News, info and works of Greek-American artist, Ithaka (Ithaka Darin Pappas); visual artist, music-maker, writer, photog, citizen biologist & saltwater nomad (surfer). Lives between LA, CDMX and AkahtiLândia, Brasil. Ithaka official instagram: @_ithaka_
Eazy E, N.W.A and Ithaka Darin Pappas's Iconic Imagery
Damien Fahrenfort
We all have a friend like Ithaka Papas;
he’s the one everyone's jealous of. The guy who picks up sports quicker
than anyone. That friend who hears a tune once and can play it on any
instrument and he also happens to tell the best stories all-the-while
completely nonchalant about the said above. He's that guy that you want
to hate on but you just can't. When I first met Ithaka six years back,
he came over to my pad with a little point and shoot camera. He snapped a
few pics while we were hanging out. I didn’t think anything of it. We
later went surfing and I was blown away by his ability in the surf. I
got to know him, and he was an unraveling onion. Each layer was a wild
adventure; his life was coated with wonder. And, it wasn’t until the
feature film Straight Out Of Compton landed in theaters that I
learned Ithaka had spent two years with N.W.A. He had shot their album
covers, editorial and more. Fascinated by our cover photo of Eazy-E in
Venice I grabbed him for the real story and the back story on a few of
his other favorite pics. All photos courtesy of Ithaka Darin Papas/Tack Artist Group GA: Tell us about the cover photo and how you got to that point with N.W.A? Ithaka: At the time I was working for
Priority Records. I was their main freelance photographer during this
period and I had photographed N.W.A. probably more than any other
photographer. This particular day was a shoot for MTV and they were
doing a little culture clash unite between this pop group Kris Kross and
N.W.A. Kris Kross came down and we all met in Venice. Fab 5 Freddy did
the interview, an old-school artist and hip-hopper from New York. After
the Kris Kross bailed we all walked down to the skate area down there on
the beach at Venice. Eazy grabbed some kid's skateboard and took off.
I'd already been working with this crew for probably almost two years
and I'd never even heard the word skate board came out of anybody's
mouth, or surfing, or anything like that. It was a shock to me, and he'd
obviously spent some time on a skateboard because he knew what he was
doing. GA: He could skate? Ithaka: Yes. He was confident on it.
One thing we've learned from this photo is Eazy is a goofyfooter. (Ed’s
note: Goofyfoot is the type of stance a surfer or skater is defined by) GA: Back then Venice was still pretty hardcore, we’re people excited to see Eazy, or was he getting a few scary looks? Ithaka: No, they were super excited to
see him. But during that period there were a lot of gang conflicts here.
A lot of these shoots that I did with N.W.A., we'd go to a place and
there'd be a mixed reaction. I don't think anybody specifically from the
band has ever been an affiliated gangster, but friends of theirs are
and that ends up being a co-affiliation. Sometimes they'd go to these
shoots and there would be some vibe from whoever. But generally speaking
it was just excitement, it was a big deal, Eazy-E was down on the
beach, he was signing autographs non-stop, and girls were screaming,
they were big stars. GA: Anything else exciting happen that day? Ithaka: Not really, that was it. We
just went down there and everyone went their separate ways. I did
another little shoot with Dre and DSC after this. These were good shoots
because they were very informal so you could get good material and
everybody in their element, that was my specialty, going where they were
shooting a video, then doing a portrait session on the side, that kind
of thing. It's hard to get everybody together in the same space, like,
"Okay, we're going to have a photoshoot out of the studio." It's hard to
get them together and focused for more than a couple minutes at a time.
GA: You also shot Eazy E's famous pool party from the movie Straight Outta Compton?
Ithaka: I did
not shoot the pool party but I went to the pool party. Way better to
participate in that one than photograph it [laughs]. That was pretty
nuts, it was at some ranch up in Malibu. No holds barred, they put on a
serious party. You know, the great thing about "Straight Outta Compton",
you know I'm sure you know people that were even more involved than me
might see subtle details that weren't accurate from my perspective, it
was exactly the way I remember working with them, the portrays of them.
GA: Let's go through some other photos. Tell me about this one of Eazy on the train tracks. Ithaka: This was on the east side of
downtown LA. Once again, it was myself doing promotional portrait stills
on the side of a video shoot, and in this case, this was the video for
“100 miles and running”. This was when Ice Cube already left the band.
This was the second N.W.A. album. So, this was towards the end of the
project because Ice Cube had already left the band a few months before,
so it just totally changed the direction of the project.
GA: What a bummer. This one of him here is my favorite of the four. He looks so young.
Ithaka: So, this was, I think it was
November 1988. This was the first time I had ever met any of these guys.
This was the record cover shoot for “We want Eazy” the single, which
just had the song “Radio” on it. So, this shoot was mostly about Eazy.
Everybody was there though, so also there's some shots of N.W.A from the
day. This is at my apartment on Orange Street near Wilshire and San
Vicente. So, this one it was a little bit more produced. I think I got
500 dollars for this shoot and I’m sure I spent more than 600 dollars
shooting it. But I didn't care I was so excited to shoot them.
(Continued below) Ithaka: I was a fan of these guys as
well. I was a daily listener to K.D.A.Y. I knew the music very well
before I ever even worked with N.W.A. or Eazy. So, it was like I knew
what I was getting into and I wanted to do a good shoot, and one of the
shots from this shoot had all five members, they gathered without their
sunglasses, and the image is one of the images that has survived the
test of time. Because it’s really rare to see everybody without their
sunglasses in controlled lighting. GA: I remember you telling me a funny story about the catering for the shoot? Ithaka: Oh, yes. This was Clarity
Records and the only records they had really done before this was the
California Raisins. You know, the California Raisins? GA: Yeah I saw it in the movie. Ithaka: They went into hip-hop and they
were treading lightly. Unsure of how it was going to turn out they
didn’t want to spend too much money. So the catering for the shoot was
four bags of Doritos and a 24 pack of Old English 800. GA: It’s crazy how young they are here, man. They’re just kids. Eazy would have been what age? Ithaka: He might have been 20, so let
me think. Dre’s a year older than me, ’88, how old was I? So, I was 22,
Dre was 23, Cube is like 20-21. GA: Insane. Fuck, that's such a good photo. Ithaka: Fun shit though, huh?
GA: Yes, it’s such cool shit, man. Okay last one, what about this one below.
Ithaka: Yes, this was down at MacArthur
Park. This was another segment for MTV. This was the record cover shoot
for the single "12-inch", extended version of “Express yourself”. Which
also had "A bitch is a bitch" on it. This was the cover of that. At the
time MacArthur Park used to be a pretty rough neighborhood. I think
they'd just drained the lake right before this. They found 700 guns in
the lake, 3,000 knives, couple dead bodies. I don’t know what it’s like
now down there now but I imagine a lot nicer.
In early, 2017, Los Angeles-based independent music label, Sweatlodge Records will release the seventh album by the Californian songwriter, Ithaka, entitled, So Get Up & The Lost Acapellas. The record will include thirteen of Ithaka's vocalized poems (without music), many of which were written during 1992 and 1993, two of the six years that the artist lived in Lisbon. Also, as a bonus track, the original 1993 demo-version of So Get Up will appear.
There in Portugal, Ithaka was regularly recited his texts and rhymes for the daily radio program, Quatro Bairro on the national station, Rádio Comerical. Ten of the poems offered on the Lost Acapellas release were written and recorded specifically for the radio program and later (in mid-1993) were rerecorded as voice-over and musical demos on a visit to England. These recordings, were missing for 23 years until recently being discovered in a Los Angeles storage unit on a antiquated cassette tape.
Among these early acapella poems is So Get Up, most recently re-popularized by Armin Van Buuren and Cosmic Gate, which today (twenty-four years and more than a thousand releases and adaptions later) is considered The Most Remixed Vocal Acapella In Musical History (by Guinness World Records - 2016, 2017).
Ithaka first wrote So Get Up in a small cafe in Amoeira near Rádio Comerical about an hour before going on air with it for his slot on Quatro Bairro, unfortunately this very first recording has never been recovered. He did however, as mentioned, record it a second time in the U.K - to present to radio producers and possibly record companies.
There working at Rádio Comerical, Ithaka met DJ Vibe (Portugal's most prominent DJ), who played an hour of progressive house music immediately following Ithaka's segments. There Vibe usually heard the end of Ithaka's vocal sequences and was intrigued by the poems. Some months later, he invited him to participate as a guest vocalist on the first release by Underground Sound Of Lisbon (a progressive house duo consisting of Vibe and Rui Da Silva) for Kaos Records.
They recorded Ithaka's vocal in the early hours of a rainy winter night at the garage studio, 1 Só Céu, owned by the Portuguese rock band called, Os Delfins.
Ithaka was told by Kaos (a micro label at the time) that they would make 200 white-labels vinyls for distribution within Portugal only. They paid him $70 dollars for his participation, with a verbal promise to discuss any future distributions and manufacturing that would possibly follow. And weeks later, from just that single white-label distribution, the song exploded into an almost instantaneous national dance floor classic.
Although open-minded musically, Ithaka was more associated with hip hop, surfing and contemporary art more than dance music and only infrequently appeared at the clubs his apocalyptic poem had literally become an anthem for an entire generation of club goers, inspiring even people who never liked dance music to get involved.
Ironically, Kaos Records and Underground Sound Of Lisbon themselves never made a point of explaining who the mystery prophet was and nobody seemed to ask, the press included - even though Ithaka was indeed the actual performer and owned 50% of the publishing.
"I remember specifically on a couple of occasions trying to get into Lisbon-area night clubs, which was always a chore because of the wait to get in, and there in line, two different times during height of the song's first wave of popularity, I could hear So Get Up playing on the dance floor...The first was at Frágil in Bairro Alto - and I said to the snob at the door, hey man, that's me, my voice...let me in. And the doorman said, if that was you...I would know who you are AND I DON'T! - And the other time, a few months later, was at ALCÂNTARA, when I again declared that that was my voice with hundreds of people shouting the lyrics on top of it muffled behind the thick curtains out the dance floor..and that doorman said, Yes, my friend, and Elvis is still alive too!
In late 1994, Ithaka left Portugal for four months back to Los Angeles for an art exhibit - and during that short amount of time, Kaos Records had licensed So Get Up, without consulting him, to several international parties most notably Tribal Records -USA, a sub-subsidiary of Miles Copeland's I.R.S. Records (EMI).
Although Rob Di Stefano, the managing director of Tribal Records had met Ithaka on a previous trip to Portugal, and obviously understood he was from California and only temporarily residing in Portugal, he realized the marketing potential of an exotic 100% Portuguese house music product arriving in the U.S. for the first time and made no attempt to publicize the vocalist's true origins. No featuring Ithaka credit was ever included on any of the releases, even though he is both the author and the vocalist. Yes, this is dance music, but no matter how good or bad the production is, no one can deny that the vocal-poem and adjoining hooks are the primal guts of the entire So Get Up experience. How else could it possibly appeal to such a large musical spectrum of DJs and producers?
The first 1994 release of So Get Up on Tribal was a double-vinyl set with ten-mixes, including several versions by New York superstars Junior Vasquez and Danny Tenaglia. The early international popularity of So Get Up was undoubtfully manifested by these interpretations by Vasquez and Tenaglia. Two New York all-stars creating music around the words of a California hip hop wordsmith. To call So Get Up, even at that point, a 100% Portuguese release, was inaccurate at best. The first release by Tribal, which sold upwards of 50,000 copies, also included an uncredited acapella of Ithaka's raw poem - which paved the way for a vast multitude of remixes and samplings over a huge cross-section of electronic musical genres.
With the exception of Stretch & Verne's legally licensed rerecord "Get Up, Go Insane!" in 1997 (and subsequently Fatboy Slim's remix of that), every other international release of So Get Up has essentially been unauthorized. It is fair to say that every (of the more than a thousand mixes released) house, trance, techno, electro, drum & bass, big beat, dub step, and art rock versions - under their varying titles of "So Get Up", "Get Up", "Forget The Past", "the End Of The Earth", "Have A Blast", "Headcharge", "Hardaventure", etc. have been issued illegally. No record royalties or performance royalties have ever been paid to the vocalist/lyricist although all have been made using Ithaka's 1994 recording - made that late night way back when in Cascais, Portugal. By the most recent estimates of Ithaka's publisher attempting to recoup his writing shares, So Get Up in it's many incarnations has been either sold or downloaded more than 30,000,000 times and approximately 250,000,000 have at least heard the poem. Whether payment ever falls into the right hands, time will only tell.
Ithaka himself has had an unusual career (and life) to say the least. He came to recording not thru music itself, but via music photography, visual arts....and reading books. For nearly three years, among his many other sporadic occupations, Ithaka was the principal photographer for Priority Records gangster rap icons, NWA and Eazy E , but that's a story for another day.
In 1992, attempting to expand his boundaries outside of the Southern California area, the half-Greek, Ithaka Darin Pappas, set off soul-searching. He first relocated to Athens for six months and then spent a year in Tokyo, finally landing in Lisbon where he spent more than six years.
During this six-year period in Portugal, Ithaka was hyper-productive. He recorded So Get Up (and many other poems), made two award-winning hip hop albums, published translated poems and short stories in Portuguese magazines - and had several large scale sculpture exhibits of his work. He also photographically documented much of the early and mid-nineties Portuguese music scene, shooting record covers for rock, hip hop and EDM projects.
"SO GET UP" (1993 Demo) - Very rare 1993 demo version of the iconic
electronic dance music vocal-poem "So Get Up". This lyric was
originally written and recorded by Ithaka (aka: Ithaka Darin Pappas) in
January 1993 for a Rádio Comercial Program in Lisbon.
In March
of 1993, this Demo version was recorded in Manchester, United Kingdom
with producer Simon Bradshaw. And later, in February of 1994, Ithaka was
invited to rerecord the poem for the B-Side of the first vinyl release
of Underground Sound Of Lisbon on Kaos Records, Portugal. It was an
almost instant national hit and soon released (along with an acapella
version) internationally by Tribal (USA), a subsidiary of Stuart
Copeland's IRS Records in New York.
Interestingly, although the
poem was written and vocalized by Ithaka a year before ever meeting
Underground Sound Of Lisbon, no public vocal credit was included on
those first releases.
The USL version and the new remixes by
Junior Vazquez and Danny Tenaglia were quite popular themselves (selling
at least 50,000 units) but because an acapella was included in these
major distributions, literally hundreds of new mixes appeared in just a
few years. Many producers simply changed the title (sometimes not) and
put the entire vocal on their own instrumentals and called it their own.
The
vocal acapella has also been released under the titles; "Get Up", "Get
Up Go Insane", "So Get Up Atom Bride", "The End Of the Earth", "Next
Life", "See You In The Next Life", "Intro", "Headcharge" and
"Hardventure"
The vocal itself has never had a sonic style
specifically associated with it, it has kept changing it's clothes and
modernizing itself with the times.
The spoken-word acapella was
originally read on-air on top of an instrumental version of a
Naughty-By-Nature hip hop song, and this UK demo version is a mid-tempo
electro-style track,. The vocal never had a sonic style specifically
associated with it,
it has kept changing it's clothes and modernizing itself with the times.
The USL, Tenaglia and Junior Vazquez versions were progressive and tribal house
And
since then have versions have appeared in almost every avenue of global
electronic music such as; Trance, Dubstep, Drum & Bass, Big Beat,
Trip Hop, Tech House, Electronic Art Rock etc.
Groups, producers
and DJs that have released So Get Up inculude; Derek Marin, Peter
Bailey, Pagano, Ben Gold, Eric Kupper, Cosmic Gate, Armin Van Buuren,
Ricardo Diaz, Nixu Zsun, Oxia (France), Mert Yucel (Turkey), Igor Carmo
(Portugal), Miss Kittin (Germay), Public Domain (Holland), Fat Boy Slim
(Norman Cook) UK, Stretch & Verne (UK), Lexington Avenue, Damage
People, Mirabeau, Ma-Beckerfield, FuturePlays (from Mexico), Dj Screw
(Thailand), Djz Rom (Cambodia), Technoboy (Italy), Frankyeffe (Italy),
Maik Ibane, Murt Yucel (Turkey), Mowree (Italy), Razat (Portugal),
Tuneboy (Italy), K-Traxx (Italy), Dylan Hilsley (UK), DJ Vibe, Cee Cee
Lee (Italy), Alex Di Stefano, etc etc etc.
As of 2016, with a
staggering 1129 documented and released mixes, So Get Up is considered
"The Most Remixed Vocal Acapella In Musical History" by the Guinness
World Records.
In 2013, twenty years after it was first written and recorded, trance legend Armin Van Buuren re-introduced Ithaka's iconic EDM vocal poem So Get Up (The End Of The Earth) to a new generation by playing a version by Cosmic Gate on his popular global A State Of Trance radio program and featuring it on his mix album A State Of Trance 2013 (Armada Records).
Ithaka Darin Pappas: writer vocalist of the apocalyptic, So Get Up
In March of 1993, a demo version of So Get Up was recorded in Manchester, United
Kingdom with producer S. Bradshaw. And later, in February of 1994,
Ithaka was invited to rerecord the poem for the B-Side of the first
vinyl release of Underground Sound Of Lisbon on Kaos Records, Portugal.
It was an almost instant national hit and soon released (along with an
acapella version) internationally by Tribal (USA), a subsidiary of
Stuart Copeland's IRS Records in New York.
Interestingly,
although the poem was written and vocalized by Ithaka a year before ever
meeting Underground Sound Of Lisbon, no public vocal credit was
included on those first releases.
The USL version and the new
remixes by Junior Vazquez and Danny Tenaglia were quite popular
themselves (selling at least 50,000 units) but because an acapella was
included in these major distributions, literally hundreds of new mixes
appeared in just a few years. Many producers simply changed the title
(sometimes not) and put the entire vocal on their own instrumentals and
called it their own.
The vocal acapella has also been released
under the titles; "Get Up", "Get Up Go Insane", "So Get Up Atom Bride",
"The End Of the Earth", "Next Life", "See You In The Next Life",
"Intro", "Headcharge" and "Hardventure"
The vocal itself has
never had a sonic style specifically associated with it, it has kept
changing it's clothes and modernizing itself with the times.
The
spoken-word acapella was originally read on-air on top of an
instrumental version of a Naughty-By-Nature hip hop song, and this UK
demo version is a mid-tempo electro-style track,. The vocal never had a
sonic style specifically associated with it, it has kept changing it's clothes and modernizing itself with the times.
The USL, Tenaglia and Junior Vazquez versions were progressive and tribal house
And
since then have versions have appeared in almost every avenue of global
electronic music such as; Trance, Dubstep, Drum & Bass, Big Beat,
Trip Hop, Tech House, Electronic Art Rock etc.
Groups, producers
and DJs that have released So Get Up inculude; Derek Marin, Peter
Bailey, Pagano, Ben Gold, Eric Kupper, Cosmic Gate, Armin Van Buuren,
Ricardo Diaz, Nixu Zsun, Oxia (France), Mert Yucel (Turkey), Igor Carmo
(Portugal), Miss Kittin (Germay), Public Domain (Holland), Fat Boy Slim
(Norman Cook) UK, Stretch & Verne (UK), Lexington Avenue, Damage
People, Mirabeau, Ma-Beckerfield, FuturePlays (from Mexico), Dj Screw
(Thailand), Djz Rom (Cambodia), Technoboy (Italy), Frankyeffe (Italy),
Maik Ibane, Murt Yucel (Turkey), Mowree (Italy), Razat (Portugal),
Tuneboy (Italy), K-Traxx (Italy), Dylan Hilsley (UK), DJ Vibe, Cee Cee
Lee (Italy), Alex Di Stefano, etc etc etc.
As of 2016, with a
staggering 1129 documented and released mixes, So Get Up is considered
"The Most Remixed Vocal Acapella In Musical History" by the Guinness
World Records.
"SO GET UP" (1993 Demo) - Very rare 1993 demo version of the iconic
electronic dance music vocal-poem "So Get Up". This lyric was
originally written and recorded by Ithaka (aka: Ithaka Darin Pappas) in
January 1993 for a Rádio Comercial Program in Lisbon.
In March
of 1993, this Demo version was recorded in Manchester, United Kingdom
with producer Simon Bradshaw. And later, in February of 1994, Ithaka was
invited to rerecord the poem for the B-Side of the first vinyl release
of Underground Sound Of Lisbon on Kaos Records, Portugal. It was an
almost instant national hit and soon released (along with an acapella
version) internationally by Tribal (USA), a subsidiary of Stuart
Copeland's IRS Records in New York.
Interestingly, although the
poem was written and vocalized by Ithaka a year before ever meeting
Underground Sound Of Lisbon, no public vocal credit was included on
those first releases.
The USL version and the new remixes by
Junior Vazquez and Danny Tenaglia were quite popular themselves (selling
at least 50,000 units) but because an acapella was included in these
major distributions, literally hundreds of new mixes appeared in just a
few years. Many producers simply changed the title (sometimes not) and
put the entire vocal on their own instrumentals and called it their own.
The
vocal acapella has also been released under the titles; "Get Up", "Get
Up Go Insane", "So Get Up Atom Bride", "The End Of the Earth", "Next
Life", "See You In The Next Life", "Intro", "Headcharge" and
"Hardventure"
The vocal itself has never had a sonic style
specifically associated with it, it has kept changing it's clothes and
modernizing itself with the times.
The spoken-word acapella was
originally read on-air on top of an instrumental version of a
Naughty-By-Nature hip hop song, and this UK demo version is a mid-tempo
electro-style track,. The vocal never had a sonic style specifically
associated with it,
it has kept changing it's clothes and modernizing itself with the times.
The USL, Tenaglia and Junior Vazquez versions were progressive and tribal house
And
since then have versions have appeared in almost every avenue of global
electronic music such as; Trance, Dubstep, Drum & Bass, Big Beat,
Trip Hop, Tech House, Electronic Art Rock etc.
Groups, producers
and DJs that have released So Get Up inculude; Derek Marin, Peter
Bailey, Pagano, Ben Gold, Eric Kupper, Cosmic Gate, Armin Van Buuren,
Ricardo Diaz, Nixu Zsun, Oxia (France), Mert Yucel (Turkey), Igor Carmo
(Portugal), Miss Kittin (Germay), Public Domain (Holland), Fat Boy Slim
(Norman Cook) UK, Stretch & Verne (UK), Lexington Avenue, Damage
People, Mirabeau, Ma-Beckerfield, FuturePlays (from Mexico), Dj Screw
(Thailand), Djz Rom (Cambodia), Technoboy (Italy), Frankyeffe (Italy),
Maik Ibane, Murt Yucel (Turkey), Mowree (Italy), Razat (Portugal),
Tuneboy (Italy), K-Traxx (Italy), Dylan Hilsley (UK), DJ Vibe, Cee Cee
Lee (Italy), Alex Di Stefano, etc etc etc.
As of 2016, with a
staggering 1129 documented and released mixes, So Get Up is considered
"The Most Remixed Vocal Acapella In Musical History" by the Guinness
World Records.
So Get Up (the poem)...NOT by Cosmic Gate
- NOT by Underground Sound Of Lisbon. I am currently writing an article
for EDMania Magazine (Brazil) about the lack of lyric and vocal
credit in dance music (even though some of our music is very lyrical
indeed). After six-weeks of research, the example (of hundreds) that
most repeatedly keeps hitting me in the head is SO GET UP !.
One of the most used vocals in the history of music (ALL music).
Ironically after hearing the voice for nearly 12 years, I only recently
discovered the source of this iconic dance festival anthem. It was
written (and vocalized) in 1993 by a Greek-Californian from Los Angeles,
Ithaka (aka Ithaka Darin Pappas), a well-known contemporary artist, writer/poet and producer,
who musically is more associated with hip hop and trip hop.
Obviously, the true identifying factor of all 1150 trance, house, big
beat, drum & bass, grabber and dubstep mixes of the absolutely
iconic So Get Up
are the timeless lyrics and animated vocal of Mr. Pappas.
Does any of
this even matter?
Personally I despise rap music, but are we so wrapped
up in our electronic wonderland not to show at least a little love to a
poet, whose work as been heard by more people around the world than have
ever read Emerson ?
So Get Up (the poem)...NOT by Cosmic Gate
- NOT by Underground Sound Of Lisbon. I am currently writing an article
for EDMania Magazine (Brazil) about the lack of lyric and vocal
credit in dance music (even though some of our music is very lyrical
indeed). After six-weeks of research, the example (of hundreds) that
most repeatedly keeps hitting me in the head is SO GET UP !.
One of the most used vocals in the history of music (ALL music).
Ironically after hearing the voice for nearly 12 years, I only recently
discovered the source of this iconic dance festival anthem. It was
written (and vocalized) in 1993 by a Greek-Californian from Los Angeles,
Ithaka (aka Ithaka Darin Pappas), a well-known contemporary artist, writer/poet and producer,
who musically is more associated with hip hop and trip hop.
Obviously, the true identifying factor of all 1150 trance, house, big
beat, drum & bass, grabber and dubstep mixes of the absolutely
iconic So Get Up
are the timeless lyrics and animated vocal of Mr. Pappas.
Does any of
this even matter?
Personally I despise rap music, but are we so wrapped
up in our electronic wonderland not to show at least a little love to a
poet, whose work as been heard by more people around the world than have
ever read Emerson ?
So Get Up, written and vocalized by Ithaka, is a 1993 spoken-word Electronic dance music vocal-poem more frequently credited to the Portuguese house music production duo Underground Sound of Lisbon and the GermanTrance music duo, Cosmic Gate.
LYRICS: The end of the earth is upon us. Pretty soon it’ll all turn
to dust. So get up. Forget the past. Go outside and have a blast. Go a
thousand miles in a jet airplane. Go out of your mind go insane To a
place you never been before. Eat ice cream our you’ll lick the floor.
'Cause, the end of the earth is upon us. Pretty soon it’ll all turn to
dust. Goodbye my friends. Goodbye world. I’ll see you in the next life.
Although Ithaka's poem vocal was written and first recorded in 1993
for a program called "Bairro Quatro" on Rádio Comercial in Lisbon, the
initial musical element backing the poem was created in 1994 by DJ Vibe & Doctor J aka Underground Sound Of Lisbon (or USL) [1]
who invited Ithaka (at that time using an alias name, Korvowrong) to
rerecord the poem as a guest vocalist on their first release. Ithaka
Darin Pappas lived and recorded in Lisbon, Portugal from 1992-1998.
USL's original 12" Progressive house
mix of So Get Up was 9 minutes and 22 secs long, and was released as
the B-side of the "Chapter One E.P". In Portugal this was released by
Kaos Records, and worldwide by Tribal UK and Twisted Records (U.S.).
It became a major Portuguese dance music "national anthem" and
influenced a large populace of Portuguese youth to get interested in house music, famous for Ithaka's shouting "So Get Up, forget the past, the end of the world is upon us! Pretty soon it will all turn to dust!"
In 1994, the UK edition of the single (now as A side), had several remixes by Danny Tenaglia and Junior Vasquez as well as an original mix and a cappella version. This first international edition sold approximately 50,000 copies.
Thru the last two decades, So Get Up under varying titles such as;
"Get Up", "Get Up, Go Insane!", "The End Of The Earth", "Hardventure",
Headcharge, "Forget The Past", etc has been remixed, sampled and
released in a multitude of EDM styles on the records of; Fatboy Slim,
Stretch & Verne, Oxia, Peter Bailey, Orion's Voice, JJ Mullor, Dani
Sbert, Lexington Avenue, Dylan, Derek Marin, Public Domain, K-Traxx,
Technoboy, Bob Ray & Van Dyuk, Ben Gold, Pelari, and many others.
In 2003, Miss Kittin used the entire "So Get Up" poem as part of the intro on her album Radio Caroline Vol.1.
In 2005, Kaos Records released a 10th Anniversary Edition of the single. The CD release included 8 different tracks:
Although some legal and registered re-mixes have been made of So Get
Up, because an acappella was included in the first U.S. and U.K.
releases on Tribal Records, rouge musical versions using the vocal have
snowballed out of control. Hundreds of House, Trance, Techno, Rock,
Dub-step and Grabber producers have simply placed the So Get Up vocal on
their own instrumentals and called them their own (sometimes with
subtle title changes but often just as "So Get Up"). To date there are
now at least 1029 released remixes using the Ithaka Darin Pappas'
original vocal recording - and as of late 2016, So Get Up now hold the
distinction of being the most remixed vocal a cappella in musical
history (Guinness World Record Holder 2016 [2]).
So Get Up by it's individual producers and djs has been
played/performed at large scale dance parties around the global such as
the Electric Daisy Carnival in New York (2016) as interpreted by Cosmic Gate.[3]
In
1993, Ithaka had originally written and recited the poem called So Get
Up (The End Of The Earth Is Upon Us) for his weekly segment of a radio
program called Quatro Bairro on Antena One in Lisbon, Portugal. The next
year he rerecorded it as a guest performer to be the primary vocal of a
B-Side single for the Portuguese dance music group called Underground
Sound Of Lisbon. The song became an instant national hit and was later
released internationally as a ten-mix, double vinyl set on New York's
Tribal Records (a subsidiary of I.R.S. Records/E.M.I. Records). The song
climbed to 8th place on the Billboard's Independent Dance Music Charts
for the U.K. – and number 52nd in the United States. Since 1995, the
song has been remixed over a thousand times including versions by such
greats as Fat Boy Slim, Junior Vasquez, Danny Tenaglia, Cosmic Gate
and has appeared on over fifty compilations with combined sales in the
millions. As the original music has been stripped away by each
succeeding producer, the only singularly unifying element of all 1000+
mixes is Ithaka's poem and his vocals. Ironically, the song which was
considered the first modern "Portuguese" musical export was released
without even a "featuring Ithaka" credit even though Ithaka, a
Californian who was only temporarily residing in Lisbon, was the primary
publishing rights owner of the track and never a member of the
Underground Sound Of Lisbon project. Reportedly no actual record
royalties were ever paid to Ithaka [4].
In 2013, German Trance superstars, Cosmic Gate, also excluded
Ithaka's vocal/lyrical credit even though they licensed the entire So
Get Up a cappella. Without a doubt, Cosmic Gate's version has become the
biggest commercial success of So Get Up to date. It was featured on
Armin Van Buuren's compilation A State Of Trance 2013, on Cosmic's Gate album Start to Feel(2014)[5],
with additional mixes by Pelarli, Alex di Stefano and Ben Gold. It has
been a festival favorite for the group since it's release, being
performed at Amsterdam Dance Event, Electric Daisy Carnival, Ultra Music Festival and on Cosmic Gate's own world tour.
Track list
So Get Up (original mix)
So Get Up (Junior's Factory mix; remix – Junior Vasquez)
So Get Up (Danny's "In The Light We Sleep" mix; remix – Danny Tenaglia)
So Get Up (King-Size mix - King-Size)
So Get Up (Eric Kupper's Tribalectro mix; remix – Eric Kupper)
So Get Up (Low End Specialists mix; remix – Low End Specialists)
So Get Up (Mert Yücel DeepXperience mix; remix – Mert Yucel)
So Get Up (Dan Robbins Three Dimension mix; remix – Dan Robbins)
In 1994, the international hit "So Get Up" that Ithaka wrote the lyrics
for and vocalized (in participation with Underground Sound Of Lisbon)
was nominated for "Song Of The Year" at that year's Blitz Awards, and
later climbed to 8th Place on Billboard's U.K. Independent Dance Charts
(and 52nd on Billboard's U.S. independent Dance Charts).
In 2016 More than
twenty years after it's original release (with at leased one-thousand
and twenty-nine released remixes of the original vocal) So Get Up was
deemed by Guinness World Records as being The Most Remixed Vocal A
Cappella in musical history.
