The "So Get Up" Controversy
In 1993, Ithaka wrote a poem called So Get Up 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 to be the primary vocal of 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 a minimum of a hundred times including versions by such greats as Fat Boy Slim, Junior Vasquez, Danny Tenagalia 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 100+ mixes is Ithaka's poem and his vocals. Ironically, the song which was considered Portugal's first real modern music export was released without even a "featuring Ithaka" credit, even though Ithaka, a Californian, was not only 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 and lawsuits followed, finally resolved for an undisclosed amount.[9]
