In the world of contemporary rock and dance music, everything old ultimately becomes new again. The plucky three-chord anthems of Green Day are fresh for youngsters exploring safety pins and green hair as fashion statements for the first time, but for many over the age of 30, they are all too familiar.
The musicians of the German progressive rock movement never made the cover of Rolling Stone, but their influence is just as formidable as punk -- if not more. Behind Juan Atkins' intelligent techno, Radiohead's twisted pop hooks and Wu Tang Clan's hip-hop collages lurks the rock experiments of groups like Faust, Neu, Can, Amon Duul, Popol Vuh and Kraftwerk.
Even records regarded as seminal in their own right owe a debt to German progressive rock. David Bowie had almost certainly been under the influence of Neu and Faust when he wrote the languorous pop songs that became his Berlin trilogy of albums ("Low," "Lodger" and "Heroes"). Listening to the jumble of tribal electronica on Brian Eno and David Byrne's "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts," from 1982, is like hearing Can's ethnographic music experiments anew. And Afrika Bambaataa's sampling of Kraftwerk's 1977 hit "Trans-Europe Express" on the crucial early dance track "Planet Rock" immortalized the band as club music godfathers.