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What did I just witness? Was that the most incredible concert I’ve ever attended or a waste of two hours? And I mean two hours on the dot, perfectly timed out. The time listed on the ticket was 8:00 p.m., and they hit the stage exactly at 8:00 p.m. and left the stage at precisely 10 p.m.

It all started with a text message from a friend on Friday afternoon. She posed a simple question: Would my wife or I like to accompany her to the Kraftwerk concert in Minneapolis on Sunday night? I could tell my wife wasn’t jumping at the opportunity, nor was I. My wife and I enjoy live music of just about any genre, and we are both friends with the woman who extended the invitation, so we knew one of us would attend. After a bit of back and forth, it was decided that I would go. We let our friend know and went about our weekend.

I was familiar with Kraftwerk, although I don’t believe that I had ever knowingly chosen to listen to their music. My knowledge of Kraftwerk is knowing that they are commonly cited by other artists as pioneers in electronic music and that I had found their music to be a little odd on the occasions that I had heard them.

Sunday afternoon rolled around, and my wife and I were working on a jigsaw puzzle (it was the end of March, but to glance out the window, you would swear it was the beginning of February, the wind blowing fierce and the snow falling hard), my wife decided to put on some music. She asked what I wanted to listen to. I replied that maybe she should put on Kraftwerk so I could familiarize myself with them a little more. For the next two hours, we puzzled and listened to the strange noises that were emanating from the stereo.

I’ll be honest; after listening to a handful of songs that afternoon (including a 28-minute version of a tune called Autobahn), I felt indifferent about Kraftwerk.

The evening rolled around. The friend who extended the invitation and I arrived at the theater and found our seats. I glanced at the stage as we sat down and noticed it was nearly bare. There were no instruments, just a foot-high platform with what looked like a row of four small podiums about two feet apart and a projection screen behind.

The house lights went down, the crowd started to cheer, and green numbers began to appear on the screen. Four figures in a single file line walked onto the stage. Each took a place behind one of the podiums. The figures were dressed in tight black bodysuits, the trim of which was LED lights. They looked like extras from the movie “Tron.”

While my afternoon listening session gave me a good idea of the music I would hear that evening, I wasn’t sure what I would see. Once the show started, it quickly became apparent. I had seemingly been transported back to the mid-1980s. Graphics fit for Atari or Nintendo appear on the screen, interspersed with old video reels. The images on the screen during the opening song eventually filled the screen as binary code, a look reminiscent of an MS-DOS operating system.

The screen provided a story for the songs. During their hit “Autobahn,” a clip art style video with graphics reminiscent of the 1980s arcade game “Pole Position” showed German cars driving along an animated version of the famous freeway. When they played “Tour De France,” 8-bit graphics with video clips of bicyclists were spliced in. As the graphics on the screen would change, so would the color of the LED lighting on the band members’ outfits. Throughout the evening designed simplicity seemed to be the rule.

During one song, “Radioactivity”, it was just single words appearing on the screen in a font that conjured memories of a mid-90s Apple computer. While visually odd, the words still struck today: Chernobyl, Harrisburg, Sellafield, Hiroshima.

The music, aside from saying it’s electronic, is hard to define. I never said to myself, “Yes, this song is amazing!” but I also never said to myself, “This is terrible.” Easy beats, made with synthesizers and drum machines. I still was unsure what exactly Kraftwerk’s “musicians” were doing; the podiums that they stood behind must have contained various buttons and keys to produce the music. One band member did most of the singing, sometimes in German and sometimes in English.

I’ve seen lots of concerts, some with elaborate choreography, some with very barren stages, some that started on time and some started hours late. Kraftwerk’s concert was as perfectly planned and executed as any band I have seen. While it appeared simplistic two hours earlier I now realized that everything was about perfection; clean stage lines, precise tones, impeccable timing.

And then, in the midst of performing a song, one band member turned and walked off the stage. The music continued, but the crowd began to cheer; I realized he had left the stage intentionally, and the exit of the band members was designed into the show as well. In doing this, you could tell what each band member was adding to the sound. After another minute, the next band member turned and exited in the same style. As the last band member made his way off, he stopped and faced the crowd. Everyone was on their feet, showing their appreciation. As he exited, I looked at the time; they had performed for exactly two hours.

So, was it the greatest concert ever? I don’t know, but it was flawless.