Celebrating Klaus Dinger on the day of his birth. —Ed.
I’ve always loved Neu!; theirs is the relentless and steady as she goes “motorik” sound of a BMW stolen by the outlaw Baader-Meinhof Gang speeding down the Autobahn, on their way to West Berlin to create mischief and mayhem.
Formed in 1971 in Düsseldorf by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother, both of whom were former members of Kraftwerk, Neu! was one of the founders of Krautrock, utilizing the simplistic 4/4 motorik (i.e., “motor skill”) beat (which Dinger chose to label the “Apache beat”) to propel their songs while dispensing with all kinds of useless stuff like verses and choruses and the like. Meanwhile Rother accompanied Dinger’s drumming with a guitar-produced harmonic drone, utilizing a single chord upon which he would pile overdub upon overdub to emphasize timbral change.
Not that I know what any of that means, but I don’t have to, because I’m no musician but just a guy with ears, two of them to be exact, one of which works better than the other due to a tragic Q-tip accident. The important thing is that Neu! influenced everyone from David Bowie to John Lydon, to say nothing of Stereolab (natch) and even Oasis. The results of Neu!’s innovations were simultaneously lulling and exciting; theirs was the sound of minimal variation at high velocity.
Neu! ’75 followed 1972’s Neu! and 1973’s Neu! 2, and was significantly different from those records in so far as Dinger and Rother had begun to take divergent paths. In the end they compromised, with side one highlighting Rother’s ambient leanings and side two spotlighting Dinger’s more feral rock, which could almost be called proto-punk. The resulting LP is a Jekyll and Hyde proposition, but it works, in exactly the same way as David Bowie’s Neu!-influenced Low LP does.
Why Is Tower Records Coming Back Now, of All Times? It’s trying to offer something Amazon and Spotify can’t. In 1965, Heidi Cotler got a job at Tower Records. She worked in the books department, which had opened not long after the record store did. The job suited her countercultural style. “There was no dress code. There was no hair code. As long as you didn’t smell and your butt wasn’t hanging out, you were pretty much good to go. You had to wear shoes, most of the time.” Cotler says the vibe at Tower—what we’d now call its corporate culture—all came from its founder, Russ Solomon. He was cool, he was free-spirited, and he hired lots of cool and free-spirited young people to create the kind of company he wanted. He didn’t care much about rules as long as the job got done. “We ran on basically just sheer idiocy for a long time,” Cotler says, “and it worked because we adored Russ. He had respect for us, and in a business where you’re being paid $1.25 an hour, to be respected at 19 or 20 years old is a pretty heady thing. You really have to respect that and 
Audio cassettes: despite being ‘a bit rubbish’, sales have doubled during the pandemic – here’s why: Described by some as “Europe’s biggest tech show”, the Berlin Radio Show has long been famous for exhibiting the next big thing in consumer electronics. In 1963, that was the compact audio cassette, introduced at the time by its creator, the late Dutch engineer Lou Ottens, who died in early March. Over the course of Ottens’ lifetime, cassette tapes came to redefine listening habits, which until then had been limited to the much more unwieldy vinyl record. Car stereos and the iconic Sony Walkman suddenly made individual listening experiences possible outside of the home. The re-recordable nature of the format, meanwhile, helped music fans collate and circulate their own mixtapes. At its peak in 1989, the cassette tape was shifting 83 million units per year in the UK alone. Despite having been superseded in functionality first by the compact disc (CD) and then the digital file (mp3 and mp4), the audio cassette retains 
Khan, as everybody in the universe knows, got her start with 
Denver, CO | Labor of Love: Bart’s Record Shop Becomes Paradise Found: “I’ve spent most of my adult life in record stores. This is the most organized, cleanest record store I’ve ever worked in,” says Bart’s Record Shop vinyl buyer and former Cavity guitarist Jon Martinez, who’s been employed at Bart’s for over twenty years and is a veteran of now-defunct legendary Boulder record shops like Trade-A-Tape and the old Wax Trax. “It’s been refreshing to work under these circumstances,” Martinez said from behind a Pink Floyd mask while pricing stacks of used vinyl on a recent Thursday evening. “Everyone’s working very hard to make the store a great place. That’s not necessarily the case in all the other stores I’ve worked in. This is the one that hits all those sweet spots — and also, records are booming right now, and I’m astonished.” “…The big thing is, I wanted more vinyl in the store,” Paradise says. “We had close to 20,000 CDs. Since that time, we’ve almost tripled sales, and CDs have gone from over 50 percent of sales 
Bay City, MI | Electric Kitsch moves to a much larger space in Bay City’s South End: Co-owners Jessica McQuarter and Jordan Pries are relocating their business to 2106 Kosciuszko (22nd St.), where they’ll have nearly three times the retail space and be able to expand their product offerings. Electric Kitsch first opened at 917 Washington Ave. in downtown Bay City in June 2012. That location closed on March 15 and the tentative reopening date at its new location is Thursday, April 1. “The building has quite a lot of history,” McQuarter said, noting that it was formerly Joe’s Appliance. In addition to music, Electric Kitsch sells guitar strings, cables, picks and other accessories. At the new location, customers can also expect to find some used guitars and amplifiers. Pries said he hopes the new location will serve as a gathering place for their customers and fellow music lovers. “We lived above our store downtown prior to this, and this place also has living quarters above the retail space,” McQuarter added. “We really like that old school, like, 
New York, NY | Can Williamsburg’s Record Stores Get Back Into the Groove? Like the plague victim in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, “I’m not dead yet!” is the obstinate cry of independent record stores coping with lockdowns and reduced foot traffic during the Covid-19 pandemic. In Brooklyn’s northwest corner, two Williamsburg record stores have announced the closing of their brick-and-mortar locations, leaving a temporary void of arts and culture in a neighborhood already disappearing under commercial chain stores and high-rise apartments. Rough Trade NYC and Human Head Records both say they have plans to reopen in new locations later in the year, but their vague announcements made me nervous. In order to assess the health of my favorite record stores, I donned a surgical mask and set out to check on them. I spoke to employees at a distance while safely indulging my own vinyl habit. As I observed the life inside their walls, I found an atmosphere still charged with the search-and-you-might-find excitement that makes 
Vinyl gore is the internet trend where people share photos of disfigured records: Ever ordered a record that arrives broken in the mail? Or left your vinyl next to a radiator for too long? That’s Vinyl Gore. Vinyl Gore is the internet trend where people share photos and video footage of disfigured records. This community of brilliantly self-deprecating vinyl diehards lives in the Vinyl Gore subreddit where tales of warped, snapped and smashed records are posted and commented on with plenty of dry humour and withering Discogs rating references. Ever ordered a record that arrives broken in the mail? Or left your vinyl next to a radiator for too long? That’s Vinyl Gore and the weathered souls who’ve been through it all before are here to help you through your pain. Trust reddit to house a community that understands the disappointment of a seriously bent sleeve or 12″ that’s been bent beyond the forces of gravity. The subreddit isn’t for the faint of heart due to the amount of 
While bands of similar stature have had their histories dissected and anthologized, the story of America has never endured such an investigation. Author 
