Kraftwerk - Live in Sao Paulo 1998

Kraftwerk live at Jockey Club, Sao Paulo, Brazil
October 16th, 1998
1998 World Tour
Home Remaster
Recording quality: B+
Attendance: ???
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00:00 Announcement
01:45 Pre Show Sounds
05:27 Meine Damen Und Herren
06:09 Numbers
10:37 Computer World
13:43 Home Computer
20:47 The Man Machine
28:47 Tour De France
35:25 Autobahn
48:58 The Model
51:39 Airwaves
53:00 Tango
1:01:18 Sellafield 2
1:02:23 Radioactivity
1:09:11 Trans Europe Express
1:19:30 Pocket Calculator / Taschenrechner
1:27:35 The Robots
1:31:59 Robotronik - Last performance until 2019
1:38:13 Nummweltverschmutzung - Last performance
1:44:41 Music Non Stop
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So, this is the last concert of Kraftwerk before the turn of the millennium performed as part of the Free Jazz Festival in Sao Paulo. The venue used for this concert is Jockey Club, a racecourse which is orginally built for sport event, though its purpose was then extended to provide space for music festivals. Kraftwerk's studio was still sensitive towards weather conditions, thus this gig took place inside a tent.

In comparison to last concert in Rio de Janeiro, this performance was flawless. The robovox in The Man Machine got fixed, Autobahn got its second half back, Sellafield 2 didn't require a restart and Trans Europe Express didn't get interrupted. Ralf's voice was still hoarse, but problems with the sound system in regards to his vocals were fortunately absent unlike other 1998 concerts. In my opinion, the concert in Sao Paulo should have been broadcasted on Brazilian television instead, but it is understandable that they chose Rio De Janeiro without knowing that these technical difficulites would happen since nobody has a real crystal ball.
Robotronik was performed for the last time until 2019 and 2022, since it got merged with The Robots in 2002.
Nummweltverschmutzung could be heard for the last time in a Kraftwerk concert. It is well known that Kraftwerk worked on a new album slated for release in 1999 or 2000. Lichthof, Tango and Nummweltverschmutzung are among the songs included in the album, but it got cancelled for several reasons. The project file of Lichthof got irreversibly corrupted, the songs lack variation and the bassline got sampled from The Art Of Falling Apart by Soft Cell which posed a copyright problem.
In 1983, there was a similar case with Tour De France. I read about a rumour somewhere that Karl Bartos took the main melody from a composition by Paul Hindemith and didn't tell Ralf and Florian about it. After the single release, Kraftwerk got sued for copyright infringement and had to pay a fine to keep the song on the market. If this was true, Kraftwerk had learned from this mistake and checked Nummweltverschmutzung for copyright problems before releasing it. They tried to modernize their music style by getting inspiration from newer electronic music and they did that by listening to them extensively, although its downside is that a melody which seems to be one's own creation, but originates from an already existing song, could flow into one's own work.
Kraftwerk's conclusion from this result is to start again from scratch.

Two concerts in Sydney, Australia were planned to be performed afterwards, one on January 23rd, 1999 and the other concert three days afterwards, but they got cancelled. For the Expo 2000 event in Hannover, Germany, Kraftwerk created a short jingle and later extended it to a full song which got released in late 1999. Allegedly, Kraftwerk received 400.000 German mark for the jingle which is disproven by Ralf who said in an interview that they had denied the fee.
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Sao Paulo's audience recording is similar to the one from Rio de Janeiro. The waveform is brickwalled causing the kick drums to drown other elements of the music while the frequency range is high and a strong stereo width is present. These simillarities indicate that this was taped by the same person who taped Rio de Janeiro. Nothing can be done to truely eliminate the brickwall, but I tried to strengthen those music elements that are in the mid-range of the frequency spectrum. The hihat in The Model was obscured even though the high frequencies were strong elsewhere, so, I restored it.
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