Show 180 - Kraftwerk - Live At L'Olympia, Paris - 28 Feb 1976

 

A quick request. If you plan on downloading this and putting it on your YouTube channel or your own bootleg page - I don't mind. But a credit to this website where you found it, and a link back to this page would be really appreciated. It helps me gauge which artists are popular - ie more chance of other restorations coming. Don't steal and take the credit. Thanks.

At the beginning of 1976 Kraftwerk played a few shows in Europe before doing a full tour in the Autumn. This is a recording of one of those early 1976 shows.

This show has appeared on bootlegs in various forms over the years - not all of which even had all the tracks played. Some also had radio announcers talking over them. There is at least 1 unrestored "complete" version out there with a different tracklisting, with the songs in a different order (the latter is also on YouTube, so some of you may well be familiar with that version already. It doesn't have the correct song titles either).

This restored and remastered version is complete, has no radio announcers and has some songs in a different order. And below, you will find the correct titles. Taken from the mixing desk for use on later radio broadcasts, this came to me from a collector in Germany. With this setlist order. Having compared this to the OTHER "complete" version, I think this one is more likely to be correct. There is applause at the beginning of the gig, and after each song played - as it should be. That doesn't happen on the other version. This setlist order also seems to flow far better, to me. If you disagree, that's ok. But until Herr Hutter tells me the actual setlist running order, I'll go with this one.

Annoyingly, someone has updated this gig on setlist.fm with the bootleg's running order, so that's no help either.

Anyway, I put the setlist as I see it. Incidentally, on the bootlegs Die Sonne, Der Monde, Die Sterne is mentioned - but the track is not that one; it's more like a vocoder jam more closely resembling the "Pulsar und Quasar" section of Radio Stars, so that's what I listed it as.

The original recording was often very quiet. After repairing a few clicks and minor faults, I remastered this so the volume is more consistent. This makes the synths really far more audible. I also EQed so the electronic percussion could be heard far better. And the crowd noise on the bootleg sometimes sounded edited and also too loud at times. So I've had a go at that too, to try and make it all sound a bit more natural.

The result is the best ever quality for this rare gig recording in my humble opinion. You can now download the repaired, restored and remastered version of this show exclusively for free, right HERE as one 320kbps MP3 file.

If you would like to support what I do, and this site, and obtain separate, fully tagged 320kbps MP3s or lossless FLACs of the restoration, head on over to the Rewards For Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs. Absolutely no obligation to do so of course - you can take the file on this page absolutely for free - but every single donation does go towards this site and domain/storage costs, and helps the site stay open.

Either way, enjoy the show! And if you like this recording, PLEASE spread the news and share the page link to anyone you think might be interested - facebook fan groups, web forums, Twitter and Instagram are a great way of spreading the word - that way, I always find out which bands are popular and can do more shows by them in the future. Many thanks.

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Setlist
Goethe's Poem
Kometenmelodie 1
Kometenmelodie 2
Tongebirge
Tanzmusik
Radioactivity
Airwaves
The Voice Of Energy
Radio Stars
Autobahn
Mitternacht/Showroom Dummies

***Some extra information has come to light which you might find interesting. Part of restoring this show involved increasing the volume of large parts of the recording that were very quiet. As a result of this you can now hear Ralf Hutter occasionally speaking to the crowd in French during the gig. Well, Nicolas, a member of the Kraftwerk Facebook group, translated what Ralf is saying; with his kind permission, I repeat that here:

"Before playing Airwaves, Ralf says: "We are going to play a song to discover the Martenot waves". As a tribute to the instrument of the same name, "Les ondes Martenot" in french, made by Maurice Martenot in 1928.

 

Before The voice of energy, he says: "We are going to play a composition of energy, solar energy".

 

And before playing Mitternacht, Ralf says:

"We are going to play a song, Le vampire de Düsseldorf" ( The vampire of Düsseldorf ) and he adds "toujours à la recherche", which can be translated as "always in search for", I guess it means the song was still a work in progress. But the most interesting thing for me is that Ralf gave this Mitternacht/Showroom dummies suite a name."

For those who don't know, the Ondes Martenot is a very early electronic keyboard instrument, while "Le Vampire de Düsseldorf" is a 1965 German film thriller.