Lisbon, Portugal
Techno and early trance were playing. One of the most played records on the Portuguese circuit in 1992 and 1993 was The Jam & Spoon's remix (Watch Out For Stella Club Mix) of the track The Age Of Love, a good example of the then-emerging trance sounds. The shift in dance music trends, which would shape the "Portuguese sound," occurred around that time and revolved around one of the main protagonists of this story, Tó Pereira aka DJ Vibe. In 1992, the DJ spent a week in New York, representing Bimotor, for a meeting in Long Island with a music import company, staying at the home of relatives of his friend and then manager of Kremlin, Luís Amaral, who, after the success of So Get Up, had been promoted to his manager, the first DJ manager in Portugal.
It was a unique opportunity to experience the American nightlife, and Tó Pereira and his friends didn't waste it. They went to Frankie Knuckles' birthday party at the Roxy and ended the night, already in after-hours mode, at Sound Factory, to the sound of the well-known DJ Junior Vasquez.
Tó Pereira was surprised by the atmosphere of the place, from the sound system to the dancers, to the technique and unfamiliar music that Junior was playing.
This experience decisively influenced DJ Vibe's career, but above all, what happened from then on in the Portuguese dance scene. From 1993 onwards, Vibe's sound changed profoundly. In his sets, the transition from techno and trancey scenes to a more garage-oriented New York house and, particularly, tribal, Manhattan-style is noticeable. Records from labels such as Nervous, Strictly Rhythm, Emotive, Eightball, Murk or Tribal America began to spin on the turntables at Kremlin and the parties where Tó Pereira performed, thus initiating, for many years, an important trend in Portuguese dance music.
Tó himself readily states this when the Red Bull interviewer asks him what the crucial element is in the Portuguese sound: drums! In fact, Vibe's connection to the United States is fundamental to understanding how American tribal house took root instead of other styles, such as Central European techno, however, other hypotheses should not be overlooked, such as Portugal's colonial past and its sociocultural influences, dynamics and exchanges in the acceptance of those sounds, a question certainly to be addressed in another approach.
Be that as it may, much of what is in the tracks "Get Up" and "Dance With Me" from Underground Sound Of Lisbon (USL) is a result of Tó Pereira's night at Sound Factory. The "spirit" of the Manhattan scene is inscribed on the record, and it was no coincidence that Junior Vasquez placed Get Up seventh in a top ten of essential tracks in his sets at that club, published by iD magazine in 1994.
When Tó Pereira returned, now with more availability after leaving LX-90, he decided to accept the challenge that Rui da Silva had been making to him for months to make music. Both had albums released at that time, in mid-1993. In April, remixes (“Tó Club Mix”, “Dance Mix” and “Diz Pára Mix”) by Tó Pereira for Diz Quem Diz, by Rádio Macau, were released, and Rui da Silva, under the pseudonym Doctor J, debuted the Kaos catalogue in August – the promo had already been circulating the previous year – with the album Não, an experimental crossover of house with samples of the song Não Sou o Único (1991), by Resistência, which Tim, the band’s vocalist, hated. The duo went to Rui da Silva’s studio, at his parents’ house in Queijas, and from the marathon with an Atari Commodore, the TB, synthesizers and an Akai S1000 sampler, Tó’s, resulted the two tracks that make up Kaos’ second album, Chapter One: Dance With Me and Get Up.
Thus, the duo USL was born. The mixing of the tracks was done at Delfins' studio, Um Só Céu Studios, by Sinewave (Paula Margarida), then Rui da Silva's girlfriend and sound engineer. This work lasted, according to Rui da Silva, twenty-odd hours due to a bug in the production software (Cubase) related to synchronization when recording on tape. It is no coincidence that in Get Up the rhythm section, created on a TR-808, fades in.
The lyrics and vocals for "Get Up" are by Californian Ithaka Darin Pappas, identified on the album as Korvowrong (a misspelling of his actual alter ego Korvorowng or Korvorao...the ravenshark), who at the time was living in Lisbon and writing and performing poems on the radio program "Quarto Bairro" on Rádio Comercial. Tó Pereira played music on that program and that's where he met Ithaka, inviting him to MC at a couple of Kaos parties. At one of the parties where Ithaka performed, improvised some vocals at the sound check when Tó played the instrumental version of the track "303" (that would later serve as the musical base of "Get Up"). Hearing Ithaka's voice on the track, instantly convinced him that's what they needed to finish the song.
In late 1993, they returned to the Delfins studios, this time to records Ithaka's voice on the track. He brought several poems to the studio and began reading them one be after another on the microphone, but it was So Get Up that was the clear standout and the one decided on for the recording.
Note: In December 1992 the poem had already been recorded by Ithaka on a broadcast of “Quarto Bairro” and, in the following March, he had recorded electronic version with a sound engineering student while visiting Manchester. Acapellas of the spoken word vocal have now appeared on several hundred other artist's track, making it one of the most remixed songs in musical history.
Curiously, Get Up was pressed on the B-side of the USL vinyl when released in Portugal. Only DJ Luís Leite played it (at Alcântara) while "Dance With Me" received more club play.
"Dance With Me"had a hypnotic crescendo and was a good representation of the musical transition that was taking place in the Portuguese electronic scene, between European and North American influences. In short, Chapter One was a double success: an excellent record that foreshadowed Portuguese internationalization.
Before the album was released, Tó Pereira sent a promo to a friend named Paulo he met in New York, a Portuguese man who used to DJ at parties for Portuguese immigrants. One night, Paulo decided to go to Sound Factory and gave the album to Junior Vasquez, it was a white label vinyl, identified on the sticker only by the contact information.
When Paulo went to the cloakroom, Junior suddenly stopped the music and started playing "Get Up." The audience went wild when they heard the first verses of the poem, so much so that Junior played the song a handful of times that same night:
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
In the media, the latest dance electronica music also began to receive special attention. Rui Monteiro, director of Blitz, founded in 1984, perceived the changes that were taking place in the music scene and, above all, in youth culture. It was a period of transition, no longer limited to pop and rock. New journalists were tasked with reviewing the latest electronica dance music and writing about the Portuguese movement. Others followed him in the early 90s, such as Miguel Santos or Nuno Galopim.
The advantage of having the record out for almost a year without anyone in New York knowing what it was about gave Júnior the honorable task of creating buzz around the track. When the So Get Up was released in Portugal, Tó Pereira, sent some more copies to his friend, who gave a copy to DJ Casanova, resident DJ at the Palladium nightclub.
From here, there are different versions of what happened. According to Tó Pereira, as soon as Junior learned that his secret weapon was, after all, no longer so secret, the Sound Factory DJ passed on USL's contact information to the A&R of two New York labels, Rob Di Stefano of Tribal America and Kevin Williams of Eightball Records. USL received proposals from both labels, via fax, for Kaos to license the record. The choice fell on Tribal América, whose catalog already enjoyed considerable acceptance in the Portuguese DJ circuit.
USL signed a contract with Tribal in the spring of 1994. One of the demands imposed by the Portuguese duo on Rob Di Stefano was a remix by Junior Vasquez for the track "Get Up," renamed "So Get Up" in this edition. Rob tried to dissuade USL from this idea due to the monetary cost, but ended up accepting on the condition that one of his artists would remix the track. The DJ and producer Rob was referring to was Danny Tenaglia, still unknown to the Portuguese duo at the time. The release was scheduled for the summer of that year as a double 12" LP edition, featuring the originals "So Get Up" and "Dance With Me" (a cappella), two Vasquez remixes ("Junior's Factory Mix" and "Factory Dub"), and three Tenaglia remixes ("Danny's "In The Light We Sleep" Mix," "Get-Upella," and "The "It's 4 P.M. Danny, Get Up!" Dub") of "So Get Up."
It seemed that Portugal had found its place in the world. Americans and British were fascinated by the country and everything it had to offer (the beaches, the sun, the gastronomy) combined with the exciting atmosphere of the emerging dance scene: the authorities collaborated in the organization of the parties, alcoholic beverages were sold in the service areas of the highways, it was allowed to drink all night and smoke in almost all places, drugs were practically Free, in short, the opposite of what was happening in the United Kingdom.
It is absolutely undeniable, however, the role of So Get Up and its projection abroad, which definitely helped the buzz created around Portugal creating millions of dollars in collateral revenue for the country.
The Kaos edition of "So Get Up" reached 1st place on the American DMC chart (Update USA Chart), a new national record on the eve of the American and English editions of Tribal. And, in England, it reached 5th place on the Coldcut Chart, 4th place on the DMC Update UK and 90th and 83rd places, respectively in the weeks of September 10 and 17, 1994, in the top 100 of the official UK chart.
There are twenty-four individual official versions of "So Get Up" specifically by:
Underground Sound of Lisbon ft. Ithaka in existence
[released by Kaos Portugal, TRIBAL America, Tribal U.K., Twisted (USA), Absolutely Records (Italy).]
*There are approximately 1100 additional mixes by other artists not officially associated with USL's version, All versions include the lyrics and vocals by: Ithaka Darin Pappas
1993 "Get Up" (original mix)
1993 "Get Up" (acapella)
1994 "So Get Up" (Original mix)
1994 "So Get Up" (acapella)
1994 "So Get Up" (Junior's Factory Mix)
1994 "So Get Up" (Factory Dub)
1994 "So Get Up" (Danny's In The Light We Sleep Mix)
1994 "So Get Up" (Get-Upella)
1994 "So Get Up" (The "It's 4pm Danny, Get Up!" Mix)
2002 "So Get Up 2002" (Eric Kupper's Tribalectro Mix)
2002 "So Get Up 2002" (Dan Robbins Three Dimension Mix)
2002 "So Get Up 2002" (Low End Specialists Mix) by ali Geramian, Mac Clark
2002 "So Get Up 2002" (Mert Yücel's DeepXperience Mix)
2007 "So Get Up" (Mirabeau Mix) by Colin Airey & Rob Jay
2007 "So Get Up" (Damaged People Remix) by Mark Armstrong, Mark Lowry, Scott Bradford
2008 "So Get Up" (Phunk Investigation Turbolento Mix) by Armando Maggiorana, Stefano Silvestri
2008 "So Get Up" (Next Life Mowree Mix) by Maurizio Filograsso
2008 "So Get Up" (Phunk Investigation O'Tech Mix) by Armando Maggiorana, Stefano Silvestri
2008 "So Get Up" (Sharp & Smooth Remix) by Alex Bass, David Mimram
2008 "So Get Up" (Phunk Investigation Cognoscenti Mix) by Armando Maggiorana, Stefano Silvestri
2008 "So Get Up" (Shuffling Phunk Investigation Mix) by Armando Maggiorana, Stefano Silvestri
2015 "So Get Up" (Adam Freemer Rm-X)
2015 "So Get Up" (Pagano 2015 Mix) by Francesco Pagano
2015 "So Get Up" (Pagano 2015 Dub)by Francesco Pagano
