1982-11-28 Zeche, Bochum, Germany

Notes

Alan Wilder stated in Fachblatt magazine (translated):

"Yesterday at the concert in Bochum, something incredibly embarrassing happened to us. We had always hoped that we would once meet Kraftwerk; they could be described as our grandfathers of music. And now they were at the Bochum concert there as well, and we had the worst concert ever. Both my and Martin's synth played totally awfully and were permanently out of tune, and the evening went down really totally miserably. And so as a result we ruined any chance of getting sympathy from Kraftwerk..."

A quote from Martin, found in Mojo magazine in 2012:

"There was one time around 1982 when we were using a prototype PPG [earlier digital synthesizer] live and it was very unreliable. Kraftwerk turned up to see us play somewhere in Germany and the PPG went down during the first song and never came back. It was one of the worst concerts we’ve ever played."

Martin said again to Rheinische Post in 2017 (translated):

"We played in Aachen [sic] once. That was very early in our career, in 1982, I think. And we heard that Kraftwerk would come to our show. We were terribly excited, because they were our big idols. Back then, we were using a PPG-synthesizer. It wasn't really made for travelling. And so it broke during one of the first songs. The performance became horrible, because this was our most important keyboard. We then did not see Kraftwerk anymore. People told us afterwards that they thought it was awful and left before the end of the show."

Andy Fletcher echoed this in 2001:

"We played in Germany. We had this synth called the PPG. It was notoriously designed not to go on the road but we used to take it on the road. We had this most disastrous gig in probably of our career when all the synths just went, completely. Unfortunately, it was the gig that - we found out afterwards - Kraftwerk had been there, watching us. Do you know how embarrassing? The godfathers seeing us. They must have thought, 'We got no competition here'. [laughs]"

For DM's concerts in Germany in fall 1982, X-Agenten were the support act.

Set list

1. Oberkorn (It's A Small Town)
2. My Secret Garden
3. See You
4. Satellite
5. New Life
6. Boys Say Go!
7. Tora! Tora! Tora!
8. Nothing To Fear
9. Leave In Silence
10. Shouldn't Have Done That
11. Monument
12. The Meaning Of Love
13. Just Can't Get Enough
14. A Photograph Of You
15. The Sun & The Rainfall
16. Shout
17. Photographic
18. Dreaming Of Me

Sources

• Source 1 is a very good audience recording sourced from the silver CD bootleg First Time Around.