Here was precision oozing endlessly, machinery and science meeting music to create something completely new. In Kraftwerk and other German electronic bands, OMD found the model of music they aspired to. With this frustration sitting in the back of their minds, their imaginations were to receive a swift overhaul when they heard Kraftwerk, the pioneering German electronic group, play in 1975 for the very first time.
Not only had the songs become loud and chaotic, but they had lost discipline and meaning. They had thought that the obnoxious guitar solos and screeching vocals of modern rock had become unpalatable. When OMD played their first gig in the famed Liverpool club, Eric’s, they were doing so out of rebellion. Flash forward a handful of decades and a series of acclaimed and somewhat less acclaimed albums, and this 24-year-old boy right here got to see OMD live in NYC’s Central Park, just in time for their final 40th-anniversary show.Ĭlutching onto the bar at the very front of the mosh-pit, I was one of just a few mid-20s kids who were surely attracted to OMD for their warm synth ballads that referenced a time when electronic music first became accessible. OMD had struck a chord without a guitar in sight, and electronic music had begun to resonate with audiences in a manner it never had before. Leading with synthesizers was having a peculiar effect crowds were forming and sticking around for the encore. One concert became two, three, and then four. Well, something messed up, and it wasn’t the audio system. They would shake off some of the tracks they’d been writing since the two were 16 in 1975, and then they’d retire.
Synthpop legends Andy McClusky and Paul Humphreys said that when they formed Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) in 1978, it was to play a single show.
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