big_dave wrote:Best band: Kraftwerk by far.
Most positive impact: Ramones by far.

This simple analysis threads the needle quite well, Big Dave.

ctrl-s wrote:thyklopth: Great, and your point is?

My point was that: I can't possibly be the only musician on the planet that eluded the influences of these two bands. To say that there wouldn't be punk w/o the Ramones or electronic rock w/o Kraftwerk is just far too coarse- too many bands have existed in pre-internet days making music all their own in basements and garages. You're discounting real innovators as you lionize the few that got heard and landed a deal.

Aside from that: Kraftwerk vs. Ramones is = to logic vs. gut.
Advantage: RAMONES

thyklopth wrote:My point was that: I can't possibly be the only musician on the planet that eluded the influences of these two bands.

Eluded. As in actively avoided.

I find it very difficult to believe that someone with good taste has avoided both Ramones and Kraftwerk.

ubercat wrote:

thyklopth wrote:My point was that: I can't possibly be the only musician on the planet that eluded the influences of these two bands.

Eluded. As in actively avoided.

I find it very difficult to believe that someone with good taste has avoided both Ramones and Kraftwerk.

Whatever interests/influences I've aquired are more logistical than anything else. It has nothing to do with good or bad taste. They didn't cross paths with me on my musical timeline.
I always reject the notion that one need be exposed to every band others deem 'important'. When I hear something and fall in love with it, I'm like an obsessive lover- playing it over and over, because there's something in it that I feel is mine regardless of outside opinions regarding it's value(musical correctness?!). i.e.- I think I played Adrian Belew's Desire Caught By the Tail constantly for a year after I first heard it, and likewise with other artists I was struck by. If I wasn't actively seeking out
Ramones or Kraftwerk, it's because my cd player was already loaded and I was just so shitdamn ecstatic.

Kraftwerk. Anyone who voted for The Ramones in this poll has thoroughly boggled my mind.

Y'all are nuts. Ramones encapsulated a million things that are on the mind of a kid who wants to be in a band and play rock music. They are the crystallization of a bunch of abstract appreciations that me and all my friends shared: "Junk" culture (comic books, horror movies, crappy food), petty crime, dangerous drugs, crazy girlfriends, excesses of speed and volume, proletarian art unencumbered by costume or other popery... Just about everything I was thinking about.

The Ramones embodied everything I thought about as a kid and made it all into a roaring, unique racket. They elevated everything from my end of the culture (the cheap, crappy, tawdry, unsophisticated, childlike end, the criminal end, the end without means or permission) and made me feel like a goddamn king.

Kraftwerk weren't about anything. Their enigmatic presentation implied a lot, but the records and the music were actually pretty superficial. Unique, original and intriguing, but almost content-free. Their process was oblique and therefore engaging, but they distanced themselves as people not just from their audience, but from any naked consideration at all.

It is impossible to know anything about Kraftwerk by listening to their music. It never feels like the listener is part of the experience, but rather that great pains and machinations have been undertaken to present the music as a finished thing to be admired. It is opaque and intentionally vague. Its bloodlessness rates as a kind of superlative.

The Ramones made me feel like I was in their band.

Ramones by a country mile. Or country.

Kraftwerk are among the absolute best of the tinkering electronic musicians. Or rather they were before they retreated into laptop music. They are geniuses and their music is awesome. Still, they aren't a fraction of what the Ramones were, and this is by design.

kerble wrote:

Ranxerox wrote:More versatile,

no. way. we're talking flutes and oboes and synths and guitars, and percussion and computers and hand-made vocoders and sequencers and drum machines vs. gtr/bass/drm/vox and three-chord monte.

more influential,

all of hip hop disagrees. Unless "Planet Rock" by Bambaataa didn't exist and kick most of it off...and then there's big black's cover.

more fun.

possibly, but I'd give highway driving to Kraftwerk and city driving to the Ramones. I spend more time on the highway, so Kraftwerk gets that, too.

More versatile because I can enjoy them under a wider range of circumstances. Having an oboe in the tracking does not a great set make.

More influential by a sight, and not just musically. A brand new way of living. For all the ways that Kraftwerk were insular and inviting only because you couldn't get close to them, the Ramones screamed 'we are in this together and you can help if you want.' Meanwhile, sampling didn't make hip hop, rapping did, and that started with scat (don't get excited, it's a jazz term) and stuff like the Last Poets or Gil Scott Herron's gabby sides.

More fun by a damned sight. I toured for weeks listening to Trans Europe Express. Only tape in the Econoline. Never bored, and never moved to laughter, mayhem, sexual desire, pugnaciousness, triumph, etc., like listening to the Ramones.

This one seems silly to me. Honestly.

Love Kraftwerk.

I've listened to them about a million times more than the Ramones in the last decade.

But I pick Ramones.

I don't remember the first time I heard a Kraftwerk record.

I remember, distinctly, the massive rush I got playing the first Ramones record for the first time. I have only had that experience with maybe a dozen records in my life.

steve wrote:It is impossible to know anything about Kraftwerk by listening to their music.

Exactly why I gravitated to them. Mysterious like a new girlfriend. I ate this stuff up in my youth. When Computerwelt came out I got it the first chance I could and promptly memorized it.

I was captivated by the notion that a man could sacrifice 'self' for a greater purpose. As a child I was always ready to check out.

Maybe this poll is less like a Jocks vs Geeks and more like an Extroverts vs Introverts.