The female duo Ditty Bops currently making their way cross-country by bicycle isn't the first band smitten by the bicycling bug.
However, their love of the bicycle caused German band Kraftwerk to whither creatively for 17 year before reuniting a couple of years ago to create Tour de France Soundtracks, which can be heard at the Kraftwerk website.
According to the Independent Online, Kraftwerk has always found inspiration in wheeling around; their first album themes focused on the Autobahn and the German railway system.
Then two group members — Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider — took up cycling in the early '80s. They stowed their bikes on the band bus and rode stages of the Tour de France, producing an album about the event. Why did this very modern band that pioneered electronic music like bicycles? It's the similarity between music and cycling, Hutter is quoted in Independent Online:
“… speed, balance, a certain freedom of spirit, keeping in shape, technological and technical perfection, aerodynamics”.
While Hutter obsessed about his bikes, other band members got bored with his devotion to cycling and two left the band. The group stagnated until the 100th anniversary of the Tour de France rolled around in 2003.
To celebrate, Kraftwerk went to work on the Tour de France Soundtracks. It blends electronic music with “sound effects including a French-accented vocoder, whirring chains, beating hearts and panting.” In live concerts, the band performs the songs from 4 laptop computers, says the Wikipedia.
Instead of cycling driving the band members apart, the Ditty Bops love of cycling has put them together on the road.
And the Ditty Bops perform their songs on mandolin, dulcimer and guitar, not laptop computers. Amanda Barrett, above left, and Abby DeWald, at right, left Los Angeles for New York in May, stopping along the way for concert dates to promote their new CD, Moon Over the Freeway. (Reviewed in Stylus.)
Their Ditty Bops Bike Tour blog puts Barrett and DeWald in Utah where they've been logging miles and counting roadkill (270 on Monday). They've played several concerts on the tour, and serenaded some locals from the front porch of a country store that allowed them to camp out back.
Other differences in the two bike-loving bands:
Ditty Bops — Two women. Kraftwerk — Four guys.
Ditty Bops — Where bicycling togs, bikinis and lingerie in shows. Kraftwerk — Jumpsuits with day-glo graph lines.
Ditty Bops — LA. Kraftwerk — Kling Klang studio in Düsseldorf
More about the Ditty Bops tour here. Also check out the Ditty Bops website here. Also check out Kraftwerk here.
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