’Computer World’ by Kraftwerk

It’s the end of the school year for many kids across the nation soon and around this time I think about some of my favorite high school memories. It never takes very long because there aren’t that many and most of them are from one particular class, Media Productions. This wasn’t your normal high school class. Next to my high school is the William D. Ford Career Technical Center, VoTech for short, and once in 11th grade you were allowed to enroll in a class there. Each class was about 3 hours long and counted as 4 credits or something like that. Media Productions was a class to teach the basics of 35mm photography and video productions. You worked with real cameras, in a real darkroom with a bunch of other “artsy” kids. You didn’t just read about something and take a test, you did it. But none of that is what made Media Productions special. What really sets Media apart is the man who teaches it, Jeff Bloomer. Jeff took Media Productions when he was in high school. He went on to become a photographer and animator, plus a shit ton of other things. The guy built all his own furniture even. He was probably the best teacher I have ever had.

 Now I know you’re wondering what this has to do with Kraftwerk, but I assure you I’m going somewhere. In the very beginning of the year, everyone was scared of Jeff. He was upfront if he didn’t like you photo. He wore black. He drank tea. It’s pretty intimidating at first. It was the music selection that really made us think something was weird about him. It was a constant mix of Tom Waits, The Postal Service, Throbbing Gristle and, you guessed it, Kraftwerk. No one in the class at the time had ever heard such strange music, except for The Postal Service, and at the very beginning of the year the question bursting from everyone’s young lungs was, “What the fuck are we listening to?”. As the year wore on however we started to learn the words. By then end of the year we were no longer scared of Jeff, in fact he was now far beyond a teacher to all of us. We spent the last couple months of the class laughing, making art and dancing to Kraftwerk.

 The album ‘Computer World’ became the class favorite pretty quick. All the songs are straight forward, electro-pop and very easy to dance around to. As the eighth studio album from Kraftwerk it holds a special reputation as one of their best. Released in 1981 as two separate versions, English and German with the English version edited without some lyrics. If you’ve never heard of Kraftwerk, this is the album to start on. Everything on it is simple, catchy and almost childlike. They even used a Texas Instruments Speak and Spell as the intro to ‘Home Computer’. I promise you’ll be dancing. Plus how could you not love lyrics like, 

“I am the operator of my pocket calculator,
I press a special key and it plays a little melody.”

 Regardless of how awesome the album is, I will associate it with Media and Jeff. Right now they are taking away Jeffs room at VoTech and forcing him to teach all digital photography. He won’t have a real darkroom anymore. It saddens me beyond your imagination to see this class disappear. Jeff taught me that being an artist is ok. I learned more useful things in that class then the rest of my academic career. Not to mention without Jeff I never would have discovered Kraftwerk and then where would my life be?

Song: ‘Numbers’