I have long fantasized about completely automating a band, starting with music generating software like Band-in-a-Box or Experiments in Music Intelligence, then using chatterbots to do the interviews with fanzines. I figure this could satisfy my desire to play in a band without spending too much time, aside from the initial outlay of learning the software.

Is Kraftwerk still a going concern?

Also, I'd like to create a smoooth jazz radio station that worked by creating randomly generated songs, via something like Band-in-a-Box, randomly generated artists and song titles, via spamming software, and a synthesized DJ voice, using phone tree customer service software.

My guess is most people who listen to smoooth jazz would not be able to tell the difference.

Kraftwerk is still a going concern; they toured just two or so years ago, in fact. I'm told it was great.

Maybe they could work with the guy in Captured! By Robots!.

Ben: Is Kraftwerk the (or "a major") pioneer of the style of music they play, and is that style properly termed "electronica"? I don't really listen to anything that sounds like Kraftwerk except for the couple of oldish Kraftwerk albums I own, but I understand there's a lot of stuff like that.

Clownae: you might want to look for "OHM- The Early Gurus of Electronic Music, 1948-80". There are a lot of potential pioneers, and Kraftwerk is far from the earliest.

The Residents do that? That's kinda cheap. At least Man... Or Astroman? had the decency to put on a massive shtick to justify their "clone bands" that played on some dates. Also, the all-girl "Clone Tour Gamma" is just plain funny.

Clownae: Definitely check out Silver Apples's first two albums as well, since they were almost certainly a huge influence on Kraftwerk.

6:

That recommendation is liable to lead to confusion. That's a compilation focused more on electronic music that would count as part of modern composition, while I think the question at hand is about Kraftwerk's relation to electronic pop music (for which "electronica" is as good a term as any).

As far as electornica (in the pop sense) goes, Kraftwerk is generally considered the pioneer, although there's earlier stuff like Silver Apples and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (the people who did the Doctor Who theme) that gets cited in retrospect as a precursor to electronica but which probably didn't have that much influence in their time. And there's actually not a lot of other stuff from the period like Kraftwerk.

Cross-posted with JAC on the Silver Apples recommendation... I guess we should also recommend later ('74 and after) Tangerine Dream.

Lansing-Dreiden gets various semi-random people to play the instruments at their live shows while Lansing-Dreiden themselves walk around in the audience. Not sure if the actual singers do the singing.

Someone should blog this so we can gay candyass-up the blog a little bit, and also we can talk about how stupid the style industry is.

You mean like something about Marcia Brady's ass?

I was just intrigued by the idea that the anti-curl aesthetic had its roots in fear/hatred of Jews, Italians, and Greeks. I'd believe it, but it doesn't explain 80s perms.

Also, older African-American women still use the phrase "nice hair" to mean straight hair. (Not that that explains the 80s either; it's just another data point for straight being coded as good on ethnic grounds.)

80's hairstyles are not for the likes of us to understand...

straight being coded as good

So you think this is, at its rout, a homophobia issue?

80's hairstyles are not for the likes of us to understand...

Should our power of reason be so easily chagrined? Sapere aude!

I saw one of those MoA? clone tours! It was pretty good, actually, although half the fun of one of their shows is the ridiculous stage gear and seeing Coco light his head on fire.

I also saw the Silver Apples as an undergraduate -- I had no idea who they were, and they totally blew my mind, similar to the wuh-thu-hayll-wuzzat reaction of hearing the Red Krayola out of the blue. (In fact, Clownae, the first two or three Red Krayola albums are also interesting pre-electronica music, although not at all influential on Kraftwerk in any way I can think of.)

I saw those damn clones too. One of 'em nailed me in the forehead with a Little Debbie Star Crunch Cosmic Snack. Fuck you, clones!

I saw Kraftwerk in Bergen, Norway this past August. Fabulous show. Two songs in the first encore were performed by the robots. Saw the Residents in Minneapolis for their Cube E tour and it was quite possibly the most amazing concert/show I have ever seen.
Anyone interested should also check out the German band Can (I was of course going to mention Silver Apples but everyone else already did).