A kung fu fighter in a disco

the age of the young people? ie italo house (OH DERE GOD) before they were actively listening to music, 90s europop (OH MORE DERE GOD) what they danced to at school discos and thus naff for another 5-10 years...

also 80s italo is ALL EXCELLENT and well due a revival innit ;)

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I think it's not Italo House exactly tho - as in NU-NU-NU-NUMERO UNO! - which is brilliant yes, it's the earlier stuff like Gazebo (who you will find on yr Disky Box Sets!), Valerie Dore, Stephanie - flimsy post-disco pop.

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On ILM someone did a Rough Guide to Italo which included TARZAN BOY. Though IIRC they then explained that Tarzan Boy was included to show the crass commercial bastardization of real Italo *rolls eyes*.

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'You Spin Me Round' without Pete Burns = best Italo instrumental ever

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atommickbrane.livejournal.com

I used to be in Evil Gazebo!

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damnspynovels.livejournal.com

oh thanks for clearing that up... I really did think you were referring to italio piano house!

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boyofbadgers.livejournal.com

That's abt 75% of it, I think. The remaining 25% is the Northern Soul factor - in the UK Italo was not not exactly filling the charts even when it was popular, whereas there were approx a bazillion Europop hits. So there is a def. obscurantist, crate digging cool thing going in.

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Yeah, hence the Tarzan Boy snobbery I guess!

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atommickbrane.livejournal.com

I downloaded an excellent 80s Italo compilation the other day, handily for this question! It even has an earlier version of Holiday Rap on it (the samples and singing sound slightly different is all, but it is possible that is my TERRIBLE speakers).

Also there's something always kinda down to earth naff (that word again) about the Italo Disco 'players' - you don't know much of their images (apart from Holiday Rap of course) and thus you're stuck with a random chap called Kenny Lazlo who you imagine as a scouser w/ bubble perm and trackie but making disco of the sort approved by the h0m0sexualists (see also OPRESSED MINORITY MUSIC CACHET haha).

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Has there been a similar upsurge of interest in Hi-NRG? Patrick Cowley I know is a hottish name to drop and has been for aaaages, but beyond that?

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DJ Sven and Miker G were Dutch not Italian innit ;)

also numero uno style piano-led bangers is what i was thinking of in terms of "80s Italo"...

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blue-russian.livejournal.com

the simple answer is often right, and therefore i think the ageist answer is the correct one.

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katstevens.livejournal.com

I'm almost sure it has something to do with my Grand Unified Theory Of Italian Piano House^TM. If only I could remember what it was.

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alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

There's the time factor obv but I'm not sure how untrendy 90s Europop actually is: some of the er sillier stuff (Scatman or Eiffel 65 for instance) may never come back into vogue but I think - esp with the current rave revival - that a lot of it, starting with the more credible stuff like Altern8 but certainly not excluding 2 Unlimited and N-Trance - would go down v well at dance-friendly hipster parties these days.

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That's the ravier end though mostly - I see no huge signs of a revival for Dr Alban, Twenty-four seven, Captain Hollywood Project, Leila K, and certainly no real evidence of crate-digging going on.

I think the commercial success means it's more likely to go along the Guilty Pleasures lines than the "fashionable secret influence" lines though.

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alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

With genres with that much commercial success is it really necessary to crate-dig? (Did 90s Europop even exist as an underground phenomenon?) Maybe it's too...silly a genre for crate-digging to be an appropriate response. I have no idea what kind of reputation italo had at the time though!

I think it's still too early for such widespread trendy-acceptance though - if italo is the revival du jour then Europop is still a few years away.

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There was a lot of stuff which hit in Europe but not the UK, and presumably an even bigger lot of stuff which was designed to hit in Europe but didn't.

I'm not sure how commercially successful Italo was at the time - I'm also not sure how "Italo" it was, I suspect most European club music blended into one at the time.

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90s Europop has been HUGE at the Young Persons Indie Disco for well over a year now. My erstwhile DJing partners Gareth and Ollie played an entire set of the stuff at big indie allnighter the Insomniacs Ball earlier this year that started with Mr Vain and culminated in 600 indie kids boshing entirely unironically to Set You Free and No Limit.

If anything its the 80s revival that's now gone out of fashion, although italo will always be cool due to the crate-digging factor that RickyT points out upthread.

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Yes, it's always gone down v.well when I've played it too. I dunno if this is quite what I'm getting at though - maybe I should have phrased my question "Why don't hipsters like D4n S3lzer like Dr Alban album tracks dammit?"

I think you're right that Europop will hit/is hitting big as part of a general 90s revival, and any crate digging will follow behind that.

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There's an underlying sadness to a lot of italo, even some of the faster stuff, that gives it a broader emotional range then most 90s Europop as well, and that appeals to the hipsters. Really, I think it's the silliness aspect that's the stumbling block here.

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Yes, I think you're right, this is why I can never quite love a lot of italo - it goes all wimpy on you too often.

Obviously the Pet Shop Boys, who I adore, are Italo through and through, including the wimpiness and the really thin vocals. So I'm a slight hypocrite.

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and this is why it is regaining popularity then, ie IT EQUALS INDIE...

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Tho I think Dr A genuinely does have a broad emotional range!

Doctor Bombay less so maybe.

For underlying-sadness Europop the peerless Midi Maxi and Efti are what you need tho.

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Surely Midi Maxi and Efti are already beloved of hipsters if that ILM thread is anything to go by?

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The last time I looked at it it only had about 2 answers!

I only know about them cos Mark passed on a recommendation from Frank K though.

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It might be a different thread about an individual song, perhaps. I remember MUCH LOVE anyway.

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"Why don't hipsters like D4n S3lzer like Dr Alban album tracks dammit?"

Just too cheesy? And yeh too populist I suppose. I can sympathise as I wasn't that keen on much of the Europop at the time (thought 'Mr Vain' and 'Rhythm Is A Dancer' were merely 'alright' etc.

Big Euro hits like 'Pump Up The Jam' seem popular with everyone tho - somehow the commercial success doesn't hinder this - presumably people see it as less cheesy, and Ya Kid K's rapping took on this endearing quality as opposed to just 'naffness'? Leila K hasn't managed this because 'Got To Get' doesn't allude to 'hardcore' (or, uh oh, minimal) dance styles in the way 'Pump Up The Jam' did perhaps.

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acute-records.livejournal.com

sorry I didn't see this till now. Maybe by now you've heard enough other stuff, but italo means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. In the widest sense it goes back to early euro-disco from the 70s all the way to pop hits of the 80s. Through the filter of DJs and importers in the states, the only italo that got "hipster cred" was the stuff that DJs in NY, Chicago, SF etc were playing, which mostly was either the classic disco stuff (Macho, Kasso, Peter Jacques Band, Change) or, especially in Chicago and Detroit, the more minimal/electronic stuff, which has as much to do with New Wave, Synth-pop and Electro-funk as it does with disco. My exposure to Italo was through the records you'd find in american dj shops and what you'd hear on old radio and live recordings. Klein + MBO, Scotch, Pineapples, Gay Cat Park etc. My interest in italo-disco brought me to the more popular stuff, but most of it didn't take. Sure I can see the similarities, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

Likewise, it's obvious to me that some of the most euro-pop club hits of today are clearly related the hipster italo obscurities of yesterday, but they're not necessarily the same either.

To say not liking Tarzan Boy is just snobbery...that only works if you Tarzan Boy sounds exactly like Spacer Woman or Mr. Flagio. Other then those all being "italo-disco", there's a world of difference there.

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byebyepride.livejournal.com

Can someone explain what Italo is please? Is this stuff like Penguins Invasion (as collected on that great i-robots CD) which sounds more like electro? Or is it more housey?

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Search - Pineapples 'Come On Closer', which I will upload when I get home.

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All of the above! It seems very vague. Also some italo is obviously just synthpop! I think if it gets too fast it's something else, though.

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I now think of it as all the new-disco stuff produced between '77 and '84 so think Moroder-inspired stuff from that time but quite hard-sounding, metallic often. As I said upthread, Dead Or Alive's 'You Spin Me Round' is based on an Italo blueprint really.

Not much of it actually seemed piano-hook led, that came in later with Italo(-House) Mk2 which I suppose would be the poppier, piano sound championed by Daniele Davoli and co.

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Davoli and co. ripping off the Chicago dudes for that of course (e.g. Adonis 'No Way Back', Marshall Jeff's 'Move Your Body') but adding in goofy samples galore after seeing how well it worked out for P Hardcastle, Bomb The Bass, M/A/R/R/S etc.

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aaaaaaaaaaa-ha, i was also confused and thinking of mr davoli et al...

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koganbot

The question contains a mismatch, since "80s Italo" and "90s Europop" are not equivalent categorical levels. (Cf. "Why are 80s crickets trendy and 90s insects not?")

But also I cannot answer your question for many other reasons, including that I don't know why (or if) '80s Italo is trendy and I don't why or if '90s Europop isn't trendy, but also I don't know what '80s Italo is, since I discovered '80s Europop (in the '90s!) on old Mexican dance comps I bought in the Mission and Singapore pirate cassettes that I got three for a dollar in Chinatown, and these comps did not indicate where the various tracks had been recorded (some didn't even bother with performer names). Also they would include Brit acts like Hazell Dean and Canadian acts like Tapps and American acts like the Flirts and Sylvester and Divine whose sound clearly fit the mold (may have even helped create it; in fact, a lot of '80s Europop might be described as freestyle lite). Anyway, I still have no idea where Eddy Huntington and Marce and Trans-X and Lou Sern ("Swiss Boy," the yodel answer to "Tarzan Boy") and Magazine 60 and Kinky Co and Click and Ross and Chip Chip and Ken Heaven and Lime made their music, but I'm guessing that it wasn't all in Milan. The Off (Belgians and Germans) were big on these comps. One thing I noticed, though: many of the Mexican compilations were compiled by year (Hits Collection '87 and the like). Starting about 1991 the cassettes got to be way more boring, and this was around the time that house and techno rhythms began working their way into Europop and that rev-it-up bombastic oppressively obvious (and just not all that tuneful) stuff by Black Box and 2 Unlimited began to dominate the collections. So to sum up I would say that '80s Europop that hit in Mexico City and Singapore was way way way better than early '90s Europop that hit in Mexico City and Singapore. I don't really have a sense of '90s Europop. If it means "Everybody Everybody" and "Get Ready For This" it's basically mediocre; if it means "Mambo No. 5" and "Lollipop (Candyman)" then it's fine.

By the way, I once shelled out the bucks for an Italo Disco import compilation and thought the music was a lot drier and duller than the "Bailo Bolero" and "Tarzan Boy" and "1, 2, 3" Italian stuff I loved. Is "Tarzan Boy" typical of "Italo" or is it actually a poppier outpost?

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'Is "Tarzan Boy" typical of "Italo" or is it actually a poppier outpost?'

In my experience (not expert) it's very much the latter. I was surprised to see it being labelled as Italo myself and unsure of the real connections, other than being from the mid 80s it shares certain sonic elements. But I could be being too narrow re Italo definition.

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koganbot

Well, its composer and (I think) producer, Maurizio Bassi, has an Italian name and is widely believed - on the Web, anyway - to be the real singer on "Tarzan Boy," with Jimmy McShane just lip-synching in the vid. I haven't confirmed this. Most of the songs I listed above are as poppy as "Baltimora," so if they're "Italo" then so is "Baltimora." A lot of 'em could equally be classed "Hi-NRG." And maybe "Italo" and "Hi-NRG" at various points in the '80s are virtual synonyms for "Europop," wherever the record actually turns out to have been made. (Lime and Trans-X on my list turn out to be from Canada, along with Tapps.)

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"I don't really have a sense of '90s Europop. If it means "Everybody Everybody" and "Get Ready For This" it's basically mediocre; if it means "Mambo No. 5" and "Lollipop (Candyman)" then it's fine."

Ha ha, well you can say the first two are EuroDANCE and the latter two EuroPOP and then we've nailed why you might prefer the latter two there and then.

But 'Everybody Everybody' and 'Get Ready For This' ARE fairly mediocre examples of EuroDance (itself not so much a genre as just a term to encapsulate all pop-orientated/radio-friendly dance music being produced in Europe (but not the UK) in the digital age) in any case. Black Box certainly had better singles, and most people seem to think 'No Limit' is 2 Unlimited's apex - whatever you may think of that.

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koganbot

Radio Disney still plays "Get Ready For This" and "Blue Da Bee" and "Mambo No. 5" regularly. Don't know if this makes those songs trendy or un-.

I'm not thinking of Roxette and Midi, Maxi & Efti and Ace of Base (not to mention Rednex and Backstreet Boys and *NSync) as Europop but as Something Else, though obviously those were European-made pop that hit in Europe.

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