I had a great time this past Sunday with my two sons when we took a trip to Nashville to see Kraftwerk perform at the Ryman Auditorium. In the past few days I finished my last class for the MBA program I’m in, so it really felt great to get out of the house and take a road trip without any impending assignments looming overhead. The weather was great and the traffic on I-40 was not too bad for a weekend.
We arrived at a parking garage right next to the Ryman with almost two hours until showtime. We wasted a little too much time walking and backtracking around the immediate downtown area to find a suitable place to eat. Our plan had been to eat at one of the fast food places in the area, but apparently they all close on Sunday. Trekking around, the only places we found to eat were bars, but my youngest son is underage and we didn’t want such a loud eating atmosphere anyhow. We found a nice and extremely busy restaurant called Puckett’s Grocery & Restaurant, but the wait time was over an hour. I remembered that there was a place called Lulu’s Cafe in the same building as the Ryman, so we headed there since the clock was ticking. Not my top choice for eating, but it was good enough and cured our hunger before the show.
We got into the Ryman about fifteen minutes before the 7 P.M. showtime. It is a very nice and old-fashioned place and has been around for quite a while. If you’re interested, here is information about its history. I had a bit of déjà vu once we were inside. When I was a kid, probably around 7 years old, my parents brought me here when it was called the Grand Ole Opry. I have a vague memory of seeing Minnie Pearl, Grandpa Jones and David “Stringbean” Akeman at that show. There were others, possibly Porter Wagner.
The Ryman appears like it would be great for almost any concert with a medium size crowd, but apparently we had the worst possible seats in the house. When my youngest son told me about this concert and his interest in it, the only seats available were towards the back on the bottom level and also in the balcony. I assumed that the lower section, even towards the back, would be better than the balcony. This would have been the case for the country music shows that this auditorium was designed for, but not the case for modern shows with large visuals displayed behind the band. From our vantage point, the overhead balcony blocked a little more than the top half of the large screen behind the band that displayed interesting 3-D graphics during the entire show.
There were several video monitors around that showed the same graphics that were projected onto the main screen, but, relatively, these were very small and not in 3-D. Because all four members of the band play synthesizers and do not move around at all, the 3-D is a significant attraction of the show. What I did see of the 3-D was excellent.
The concert itself was super. Kraftwerk spent over 2 hours playing all of their most popular tunes. A popular attraction at Kraftwerk’s shows is a performance of “The Robots”, a tune from 1978, where the band is replaced by animated mannequins while the song is played (here’s a link that someone recorded from the same show). The bulk of Kraftwerk’s catalog is from the ’70s and early ’80s, with only one album released since 1986, in 2003. They were pioneers in the electronic music genre and their older music still appeals to a very large number of electronic music enthusiasts, including myself and my kids. As I was growing up I was not exposed to any of their music. At some point I had seen their name and knew that they were an electronic band, but did not really hear and start enjoying their music until around the late 1990s (thanks to the interwebs).
Missing a little over half of the 3-D screen gives a slight feeling of missing part of the show, but that was more than made up for because of the overall fun that the three of us had on the trip. It was a really good interruption from school for all three of us. Unfortunately, both of them had to be back at school the next morning, so we headed back home after the show and taking a few pictures in the surrounding area. Traffic on I-40 was very sparse this time of night and we had a few laughs on the way back.
I would definitely do it again. If another opportunity arises to see Kraftwerk again, I would take it, and I think I would even enjoy seeing other concerts at the Ryman. Just not from the same seats as before.