Snobsite.com, the online home of the music snob’s dictionary, is worth a look and a giggle. A bit too close to home for a music snob like me.
This rather dry excerpt about Kraftwerk is typical….
“Kraftwerk. Acutely German, acutely secretive inventors of “robot rock†(their preferred term), a highly mechanized dance-pop heavy on synthesizers, vocoders, and lyrics about robots, computers, trains, and bicycles. Founded in Düsseldorf in the late ’60s by the KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN-influenced art students Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, Kraftwerk effectively invented electronic pop music with their five albums released between 1974 and 1981, Autobahn, Radioactivity, Trans-Europe Express, The Man Machine, and Computerworld, all the while toying with Teutonic stereotypes by appearing in photographs as waxen, short-haired, emotionless mannequins. Hütter and Schneider have since become semi-recluses, infrequently releasing albums and playing live, though it’s said that they beaver away at their Düsseldorf studio, KlingKlang, on a daily basis.”