Tag: dance

  • Pearl Jam – Alive

    In this week’s Origin of Samples-post a classic case of who’s stealing from who. In 1991 a relatively unknown Seattle band Pearl Jam released an album entitled ‘Ten‘. One track from that album would go on to be one of the anthems of its generation at the explosion of the grunge hype: ‘Alive‘.

    Only a year later, on a proverbial attic, some guys got together and made hardcore gabber under the name Neophyte. Eventually a rock guitarist named Jarno Butter (whom I’ve shared some classes with in highschool, but that is a different story) joined their ranks to play with them during live sets. They released many tracks that gained international fame in an underground scene. One of the tracks, released in 1996 under their happy hardcore artist name Bodylotion, was entitled Always Harcore. Although in entirely different genre and not directly sampled from the original, it’s clear the vocal melody from Always Harcore comes directly from Alive.

    It’s not uncommon in the hardcore gabber scene to use tons of samples from other music and film quotes (especially if they contain the word ‘fuck’). What isn’t very common however to sample from their own ranks. And that’s basically what German Europop-band Scooter did in 2004 when they ripped the chorus from Always Hardcore and crammed it into their own hit single One (Always Hardcore). Even though pretty much every Scooter song is based on another song, you can still wonder if they knew the original original.

    To what extent Neophyte stole/were inspired by Pearl Jam and Scooter stole/were inspired by Neophyte or Pearl Jam, I leave you to judge. Here’s the original Alive:

  • Even the Zombie Dance Parade is dead

    Even the Dance Parade 360 has been killed off now. A press release was issued stating that the due to disappointing pre-sales the event was cancelled. In other press releases it was made clear that the event will no longer be held in Rotterdam. Though it’s not clear whether they mean “ever at all”, it also implies they’re thinking of organising it elsewhere. The question is: who will have them? Then again, the North Sea Jazz festival was once persuaded to leave The Hague and come to Rotterdam, so who knows.

    Still, my previous statement still stands: there’s no use keeping it on life support. The Dance Parade is dead.

  • the Zombie Dance Parade

    In my personal blog I already noted the demise of the FFWD Dance Parade in Rotterdam. The annual clone of the Love Parade in Berlin was Rotterdam’s annual party in the city centre, until the city government decided it was a security risk and could no longer take place in this form.

    The organisers now whipped together The Dance Parade 360, what seems to be on paper a pathetic display. Instead of trucks driving through the city centre, the Zuiderpark in the South of the city will be fenced off, tickets will be sold (only pre-sale) and the trucks will basically drive around in circles in the park with ‘crowds’ behind them, from what I can tell from the website.

    Most noteworthy to mention is that the most popular truck, the B2S, will not be present, nor will any form of harcore dance music. I can see why, since they don’t want any hooligan incidents, but effectively with the already poor location and strategy, it will make the FFWD just another small dance festival, hardly worth mentioning. It would be best for the organisation to call it quits for 2011, because this will be a pathetic charade. There’s no use keeping it on life support.