Who knows why I’m only deciding this now. But the following are resolved:
.: Computerwelt is better than Computer World. Remarkably so. Just “Nummern” is enough to make the album better.
.: Trans Europa Express is also better than Trans-Europe Express. This took time to decide upon. See, the rhythms are so hypnotic on this album that adding that third syllable in “Europa” changes the feel of both the “TEE” suite and “Europa endlos,” to the point where I didn’t initially like them. So what happened? Well, I got used to the different rhythms. I don’t yet know which is ultimately better, but there you go. So if I can’t say that, what’s with the endorsement? Partly it’s the fact that in the German version, the “TEE” suite carries across three tracks instead of just two–apparently “Metall auf Metall” and “Abzug” get run together for some reason into “Metal on Metal.” This seems rather unfair to me, but maybe it was done since, well, at least I have no idea which translation of “Abzug” is most appropriate (right now, I’m leaning toward “copy”), so maybe neither did Kraftwerk. But if you let the sparse rhythm of “TEE” sit in as a sort of train chugging along from Paris to Vienna and beyond, then it doesn’t make sense for the second six minutes to be called “Metal on Metal.” The brief bridge, sure, but the whole back half? No way. If that seems too thin, which would you rather have on your album, a song named “Showroom Dummies” or “Schaufensterpuppen”?
February 18th, 2004 at 10:57
I am obviously kidding about “Nummern.” Actually, I’m not positive I can make the case for Computerwelt objectively, in retrospect.
But, on another topic of German incidents in English music, why was it only yesterday that I learned that the closing lines of Blur’s “Girls and Boys” are:
Nothing is wasted
Only reproduced
Get nasty blisters
Du bist sehr schn
But we haven’t been introduced
So somehow the song got even better, in my opinion.