Kraftwerk is awesome.

From Kraftwerk member Ralf Hütter's Wikipeidia page: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralf_Hütter)

Cycling Interests

Ralf Hütter is an enthusiastic cycling fan. This is shown in some of the band's work and an urban myth claimed that when the band would tour, the bus would drop Hütter off 100 miles before the venue, and he would cycle the rest of the way. The band members took up cycling when recording the album The Man-Machine in the late 1970s. Ralf Hütter had been looking for a new form of exercise. The single Tour de France included sounds that followed this theme including bicycle chains, gear mechanisms and the breathing of the cyclist. At the time of the single's release Ralf Hütter tried to persuade the rest of the band that they should record a whole album based around cycling. At the time this did not happen, but the project eventually was released as Tour de France Soundtracks in 2003.

Hütter was involved in a serious cycling accident in 1983, during the initial period of recording of the since-abandoned album Techno Pop.^[2] Only the single "Tour de France" and demos of "Techno Pop" and "Sex Object", would find their way into bootleg releases after this accident. He was put in a coma as a result of the accident. Karl Bartos stated the first thing he said when he awoke from his coma was "Where is my bicycle?" a story Hütter later disputed in a June 2009 interview in The Guardian.^[2]

NME - September 1975^[3]

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Permalink Reply by David Barish on August 22, 2011 at 12:08pm

Tour de France has been rotated in at the 6 am spin class led by Ed Kriege in Skokie. I find my inner Jan Ullrich, close my eyes, and keep those pistons pumping.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Bullis 5.5-6.5 miles on August 22, 2011 at 12:19pm

A friend played a cassette tape(am I showing my age:?)for me that he brought back from Germany of this 'weird German band' sometime back in the seventies. Been a fan ever since.

The cassette was 'Autobahn'. He gave it to me and I wore it out. I managed to find an LP copy and wore that out. Found a copy of 'Autobahn' while in a used CD store in Australia a few years ago. My life became whole again.

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Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on August 22, 2011 at 1:06pm

My Kraftwerk memories . . .

A good friend had an older friend (I think the relationship centered around drugs rather than something unspeakable, but who knows . . . ) and we used to hang out there from time to time and listen to music.

He had a Bang and Olufsen receiver with touch controls, might have been this one: