Sonar 98 - Live in Barcelona

Live review and images from Kraftwerk's appearance at the Sonar 98 event in Barcelona, Spain by Jose Garcia
Photographs by Emma Villegas

Seven years on from their last show in Barcelona, a new Kraftwerk concert is announced to take place in the city, this time inside SONAR 98, the much-in-vogue annual Advanced Music festival. Kraftwerk are to play during the first day of the festival, at the Pabellón de la Mar Bella, in a pavilion used for indoor sports such as handball. The building is beside the Barcelonian beach and has 2000 seats distributed along the long sides of the rectangular building. The festival organizers announce the advance sale of tickets for the three days of SONAR. Tickets for individual days are only available one week before the festival. The ones for the 18th, the Kraftwerk day, are sold very quickly, but the mandatory 10% of tickets are kept to be sold at the day of the festival.

The now fashionable band from Düsseldorf is having preview coverage in all the major newspapers in Barcelona and Madrid, and in the nationwide music radio station Radio 3, who are recording all the performances but are not allowed to do so with Kraftwerk's. No interview either.

A meeting of Aktivität readers and Mailing List subscribers has been organized and we meet a few hours before the concert and comment on the latest concerts, the set-list and so on. It has been good to meet people that only have known each other through mail. While listening to the radio I hear that, although the rumour is that the concert is sold-out, in fact about 500 tickets remain unsold.

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