Sunday, February 26, 2012

Six Degrees of Sauerkraut--Part LII: Highways of the Glimmerlight










No one celebrated the Glimmerlight's road culture and the Light Cycle like the group of synthesists that styled themselves Space Art. The Glimmerlight's subterranean autobahn was called Schnellstraße (or the "Speedway" in English). and the synthetic synthesists would cruise over its grid with reckless abandon.

Space Art penned the greatest ode to the Glimmerlight's greatest road on their 1978 LP Trip in the Center Head - aptly titled "Speedway" - click on the title of this post to hear it.

Immer wieder.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Six Degrees of Sauerkraut--Part LI: The Glimmerlight's National Anthem














Word recently reached us that our brethren Kraftwerk would be teleporting down from the Offworld Colony to play "all" eight of their albums at New York's Museum of Modern Kunst (for some reason they continue to ignore their first two records and their brilliant third LP Ralf und Florian). Tickets went on sale at Wednesday at noon. Humans yelled "action stations!" and hit their laptops and other portable electronic devices. The primitive human electronic system could not handle it and crashed. Some humans even took to the antiquated device of the telephone. "What was this!?" I asked myself. "An ELO concert?"

The true synthesists, the mensche maschines who once dwelled in the Glimmerlight, simply had to download the tickets through our subroutines. Sadly, MoMA's two ticket policy also applied to those of us powered by the blue crystals. So I'll see you on Man Machine night, the magnum opus of Kraftwerk. The album that provided the Glimmerlight with its national anthem. To hear the icy national anthem of the Glimmerlight - "Die Mensche Maschine" - click on the title of this post.

I must say that I find it highly ironic that the ticket buying experience for Kraftwerk, those great paragons of technology, could result in such technical difficulties - computers freezing up from Manhattan to Berlin - humans throwing up their pocket calculators in despair, frantically reaching for their telephones - disappointed hipsters taking to the human blog Brooklyn Vegan to vent their angst. And all the while, I glided through the night on my light cycle, holding my Man Machine tickets in the air, laughing.

Rauf und runter!