42. Kraftwerk - The Man Machine (1978)

You don't always have to start at the beginning. I started with OMD, The Human League, Ultravox, Simple Minds and New Order at a time when there was no beginning and no end. Only later did I realise that all these bands shared a professed love of all things Kraftwerk, subscribing to the Big Bang Theory of Electronic Music; before Kraftwerk there was not even nothing, just an emptiness that was disturbed one day in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1970 by the collision of Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider.

That's how I came to Kraftwerk, via the hero of your heroes route. I once came across Andy McCluskey of OMD at Euston Station, and high on lager I asked him about Kraftwerk. He said meeting Ralf Hutter was one of the high points of his life. I said, 'Why did it all go wrong after Dazzle Ships?' Man Machine is my favourite album for the simple reason that it was the Kraftwerk album that I heard first, sucked in by the early 80's re-release of 'The Model' that made it to number 1, as unlikely as that seems today.

While the previous year's Trans Europe Express was a rapturous paen to a Europe reborn after the schisms of the Second World War and brought closer together by advances in transport, Man Machine flirts with a sense of the future seen from the past - the 'Metropolis' of Fritz Lang and the forays of Bauhaus - that were crushed by fascism and conflict. At other moments Man Machine delves into charming self parody with 'The Robots' and 'The Man Machine', and into the nerd-fantasy of 'The Model'. The best is saved for the wonderous 'Neon Lights', a melody drenched hommage to the phenomenon of urbanisation. Simultaneously capturing the sensation of travelling and arriving, 'Neon Lights' spreads the city before you in all its nocturnal glory, the glow of humanity slowly getting brighter and brighter. Jim Kerr drove his band mates insane by playing it constantly as they pulled into every new destination on Simple Minds' fateful 1980 European tour. More of that story later.

Kraftwerk - The Man Machine

43. Television - Marquee Moon (1977)

"What I want, I want now" - See No Evil

Nobody told me. I didn't know. Punk. No thanks. God didn't invent synthersizers, David Sylvian and the 1980's for me to go around listening to the snot and snakebite of The Sex Pistols.

1988, a Saturday, in Liverpool, a record fair in the Adelphi Hotel, in the days when you went to record fairs just to look at records. I have enough money to buy something, but not just anything, get it wrong and I have to live with the consequences, and no-one wants to live with consequences. 'Marquee Moon', the name rang a bell -'seminal' - Melody Maker speak for 'important'; Television, New York, Tom Verlaine, the man had the name of a poet, not a Vicious or Rotten in sight, surely there will be no snot and snakebite from a man with a poet's name. Ok, this is it, the only other thing I have seen is a Magazine album which is supposed to be their worst; fuck that, if I have the best what's the point of having the worst.

The train home takes so long. Another 15 minutes from the station to my house. 4.00pm, good I can listen to it once all the way through before the results come in...'What I want, I want now"


Televison - Marquee Moon (1977)