I always felt like having a job where I can wear band shirts, jeans and Converse All-Stars to work everyday while making a sustainable income would be a win — and it was. I’m an engineer and get to do really cool shit everyday (and some shit that’s less cool, but even that’s better than most people’s good days) and with that comes an understanding that you’re gonna get some weirdos… I’m one of those weirdos. When I started my job, if you told me that one day I’d be working from home full time, I would have thought you were full of shit, but here I am — working from home full time. I don’t think I’ve put on pants once in the last seven months unless I had to go to the store. That’s really weird.
I sit in a room all day with my record collection surrounding me, listening to music while doing my job. Great coffee is mere steps from me and I get to see my daughter all day everyday and that’s the fucking highlight of this pandemic. I’m surrounded by guitars, Moogs, FX pedals, books, records, CDs and as cool as that is, I miss waking up with a purpose — with the option to go to the office if I want to. Getting on the L and taking it into the Loop, grabbing a breakfast sandwich and seeing other people. Specifically people I work with. Sure, we have a Teams meeting everyday where we talk about work, what’s going on outside work, joke about music, talk shit about world events… but none of that really feels like human contact and I genuinely miss that. I miss the option for human interaction. Sometimes I feel we’re all becoming cyborgs — like we’re melding into one with our Lenovos and Macbooks and multiple displays. Soon we won’t know where the machine ends and the human begins, which leads me to…
I fucking love Kraftwerk.
I haven’t listened to The Man Machine in a really really long time — easily years at this point, but a weird sample at the beginning of a song by CULO reminded me of Kraftwerk. I’ve been listening to them for a few days now — Computer World, Autobahn, The Man Machine and various tracks while shuffling my MP3s.
The great thing about Kraftwerk is that they went into making music with no influence, really. They wanted to make computer music and that’s what they made. They get lumped in with Can, Neu, Faust and a lot of other German bands, but I really feel like they shine through a lot more than the others. Look — there’d be no House, Industrial, Jungle, Drum N Bass, or any other electronic music — or at least not how we know it today without Kraftwerk.
That’s all I got. OH YEAH. VOTE. If you haven’t done so already, go do it. Don’t let anyone stop you, either.
Go Freaks Go! 