PUB.lication 03 by PUB Lication

music for the past, present and Future

EDITORIAL: I’ve been excited about this issue right from the start, when PUB.lication was just a mere twinkle in the metaphorical milkman’s eye. We’re not your average fanzine, but if any of our issues fall into that category, it’s this one. Having grown up in Germany, the epicentre of the Eurodance scene, my 11-year-old self listened to those Haddaway, Ace of Base, 2 Unlimited and Cappella cassettes until my chunky, black Sony Walkman ate them alive. I devoured Bravo or Popcorn, and sometimes Pop Rocky [a substandard, teenie-bopper music mag in comparison, especially to Bravo]. I owe almost all my sex education [but not quite, as you will see] to Bravo’s Dr Sommer Team and those self-taken naked pics of random teenagers who we all pretended not to read. Sadly that era of my life was quickly relegated to a dusty, forgotten shelf in favour of cooler, teenage pastimes. But two summers ago, this issue’s guest editor, Maria [Dutch and living in Switzerland and then Germany when Eurodance hit, so no chance of escape] and I discovered some old compilations from around ‘94-95 that unleashed a tidal wave of nostalgia and new-found love. Finally letting our previously stunted passion free, we’ve pulled out all the stops with not only our first fashion shoot but also an amazing playlist and a selection of classic albums. And just to be clear: Eurotrash is a dirty word in PUB’s vocabulary.

Editor in Chief: Guest Editor: Art Director: Web Editor:

Francesca Ronai Maria Schönfeld Farouk Agoro Raymond Okoi-Obuli Tunde Olurin Contributors: Akinola Davies Jr Tom Donohue Photography: Aurore Carincotte Illustrators: Malak Mebkhout Laure Salgon Contact: editor@pub-lication.com www.myspace.com/pub_lication www.pub-lication.com

100% Dance Now Superhits Megamix 4 the ultimate eurodance playlist

The Pop Curriculum

Euro to the Core

what i learnt about sex from eurodance the best of eurodance fashion

This Page Belongs To...

tom on scooterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cool factor

Recorded Music

Ego

eurodance albums 2 unlimited/whigfield/dr alban/haddaway/snap!

crack stevens on ace of base

Compilations

define all sub-genres of dance music and Eurodance is no exception. So to kick off this issue, we’ve made our official PUBapproved playlist. A round-up of all the individual songs that haven’t been included in the following features or album reviews. Giving birth will probably prove less agonising than this has been. Check it out on: www.youtube.com/PUBlicationTheZine.

DJ Bobo – There Is A Party What better way to kick off the list. “This is a party song that makes the party going on” and it’s safe to say that this applies to all the following tunes.

Technotronic – Pump Up The Jam The daddy who spawned the whole scene with this classic. Thank you Belgium.

Scatman John - Scatman Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, whatever! This is the true master of scat.

2 Brothers On The 4th Floor – Never Alone Play this to anyone from Holland [or maybe just Maria] and see the true meaning of patriotism. The best anti-racism song since Ebony and Ivory. Fact.

Sir Prize – Declaration (Dipdipda!) My first CD single. Go to iTunes now. It’s the best 79p you’ll ever spend.

T-Spoon - Where R U Now? Probably better known for Sex On The Beach but this is far superior.

Magic Affair – Omen III An interracial rapper/singer Eurodance duo no way!

Corona – Rhythm Of The Night This, and impressive head of extra-long braids and her other big hit Baby, Baby makes Corona the official Italo-eurodance queen.

Maxx – No More (I Can’t Stand It) Super techno and white boys rapping in Jamaican patois. Oh yeah.

Slam - U Got 2 Know Eurodance had txt speak long before mobile phones were in every tween’s school satchel. [Dear readers, you are so lucky that this made the list. I’ve been humming this tune to every passing Eurokid, most of them could join in the catchy chorus but no one knew who it was by. But fate + YouTube = best song on list.]

The Bucketheads – The Bomb! These sounds fall into (and blow) my mi-ei-e-ind.

Urban Cookie Collective – The Key, The Secret Seriously ‘big in Germany’, this UK act jumped headfirst into the Euro-throng.

Rednex – Cotton Eyed Joe Take a short raving break and get to squaredancing. If you don’t know this, you are living in a black hole.

Bobby Brown – Two Can Play That Game

An undisputed anthem that happily crosses over many a genre.

What is Bobby “Crack is Wack” Brown doing on a Eurodance playlist? Well have you heard this lately? If he wasn’t trying to get a slice of the Euro-pie, how else do you explain it?

Culture Beat – Mr Vain

Reel 2 Reel - I Like To Move It

Robin S. – Show Me Love

There would’ve been a riot if this song hadn’t made it on here. Germany: douze points.

Produced by the now legendary Erick Morillo, Eurodancers ate this song for breakfast.

Black Box – Everybody, Everybody We’re going against the grain by choosing this over Ride On Time but we’re so busy jamming out to this one that we don’t care.

La Bouche – Be My Lover Like Culture Beat’s Mr Vain, we could be lynched if we left out this tune.

Dr Alban - Let The Beat Go On You are much mistaken if you thought the Doctor would rest on his Sing Hallelujah laurels.

Adeva – Warning PUB has so much love for this woman that even though she barely makes the genre, we had to include her.

2 Unlimited – Do What’s Good For Me These lovelies could’ve ruled this playlist but we had to be selective. Give it on, Give it in, If this doesn’t make you want to blow into your Give it out! rave whistle of appreciation, then nothing will.

Souladelic - I Want Your Body

Cappella - Move It Up

Captain Hollywood Project – More and More

Real McCoy – Another Night

Fun Factory - I Wanna Be With You

Captain H makes the list purely for rocking Why did I ever let this cassette out of my sight? the black man mullet way before Kanye West This take on the classic rapper/singer format made it ‘fashion’. proves why Italians Do It Better. Sshhh I have a confession to make: I hate this Any band that features a German rapper called song but the German in me can’t do without it. Olaf is genius. More genius than E=mc². You Masterboy - Feel The Heat Of The Night know it and I know it. If you haven’t already turned into a HI-NRGiser RMB – Experience bunny at this point in the list, you will now. Let’s turn those BPMs up for a minute. Another single that I proudly owned on CD and another Ice MC ft. Alexia - It’s A Rainy Day Ian Campbell aka ICE MC aka the Dreadatour. point for Germany. How do you go from Nottingham to an Italian Livin’ Joy – Dreamer superstar Eurodance rapper? There’s a large possibility that you don’t have any ears if you can listen to this song without 2 Raff - Don’t Stop The Music Apart from one, all the comments for this video dancing. on YouTube are in every European language Technohead – I Wanna Be A Hippy apart from English. That’s like an official stamp In ‘95, England said suck on this Holland and slam dunked some Gabber-pop on their asses. of approval. The video for this should be in everyone’s You- Twenty 4 Seven - I Can’t Stand It This is a Dutch hip-house corker but it was all Tube favourites. The Nightcrawlers – Push The Feeling On downhill from here on. Never ones to be left behind, Scotland also wanted in. Nightcrawlers must have set the standard so high that they scared all the other possible Scottish Eurodance acts off.

Crystal Waters – Making Happy

Congratulations: the end of the list. Moan about this not being Gypsy Woman and I’ll make you listen to Technohead on double the speed. FR

what I learnt about sex from listening to eurodance

Safe sex, promiscuity, inadequate manhood,

booty calls, the importance of foreplay; this is just a shortlist of the numerous sex-related topics that Eurodance gleefully covered in their inimitable hi-NRG style. Perhaps I could look back on my childhood musical preferences like an indignant parent trying to protect my own innocent 11-year-old ears but maybe I’m all the better for it. It’s not like I wasn’t already pouring over the sex-ed pages of Bravo, Germany’s Smash Hits equivalent. Their Dr Sommer Team [or Dr Summer Team, if you will] never shied away from ‘risqué’ subjects like the onslaught of puberty, masturbation or ‘heavy petting’ [browsing through their current website, I’m pleased to see that’s still a term they’re happily appropriating]. I remember one of my first, pre-pubescent boyfriends buying me the The Outhere Brothers’

Boom Boom Boom single as a birthday present. For those of you unfamiliar with this euroapproved American rap duo’s lyrics, I quote: ‘Girl your booty is so round, I just wanna lay you down, Let me take you from behind, I won’t cum until it’s time, But if I cannot sleep with you, Maybe I could have a taste, Put your niney on my tongue, And your booty on my face’. Unless you’ve just turned the page in horror and disgust, I know what you’re thinking: ‘You were young, you probably had no idea what they were talking about’. Actually, I distinctly remember laughing about it with my sister because (a) my sweet male love interest probably had no clue that he had just given me the most overtly suggestive song in the charts and (b) all this sexy talk was pretty far-fetched considering we never even kissed. Around this time, another one of my fave tunes

feature: the pop curriculum came courtesy of 20 Fingers ft Gillette. A regular on our monthly school disco playlist, my girlfriends and I strutted around the dancefloor to Short Dick Man waving our diminutive thumb/ pointing finger combination, copied directly from the single’s cover art in the faces of our unsuspecting male peers. It didn’t matter that the radio-friendly version promoted [or demoted] the Short Short Man, our unison shouts of ‘dick’ drowned out any PG-rated attempts at disguise. As another US act that Eurodance lovingly embraced, 20 Fingers enlisted a series of singers to front their dirty house pop. Gillette was followed by Roula, who with Lick It, was on a female-entitlement mission with the gloriously

So to paraphrase: we were young and we were free, but we were also extremely underage to be engaging in any of Sebastian’s free-for-all love-in. Plus it was hard to take him seriously, with his comical, heavy German accent and statements such as: ‘I like your body, not so much I like your mind’. Does he like my body but not my mind? Or is it the other way round? I’m so confused. But really this brings us to the MacDaddy of Eurodance sex-ed: E-Rotic. By the time they blew up, I was slowly losing faith in the Eurodance movement but these guys were unavoidable. They took what Roula started and ran a whole marathon with it, pushing the limits of sordid nursery rhymes to extremes. Fritz Love My Titz, Fred Come to Bed, ‘Oh Willy use a billy, don’t be silly’ from the condom-branded song Willy Use A Billy…Boy that even went as far as ‘scilly willy, a billy for your thrilly toy’. And no ‘scilly’, is not a spelling mistake. But my all time favourite has to be Max Don’t

catchy slogan: ‘You’ve got to lick it before we kick it’. Now I’ll be honest with you, at the time, unless it was as obvious as ‘niney on my tongue’, sexual innuendo regarding ‘getting head’ went straight over my clueless cranium, even with poetic lyrics like ‘give my cat a kiss and make it purr so we can do this right’ and the subtle ‘meow’ that followed it. But its nursery rhyming skills surely stuck with me until the light bulb of naivety went out, and the new, sexually on-theball one went on. At this time, a new gender-bending act was on the scene and for once a fully-fledged European one. Germany’s Sin With Sebastian didn’t subscribe to innuendo; donning a pair of angel wings, multi-coloured hair and severe amounts of guy-liner his demands were simple and upfront: Shut Up and Sleep With Me.

Have Sex With Your Ex because [can you guess?] ‘it will make your life complex’. Now if that isn’t the best piece of relationship advice ever, then tell me what is? In fact, I’ve just seen my neighbour leave the house with his exboyfriend. The last time they were together, the police had to be called to break up the fight. He obviously hasn’t listened to E-Rotic enough. And there you have it. Not even Dr Alban could resist adding his own two-penny’s worth with Roll Down Di Rubber Man [Roll it down, safe sex = safe life]. But whether it was AIDs-aware or overt eroti-pop, the Eurodance invasion into my tween music collection all seems quite sensible in comparison to its UK counterpart The Shamen and their secret, drug-touting messages disguised as Ebeneezer Goode . But considering how baffled I was by Roula, I probably wouldn’t have clocked those either. FR

photography: aurore carincotte / hair & make-up: charlotte fujimura

word has endured in the ever-shifting panoply of youth slang like the word ‘cool’. It has seen off challenges over the years from such vernacular titans as ‘rad’, ‘wicked’, ‘brill’ and ‘sweet’ to name but a few. Perhaps the word ‘cool’ is itself actually cool and no other word will ever be able to knock it of its shiny self-perpetuating pedestal. What exactly cool describes is eternally difficult to pin down: it is an evasive quality which can change in a split second and always remains tantalisingly out of reach. Puffy lace ruffs were cool in the 17th century, certainly aren’t cool now but could be cool again in a year; you and I as mere mortals just don’t know. What is infinitely easier to define however is what is ‘not cool’, in a sort of ‘Dude you took a dump on my lawn last night…that was not cool’ kind of way. This rambling diversion brings me to Scooter. Last time I tried to put Scooter on at a house party I was told in no uncertain terms that it was not cool. ‘But what about how they changed the face of dance music in the 90s?’ I asked. Receiving no reply, I pushed harder ‘What about how Scooter put techno music on the mainstream map?’ ‘Who are you and who invited you to this party?’ was the response. At this point I

realised the jig was up, so I raided some beers from the fridge and made good my escape, but not before vowing to improve Scooter’s image amongst England’s young folk. So here goes: Overcoming the potentially debilitating problems of having a lead singer with a face only a German mother could love and lyrics that appear to have been written by a Bavarian baby using an internet translator, Scooter have defied the odds to achieve worldwide success. Their tale of world domination began in ‘94 when techno was the past-time of only a few male social outcasts in ankle-length leather jackets. Taking the cheesy euphoric Eurodance scene head on, they have become the undeniable kings of hard-dance, remixing and shouting their way to 20 Top Ten hits. What Scooter has done perhaps most effectively is stay fresh. They managed to move chameleon-like through the endless sub-genres of dance music, from happy-hardcore, to techno to jumpstyle to an unexpected remix with Status Quo [what?]. We can only guess how Scooter will delight us next. I recommend that you peroxide your hair, put on a t-shirt with an LCD light display and listen to their entire back catalogue in one sitting. Then and only then can you tell me Scooter are not cool. TD

this month’s eurodance album of choice: No Limits [1993]

Possibly because through them the producers in

the driving seat were fulfilling their stud-encrusted pleather fantasies but there was a bottomless pit full of female singer/black rapper duos in the heydays of Eurodance. It was the quintessential act: Cappella, La Bouche, Culture Beat, TSpoon, Magic Affair, E-Rotic, Twenty 4 Seven, Pharao…this might be the longest list in the history of lists. But no one rocked this format better than Ray and Anita of 2 Unlimited. Never pandering to

the summer hits crowd with reggae-tinged jingle pop and a few easy-to-follow dance moves; they were technoheads right down the line. With Belgium producers John Paul De Coster and Phil Wilde behind them, this Dutch twosome and their ridiculous good looks presented rave as drug-free and child-friendly to the readers of Smash Hits and their European equivalents. And like the Never Mind the Bollocks of the punk generation, 2 Unlimited’s second release

“Techno-making, no mistaking, never fakin’, always breaking it down, UH to a party” - Ray Slijngaard (Let My Beat Control Your Body) No Limits! is undoubtedly one of the definitive albums of it’s era. Kicking off with the hits [no no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there’s] No Limit and Tribal Dance you might think they’d powered out. And certainly whoever owned the cassette version of the album I managed to get my hands on seemed to think so, as those first tracks are distinctly woozy from stretched tape and repeated play. But once Mysterious hits, Ray announces ‘it’s time to make the floor burn’ and so they light their BPMs on fire and throw them into the masses like a Hi-NRG Molotov cocktail. You are not allowed to take a break, and god forbid, you sit down. The harder the beats the more soothing Anita’s voice is and once you throw in Ray’s oft-banal but brilliant rapping, it’s pure Eurodance genius. Faces, The Power Age, Throw the Groove Down, R.U.OK. all putting in a combined effort to work your heart rate into a frenzy. But once Let The Beat Control Your Body drops, pushing out those last droplets technojuice, you know you’re over the hump and Invite Me To Trance can lull you back down. Happy days. FR

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recorded music: eurodance albums

Whigfield [1995] To many people Whigfield’s Saturday Night is the quintessential anthem of the early 90s [the Macarena wasn’t around until a year later so Whigfield takes the crown]. Listening to her self-titled album, released in ‘95, it would seem that it could also take the crown for embodying everything that the 90’s Euro-pop music scene was about. Every style of song is represented in this comprehensive album that graced the bedroom of so many an awkward, velvet choker-wearing teenage girl. Saturday Night, Sexy Eyes and Think of You are all distinctively Whigfield-esque [they are also her biggest hits] but when you have a listen through the rest of the songs, it’s like a smörgåsbord of Euro-pop magic. The ‘I-was-waiting-for-the-Gregorian-chanting’ ballad Don’t Walk Away takes a leaf right out of Enigma’s Return to Innocence, Big Time falls straight onto the faux-synth reggae pile alongside Mr President’s Coco Jambo, Out of Sight is a masterful 20 Fingers/Livin’ Joy mash-up and I Want to Love is a straight up Eurodance classic. So if you’re asking whether Whigfield is a good album, you’re basically asking if European pop music in the 90s was good. To which I say: it is freaking great. MS

The Album [1993] Being Dutch myself, I had nothing but high hopes for Haddaway when I was asked to review his album. Whilst What is Love and Life never fail to make me feel like donning some kind of lycra get-up and raving with the best of them, I am sorry to say that the rest of the album left me feeling sad that the 90s were ‘my decade’. Haddaway did one thing right in the 90s: pumping house tunes. So why did some over excitable producer in a backwards Kangol hat decide that abysmal tracks such as I Miss You and Mama’s House should make the cut? Thankfully the house tunes still outnumber the weird ballads, Come Back and Rock My Heart just about bridge the gaps that the other songs leave. Haddaway The Album may not have been the strongest of offering to come out of the 90s but I think a nice guy with a nice message. And besides, my Wikipedia sources tell me that he studied ‘North American History from the First Mongolian Immigrants to Amerigo Vespucci in the Fifteenth Century’ at George Washington University in Washington DC so had all else failed, he at least had an education to fall back on. And by the way, he’s only half Dutch. MS

One Love [1992] Dr Alban is the king of the scene, the numero uno Eurodance rapper. So much so that he didn’t even need the obligatory female sidekick. He just marched out in his leather waistcoat and those signature dreads sprouting from his head like the plumage of a pineapple and told everyone It’s My Life. And like a true Naija man [Sweden can claim as much they like but Nigeria is well and truly in the house] he told everyone to ‘Stop bugging me, stop bothering me, stop forcing me, stop fighting me, stop yelling me’. On his debut he said Hello Afrika but by the time One Love kicked in, Europe was all ears. After the waistcoat, there was an awesome selection of pvc all-in-ones most notably in electric blue. He was ‘jammin’ on the party station’ with Sing Hallelujah and seventeen years later we’ve still got it on heavy rotation. So is Cash Money with its gritty beats and wailing synth. A side salad of music history goes with our dancefloor main on Reggae Gone Ragga and keeping it down with the motherland, tracks like Mata Oh Aeh and Omwerembwelke meld 90s club beats with Igbo rhymes and African rhythms. One love, one blue jumpsuit and one Euro-classic. FR

The Madman’s Return [1992] Sweet Germany: the reigning champions in the sheer amount of acts they churned out during this era, with ‘quality over quantity’ not necessarily being a slogan they aspired to. But there is no doubting the credentials of Snap!: essentially the brainchild of two German producers who went by the aliases Benito Benites and John Virgo Garrett III [their real names might’ve had a few more umlauts than the international scene could handle]. Madman’s Return followed their debut, World Power that had already hit home with the single, The Power. Fronted by American ex-pats, rapper Turbo D and a series of interchanging female singers, they veered more towards vocal house similar in style to Baltimore’s Basement Boys’ productions. Don’t Be Shy and Colour of Love are the perfect example of this, with laidback jazzy beats and soulful voices complementing Turbo’s steady club rap. With Money, they laced these over something a little bit more electronic [Germany’s forte]. Exterminate kept it funky whilst stepping up the techno vibes but the track that really cemented them in the encyclopaedia of Eurodance has to be Rhythm is a Dancer, an undeniable anthem. FR

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ego: gurngurngurn.com’s crack stevens opens his sordid ears to ace of base

Where to begin talking about the Ace of Base

Happy Nation album? As a gangster rap enthusiast I often pretend to have no idea what Eurodance is but slap on some Scatman John or Ace of Base and I’m caught with my pants down like an infant on a magical potty throne. Many of the things I love about the Base can be found within the deep lyrics of their 1993 smash hit All That She Wants, the platinum amassing single. A lonely girl who wants another baby: therein lies the clue! Obviously not frigid, meaning a good night will ensue, just simply explain to her you’re not into mass-producing infants from the get-go and hopefully she’ll understand. Right? Ace of Base manages to manipulate a broad range of sounds into many a catchy Eurodance tune. There’s the hard-hitting, electro-esque Voulez Vous Dancer, the more menacing dancehall vibes of All That.., shit there’s even a banghra version of that! Fuck me if there was anything these Swedish appropriators wouldn’t experiment with. I bet Lykke Li is a big fan; I say that because my ignorant ass knows of no other Swedish acts that could stimulate ‘boner’! AoB play seductive, just take a brief gander at their song titles: Waiting for Magic: enough said about that one. Dimensions of Depth: that’s just pure filth. Fashion Party: we all know what happens at those and Young and Proud: that one is not so dirty but when I was younger there was a lot of masturbation which I’m proud of.

If you’ve read my previous [and future] reviews, you’ll know I like sexy music and that’s exactly what AoB represented in their era. And because they’re old now, less attractive and have enough money that they don’t need any of mine, I’m currently freeloading their album. Not many Eurodance pioneers made it through the 90s, it’s not as if their species became extinct, it’s just that gangster rap went mainstream and all those Euro-kids [and much of all kids] wanted to be hardcore. And not in a techno way. CS

Malakoptigato : malakoala@hotmail.com / Lauresalgosse : laure.salgon@gmail.com

2 Cool 4

C'est Bombastick

anna weeks: www.myspace.com/anna_traume

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