Looking for the perfect beat

I mentioned earlier that I used to go to all sorts of clubs back when it was cool to wear a big yellow smilie face on the back of your jacket. No kidding!

You are listening to all sorts of music and songs and older ones go while new ones come. Sure, beats and lyrics do get recycled and mixed up - maybe the younger generations do not realize the rip off and enjoy the canned, uninspired and lame version. But there are some songs that stand out. They leave a mark on a deeper level effecting you mentally and emotionally. While it could be that the song reminds you of that last great summer of school, or your first kiss - or generally having had a bast view friends while rocking, dancing or singing to this one particular track.

Now, listening to Techno is making things even harder, because they are produced by a handful of producers using different aliases for every record they release. In other words names are meaningless.

Years later I am trying to collect as many of these tracks I can find. I will try to randomly upload them here for your entertainment. Please bear in mind that they are from a time long gone, so they may sounds silly nowadays. But I do not care, I have special place for them in my heart.

The following track was - for me - the culmination of Electronic Music. I listened to it on the way to the club, the VW Beattle I had packed with friends. I had an amp and two 30" woofers in the back in that small luggage compartment below the rear window. The whole system did not cost more than about 150 Deutsche Mark - a steal. The board carrying the woofers was an old desktop plate my father got from the school he worked in.

We were going 120KM/h (or about 80mph) and the woofers were muting any other noise present in the car. No engine noise, no wind noise - nothing but the sounds of music.



The name of the Track is "Stakker Humanoid" by "Humanoid" (check out its Wiki info). It sort of builds up as it goes and I always loved that there is a distinct sharper synth beat at about 1:30 minute in. Listening to it really loud is the key here! This track is the pure Electronic - no natural sounds, fully synthesized and computer generated. Pure bliss, ahh.

Update: I just realized that this track is now exactly 20 years old (since it was released 1989 in Germany). Happy birthday!

Eternal Moments

There are so many things in life you encounter where you say to yourself: I will never forget this. But they are gone. I cannot remember many of these special moments in my life worth remembering. Songs that we listened to, movies we watched, radio stations we tuned into every week to "tape" our favorite show.

But some moments do embed themselves into our memory never to be forgotten. Why is that so? Why not always? I assume I have to cherish those memories and try to keep them alive as long as I can. Sometimes I start wondering if they actually happened - or if they are just mashed together snippets of memories, dreams and wishful thinking. A fickle thing indeed.

Yet there are some moments you recall exactly. I remember some from my youth, one is where we were in a "disco" (or club as it is called in native English speaking countries nowadays) and the music style of the time was Techno. The name of the club was "Easy" and in comparison one of the larger clubs, fitting 3000 people (so I heard). They had the typical green laser show that you could find in many disco's that wanted to be special.

I was chatting with a friend of mine I met by accident - the club was at least 70KM (45 miles) away from our home town yet here you could find at least a handful of people you knew from there. A song came on and the lasers kicked in. We started dancing to the song in true Techno style a combination of break dance and frantic hand and body movements.



I recall having the time of my life. I felt free, young and without any sorrows. Ah, those were the days...