As a student in Zürich I was quite fond of Kraftwerk - Ralf and Florian making up the wee little German techno group, something that often got me dissed by my "real music" loving friends.
But revenge is sweet, now Kraftwerk is often mentioned as a major influencer in rap, hip hop and techno, and for whatever reason, they liked cycling! For it's monotony perhaps? Not the dope I hope.
So here's a Tour de France snippet (better quality on the Kraftwerk site) while we're waiting fro the next etape to start:
Enjoy the summer and the cycling!
Hi Sig,
Wow, Kraftwerk, haven't listened to them for ages. Got to admit I was more of a Yellow Magic Orchestra fan
http://www.last.fm/music/Yellow+Magic+Orchestra.
Off to see Björk tonight in concert, should be great.
So what's your take on Rasmussen?
Posted by: Ian Prince | July 25, 2007 at 17:28
Ian, ahh, Björk, that would be something!
And Rasmussen... well, not sure, actually crossing my fingers for Contador, he's impressive and we need a new generation now!
Posted by: sig | July 25, 2007 at 21:22
Fahren fahren fahren auf der autobahn
eeeeeeeeaoooooooooooooooooooo
Magnificent!
Posted by: John Dodds | July 25, 2007 at 22:20
Björk was spectacular! Her voice is simply out of this world. There's complexity and audacity to her music that I find inspiring.
Aaron - also playing last night at Paleo - were also brilliant, in a different way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJRh0PlWB6g
I'll stop now before this turns into MySpace ;-)
Posted by: Ian Prince | July 26, 2007 at 11:14
nothing wrong with a bit of Kraftwerk. Techno music for technophiles...
Posted by: Clive Birnie | July 26, 2007 at 15:50
It was quite the tour, wasn't it ?
Do you think Rasmussen's career is now kaput ?
Posted by: Jon Husband | August 27, 2007 at 07:13
Yep, methinks it was one of the better ones - the last time trial was simply nailbiting and grand entertainment - for cycling fans at least!
For the no-so-big-fans-of-watching-hourlong-pedalling the bigger picture of doping was intriguing:
As a starting point cycling has a long history of serious doping, until just recently mostly pain relievers in all flavours (cocaine, ether, amphetamines and worse) as it's often about enduring pain.
Three things came out of this tour in my view:
- A willingness by the commercial interests (TdF) to risk bad publicity, stopping TV distribution, even stopping of the tour, when clamping down on any discrepancy. You do not see that often in other sports.
- The Rasmussen case; not following the rules to the last detail, even if not caught doping, means same as getting caught. Again not many other sports you hear doing this, random and intense off season testing. And yes, think that will put him onto the back burner.
- That focus now also is on the team support and leadership as those are inevitably populated by folks hailing from the "good old days" of less control and probably more cheating. Guess much can be done sorting out the attitudes there.
Perhaps the brouhaha in cycling will rub off on other professional sports?
Posted by: sig | August 27, 2007 at 09:48