of Elvis

Over the past decade or so there has been a bit of a fad for getting contemporary artists to cover whole classic albums. What about doing it to Get Happy!! – 35 years old next year?

Mojo did it pretty successfully with the White Album. A bunch of British folk artists did it with The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. There was that Sergeant Pepper thing, though (best glossed over); but that was ages ago.

Bob Dylan is good for covers because you can take the song out of the artist. The songs on the Elvis Costello & The Attractions album feel similarly detachable. I’m not sure how many have already been covered – I know the Q-Tips covered a couple of them.

Here’s a thing. The iTunes version appears to switch the track listings so that what was Side Two of the vinyl LP now becomes Side One and vice versa. But looking more closely, I can see that this is not the case. It is the LP cover that is out of line, although the label at the centre of the record is right and consistent with iTunes. How dare I doubt the relentless accuracy of the Apple machine.

The wiki entry for Get Happy!! is vanishingly brief, bare bones only, suggesting that this album remains somewhat under the radar.

20 songs was a lot in those days. On the reverse, producer Nick Lowe writes in tiny letters and slightly tongue in cheek:

“Hi!

You’ll have noticed that there are ten (?) tracks on each side of this, Elvis’ new L.P. Making it a real “long player”!

Elvis and I talked long and hard about the wisdom of taking this unusual step and are proud that we can now reassure hi-fi enthusiasts and/or people who never bought a record before 1967 that with the inclusion of this extra music time they will find no loss of sound quality due to “groove cramming” as the record nears the end of each face (i.e. the hole in the middle).

Now get happy.

Your friend,

Producer, Nick Lowe”

Sandwiched in between the New Wave peak classic Armed Forces and the disorientating lurch towards country music that was Almost Blue, Get Happy!! looks like the musical equivalent of a sketch book – 20 songs in 48 minutes (the cheeky sticker on the cover proclaims: “20 Hits!”), a bridge between a past career and the future, each containing one or two familiar, impeccably executed musical ideas (the wiki entry suggests the band was permanently drunk during the recording sessions in Hilversum, Netherlands; seems hard to believe, but who knows…) which served as soul / R&B suffused platforms for Costello’s lyrical word games, which were also pop themes in their own way – snatches of stylised life.

Look out for Motel Matches, which is the real pivot.

Reaction was fairly muted at the time; people didn’t really get what Costello was trying to do. Looking back you can see that he had distiller and bottled a pop essence. Fans may argue his later and earlier work had more creative reach, but there is a marriage of form and content in these musical haiku that make this an enduring collection, reflecting that sometimes it is not always the big grandiose ideas that survive.

The cover was supposed to have a retro feel to it, with the fake wear mark, the geometric shapes and the orange, lime and violet colour scheme, echoing in more polychrome form the soul and ska styles that were around at the time. The first single from the album, I Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down, was initially released on Two-Tone, as Costello was between record deals.

He had a facility with lyrics that seemed to come very easily; annoyingly easily, some might say. I just say enjoy the rapid interconnections in this bundle of ideas .

Whatever wiki says, the Attractions are at their peak on Get Happy!!: Steve Nieve’s organ and Bruce Thomas’s bass creating particularly tight lines. The production is generally sparse but the balance can be frustrating at times, some of the backing vocals disappearing into the corridor and the instrumental lines at times indistinct. Could remastering fix this?

I think Get Happy!! would make a great covers album. Would the current generation want to get their teeth into it? Covers can be fun if they’re different and unexpected and not too respectful.

In a parallel universe, this is how the 35th anniversary of this unsung masterpiece would be covered:

Side One

1. Love for Tender – Lux Lisbon

“I could be a miser
Or a big spender”

Buddy song: Plastic Lullaby

2. Opportunity – The Leisure Society

“I’m in the foxhole, I’m down in the trench
I’d be a hero but I can’t stand the stench
The Fitness Institute was full of General Motormen
And the “Hello House of Beauty” wouldn’t stand a chance with them
The chairman of this boredom is a compliment collector
I’d like to be his funeral director”

Buddy song: Fight for Everyone

3. The Imposter – Golem

“He’s got double vision
When you want him double jointed”

Buddy song: My Horse

4. Secondary Modern – Ardie Collins

“Nobody makes me sad like you
Now my whole world goes from blue to blue”

Buddy song: Cereal Bowl

5. King Horse – They Might Be Giants

“He’d seen the bottom of a lot of glasses
But he’d never seen love so near
He’d seen love get so expensive
But he’d never seen love get so dear”

Buddy song: Old Pine Box

6. Possession – Veronica Falls

So I see us lying back to back
My case is closed my case is packed
I’ll get out before the violence
Or the tears or the silence

Buddy song: Everybody’s Changing

7. Man Called Uncle – Allo Darlin’

“There’s newsprint all over your face
Maybe that’s why I can read you like a book”

Buddy song: Henry Rollins Don’t Dance

8. Clowntime Is Over – Engineers

“While others just talk and talk
Somebody’s watching where the others don’t walk”

Buddy song: Bless the Painter

9. New Amsterdam – Laura Marling

“Twice shy and dog tired because you’ve been bitten
Everything you say now sounds like it was ghost-written”

Buddy song: You Know

10. High Fidelity – Admiral Fallow

“Even though the signal’s indistinct”

Buddy song: Beetle in the Box

Side Two

1. I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down – Kid Canaveral

“Now I’ve lived with heartaches
And I’ve roomed with fear
I’ve dealt with despair
And I’ve wrestled with tears”

Buddy song: Breaking Up Is The New Getting Married

2. Black and White World – Fujiya & Miyagi

“With just a little lighting
There’ll never be days like that again”

Buddy song: Taiwanese Boots

3. 5ive Gears in Reverse – Randolph’s Leap

“Somebody send out for the night nurse
Please don’t stick me on a late shift”

Buddy song: Light of the Moon

4. B Movie – Fat Freddy’s Drop

“I found America hiding in my wallet
It’s a well kept secret, thought that I had better swallow it”

Buddy song: Russia

5. Motel Matches – Hurray for the Riff-Raff

“This is my conviction that I am an honest man”

Buddy song: Good Time Blues (An Outlaw’s Lament)

6. Human Touch – The Magnus Puto

“Though you say it’s only industrial squeeze
It looks like luxury and feels like a disease”

Buddy song: Gettin’ Trouble

7. Beaten to the Punch – Neil Cowley Trio

“Laughing at the older guys who say it’s just as well
Saved by the wedding bell…
You go hand in glove”

Buddy song: Hug the Greyhound

8. Temptation – Belle & Sebastian

“You’re just itching to break her secret laws
As you go from claws to clause”

Buddy song: Come on Sister

9. I Stand Accused – Victoria Trout Conspiracy

“You belong to some other guy
Hope I never have to testify”

Buddy song: All My Days

10. Riot Act – Kylie Auldist

“Don’t put your heart out on your sleeve
When your remarks are off the cuff”

Buddy song: No Use

Peace, Love and Kraftwerk

You can’t find the first three Kraftwerk albums in iTunes. Something the robotic quartet (for many years a duo, of course) appear to have control over. The first readily available album is Autobahn, unsurprisingly the real beginning of the band’s evolution into man-machine.

It might have been a reaction to the third album. After two albums very much in keeping with the collective anonymity that seemed to typify both Kraftwerk and their contemporaries, for the first and last time, Kraftwerk, now down to Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider, appear in person on the front and the back of the third album cover. They may have regretted this decision.

The main picture is reminiscent of those early photos of the Microsoft team; an air of earnest geekiness pervading the black and white photo, the traffic cone from the first two albums relegated to a kind of logo at the top of the page. Called simply “Ralf und Florian”, the album could be mistaken for folky or even gospel easy listening. Florian is positioned a head higher than his colleague, dressed in jacket with a musical note on the lapel and tie, longish 1970s hair neatly parted, a slightly strained look on his face. This may be something to do with the appearance of bespectacled colleague Ralf, whose shirt is open-necked, lank hair tumbling over his shoulders, looking grumpy at having had to make an effort to spruce himself up.

On the reverse, the colour photo shows a much more relaxed pair facing one another in a bare brick-walled room, with instruments and wires everywhere and that traffic cone perched on a speaker against a back wall. There are two neon signs in the foreground, next to their feet – one says Ralph and the other says Florian.

These were the days when the electronic sounds were like sound effects from ancient space soap operas or distortions of acoustic sounds and when Florian still played the flute. The days before they donned the carbon fibre exoskeleton (which Florian, it seems, later threw off again when he quit the band). Both Ralf & Florian and the more disciplined Autobahn, in fact, have a joie de vivre about them that is notably absent from the metallic, po-faced Trans-Europ Express.

My second hand copy of Ralf und Florian, quite apart from the cover looking as though it has been chewed by a giant caterpillar, is not exactly in great nick and it crackles its way through the six tracks, the titles of which are helpfully translated (so Ananas Symphonie is accompanied by its equivalent in English, Pineapple Symphony). The album is a battenberg of soft, almost New Age ambience and experiments with the buttons and switches, but it is also a lot of fun (ein musikalischer Spass, you might say). It must have been a wrench to put aside the flute – the clattery, choppy opener, Elektrisches Roulette is introduced by the instrument; the second, Tongebirge (Mountain of Sound in case you were wondering) is a pure ambient floating flute piece, but instantly followed by a flash of the future – Kristallo is a mix of side-room harpsichord and stabs of Tangerine Dream-style Moog / synth, but the refrain is unmistakeably the Kraftwerk of the future. Then there’s Heimatklange, redolent with rural nostalgia (Heimat, I think is one of those special words, like “terroir” in French). Then there is the decidedly chirpy, clappy bouncy Tanzmusik (you could, if you wanted to, but it might not be the most dignified moment of your life), the whole rounded off by that pineapple thing, the vocoder declaiming “Ananas Symphonie”.

Humour can be about no more than the statement of the incongruous, playing the banal back with an utterly straight face. So the car starting at the beginning of the title track on the next album sounds like an old jalopy, tooting its horn before we move into more familiar electronic Kraftwerk territory. Even then, the mock solemn chanted chorus “Wir fahr’n, fahr’n, fahr’n auf der Autobahn” tells us not everything should be taken at face value. This 22 minute track is celebratory, playful, even, Florian’s flute floating like candy-floss clouds over the miles of straight road ahead. It’s a far cry from the steely discipline of the railway lines that dominate Trans-Europ Express. I love this track – for me, it represents an apex, a perfect balance of past and future before setting off on the inevitable journey towards self-parody.

Some ignoramuses might try to allege that Kraftwerk, in keeping with their wholly inaccurate national stereotype (just say “Henning Wehn”) did not have a sense of humour, let alone irony. What nonsense. Don’t be fooled by the fact that, in their later career they decided to become an art installation. That’s just part of the (very patient) joke.