Who does the song "So Get Up"?

Who does the song So Get Up?

Josephine Alleyn

·

126 days ago

music journalist

The vocal-poem song “So Get Up” is by Ithaka (Ithaka Darin Pappas).

According to Wikipedia:

Ithaka Darin Pappas (a Californian hip hop artist, poet, photographer and sculptor of Greek ancestry) originally wrote and recorded “So Get Up” on December 13th 1992 for a segment of a radio program called Quatro Bairro, that he regularly appeared on as a guest host. The program was aired by the station Rádio Comercial in Lisbon, Portugal (where Ithaka lived between 1992–1998).

In February of 1993, Ithaka recorded an electro-style version of So Get Up and an entire album demo with a student sound engineer in Manchester, England which in addition to So Get Up, included several of his other poems. The project was called So Get Up & The Lost Acapellas, but was not immediately released by a label.

In late 1993, a Portuguese electronic music group called Underground Sound Of Lisbon invited Ithaka to record the So Get Up lyric, yet a third time, for the B-Side of a white label 12″ vinyl demo they were making as an initial offering for their upstart label called Kaos (Portugal). It became an actual manufactured release and achieved distribution outside of Portugal. This version enjoyed wide international success (#83 on the U.K. pop charts in 1994). But apparently, for marketing reasons, So Get Up was presented as a 100% Portuguese creation - even though the lyricist and vocalist was a Californian, briefly living in Portugal, and the song was written and recorded in English.

Ithaka Darin Pappas was largely not credited with his contribution on the Underground Sound of Lisbon version of the song, which perhaps may be the reason you are asking, WHO does “So Get Up?”.

Furthermore, both Underground Sound Of Lisbon’s label, (Kaos Records, Portugal) and their international distributor Tribal USA (EMI), headed by Rob Di Stefano, released several acapellas of Ithaka’s voice and lyrics without a visible credit, causing a snowball of anonymous bootleg versions and remixes.

In 1997, Stretch n Vern released “Get Up! Go Insane!”, principally using the hook lines of Ithaka’s “So Get Up”, becoming a #17 pop hit in the United Kingdom. “Get Up! Go Insane!”, was also used in a highly-visible Samsung printer commercial in Korea starring movie actress Jun Ji-Hyun. According to all of her biographic accounts, the commercial turned her into a “popular sensation”. The dancing around to “Get Up! Go Insane!” and the attitude expressed in the commercial’s footage made her into an icon for Koreans in their late teens and early twenties.

In 2013, German trance super stars Cosmic Gate, licensed Ithaka’s entire So Get Up vocal for their track coincidentally entitled “So Get Up” (again without a featured lyric/vocal credit to Ithaka). So Get Up became known as one of their best tracks, a ‘stadium banger’ as it was called by DJ MAG. They even manufactured a line of shirts with Ithaka’s lyrics printed on them, with no mention of the author.

By 2020, there have possibly been more than one-thousand remixes of Ithaka’s 1993 vocal acapella recording of So Get Up, becoming one of the most remixed acapellas in musical history. It appears under many alternative titles such as "Get Up", "Insane", "Get Up, Go Insane!", "Next Life", "See You In The Next Life" "The End Of The Earth", "Hardventure", "Headcharge", "Belther", "Last Resurrection", "PPF (Past Present Future)", "Intensity", "Forget The Past", "Trance Line", "Viginti Etduo", "Have A Blast", “Turn To Dust”, "Alien Life Forms, Goodbye My Friends", "Jet Airplane", "Speed O.J.", “Zombie”, etc..

“SO GET UP” REMIX ARTISTS INCLUDE: Armin Van Buuren, Fatboy Slim, Danny Tenaglia, Junior Vasquez, Dj Vibe, 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, Miss Kittin, Dave Seaman, Dade (ITA), Carlos Walker, Alien Project, Second Nature, Pomella, John Neiland, Br1an, DJ Healer, Traumprinz, Joseph LP, Rab-Beat , Pirro, Matheu, Neanderthal Phonogram, Omar Lopez, Liquid Viking, MotivBreaks, Chaka & Marty, Jay Dahbi, Hu Bee, Frankyeffe, Township Rebellion, Rui Flip, Dani Villa, Rodri Vegas, Dr. Funk, ZRG, Swing Kings, Acti, Antolini, DANTEE, Alternative Journey, Nell Silva, Geometric Dark, Pepo, Pacho, Club Atlas, Branko, Buraka Som Sistema, Alex Di Stefano, TNT, Zatox, Marc Hartman, Meat Katie, DJ Dũng Tí , Future Plays, Manu Kenton, Dejay D, Ozy & Ash, Derk Marin, Marcel, Doppeldosen, Maik Ibane, Cubik, Checo Zak, Fuelo Ruedo, Paradigm X, Samir Kuliev, Lee Burridge, Razat, Alex Page, DJ Kryst-Off, Breaker, Micromakine, Gu'Brian, Trolley Snatcha, Mr. Argenis, Let's Try, Audio Noir, Peace Maker, Ninja, Cab Thomas, Loose Effects, JJ Mullor, Dani Sbert, Atmozfears, Igor Carmo, Pelari, Ben Gold, Koozah, Slow Panpot, Furio Levant, Bob Ray, Van Dyuk, Morgana DJ, Damien Blaze, Audio Noir, Hardwell, Agustin Servente, Matias Chavez, HeatBeat, Danny Garlick, Hakan Sarugil, Cassien Jean, Marco Calanni, Bageera, Black Force, Horizon, DJ Pibert, Outworld, Plusculaar, Mike Steventon & Tone, Bart Skils, Peace Maker, Philippe Rochard, Andrea Doria & Dino Lenny, 2 DJs In A Room, Steve Hill & Technikal, Seikos, Dantime, Maziano, Lochness DJ Team, DJ Zorneus, Phunk Investigation, Sharp & Smooth, Mowree, Lexicon Avenue, Architect, Committee, Low End Specialists, Dan Robbins, King-Size, Eric Kupper, Mert Yucel, Dylan, K-Traxx, High Voltage, K-Traxx, PCP, Ce Ce Lee, Atlantis ITA, Pathfinder, Jason "Jinx" Zambito, Tecmania Rebel, Patrick van der Hart, Public Domain, Sarasite, etc.

An alternative answer to the question would be that All the above artists recorded “So Get Up”, but the lyrics and the vocals (the identifying elements) on All the versions of So Get Up are by Ithaka Darin Pappas. And if we are not talking about the identifying marker of a track as the song itself, what exactly do we mean by a ‘song’ anyway when we are talking about electronic music?…beats wandering aimlessly through the universe?

Because of the fluidity of our medium (facility to remix, etc) at some point it is necessary to say, THIS is the song.

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DJ VIBE (DJ MAG) "So Get Up"

The former Underground Sound of Lisbon producer (with Rui Da Silva) - who had a huge club hit with 'So Get Up' (featuring original vocals and lyrics by renowned California songwriter, Ithaka Darin Pappas) in the mid-'90s - is currently excited about Logic 8 and Serato, with the digital music controller changing not just the way he buys music but also the way he programmes his sets. He matches Serato with three CDJs, Cycloops and the FX1000 to get truly creative in the mix, all of which suits his big room sound. 
Those rooms have been as big as Twilo Miami for the WMC and Lux in Lisbon's 8th anniversary party - "One of the best parties in the last year". 

https://djmag.com/top-100-djs/poll-2007-dj-vibe

DJ VIBE - One Of The World's Eternal Best

António "Tó" Pereira, mais conhecido no mundo da eletrónica como DJ Vibe, é um artista que dispensa introduções em Portugal e também fora de portas. Vibe, natural de Lisboa, deu os seus primeiros passos dentro de uma cabine de DJ com apenas 15 anos e nunca mais parou desde essa altura.
O DJ já tocou lado a lado com grandes nomes da sua área, como,  por exemplo, Paul Oakenfold, Tony Humphries  Roger Sanchez e a sua eterna referência, Danny Tenaglia. O grande lançamento da sua carreira nacional e internacional ocorreu após a criação de uma parceria com outro famoso DJ/produtor português, Rui da Silva, que os elevou ao expoente máximo da música eletrónica de dança. Os Underground Sound of Lisbon, criados em 1993, influenciaram para sempre o verão de 1994 com o lançamento do seu êxito “So Get Up”, tema com vocais de Ithaka (Ithaka Darin Pappas) e lançado pela editora de Rob di Stefano, Tribal USA. Vivia-se, então, o auge do denominado house tribal e o tema atingiu o primeiro lugar da  Billboard Club Chart.
Agora, DJ Vibe vê novamente reconhecido o trabalho de mais de duas décadas atrás da cabine, tendo ficado na 74ª posição da lista dos DJs mais populares de todos os tempos, elaborada pelo site Dash Berlin World. Para chegar a estes resultados, a publicação monitorizou os Top 100 da DJ Mag entre os anos de 1997 e 2012, tendo em conta os géneros dominantes e as posições dos DJs.
Confere o top 100 aqui.
Para além da carreira de DJ, Vibe é co-proprietário da editora Records, um estúdio de gravação e uma editora em Lisboa fundada em 1992 com António Cunha. O músico esteve ainda envolvido noutros projetos, como os LHT, NYLX, Sonic Hunters e Meco.

Por: Paulo Costa

Cosmic Gate's - "So Get Up" - The Poem & The Poet

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 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 invited to recite his texts and rhymes for the daily program, Quatro Bairro on the national station, Rádio Comerical. Ten of the poems offered on the Lost Acapellas release were written 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 lost 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).

So Get Up was originally written and recorded by Ithaka for Quatro Bairro (Rádio Comerical), 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 slots 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 (an EDM 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 the label 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 just weeks later, from just that single white-label pressing, the song exploded into an almost instantaneous national blockbuster.

Although open-minded musically, Ithaka was more associated with hip hop and street art 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, 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 owned 50% of the publishing and was indeed the actual performer.

"I remember specifically on a couple of occasions trying to get into Lisbon-area night clubs, which is always a chore, and there in line, two different times, I could hear So Get Up playing on the dance floor...The first was at Frágil in Bairro Alto - and I said, hey man, that's me...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..was at Alcatara, when I again declared that was my voice 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 Stuart Copeland's IRS 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 musucal spectrum of DJ 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 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" have been issued illegally. No record royalties or performance royalties have even been paid to the vocalist/lyricist although all have been made using Ithaka's 1994 recording in Cascais, Portugal. By the most recent estimates of Ithaka's publisher attempting to recoup his writing shares, So Get Up 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 boundries outside of the Los Angeles area, the half-Greek, Ithaka Darin Pappas, set off soul-searching. He first relocated to Athens, Greece 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 also had several large scale sculpture exhibits. He also photographically documented much the early and mid-nineties Portuguese music scene, shooting record covers for rock, hip hop and EDM projects.