Before this Lannie became addicted to music with guitars, there was this whole period in my teens in which I religiously listened to the most happy stuff imaginable. It is a thing that was exclusive to Western Europe (and later only the Netherlands) only; I imagine the rest of the world looked on in horror. Between 1994 and 1997, roughly, the music charts in the Netherlands were pretty much dominated by eurodance, rave and happy hardcore. Of course there were the underground hardcore parties as well, but I think I was a bit too young and bubbly for that anyway (there are a few hardcore/gabber songs I can still appreciate, and sometimes the parallels you can draw with metal are very glaring, but that wasn’t my point).
This little Lannie LOVED eurodance, rave, and happy hardcore. I drank it all in, and I would dance to it, and I adored it. In my defense, I was frigging fourteen-fifteen years old, and I didn’t know any better.
The other day we were at a party of Other Tijs who still had a crapload of that music on his harddisk. We kind of browsed through it and every song was met with groans and laughter. But occasionally, there was still an outcry of: “Oh, this one is awesome! Let this one play!” It was preciously few of them, but these songs do still exist. Some of them have withstood the test of time.
And if you’d be interested, the songs that I still like are:
- RMB – “Spring” (complete with dissonants that make you cringe, this is AWESOME)
- Dune – “Hardcore Vibes” and “Can’t stop raving” (especially the latter makes me grin like an idiot
) - Robert Miles – “Children” (still very pretty)
- Moby – “Feeling So Real” (still awesome)
- The Prodigy – “No Good (Start The Dance” (the rest of their repertoire left the eurodance genre, but this one was still in there)
I’m sure there was more that night, but I can’t think of any more right now. You’re welcome to add more, btw.
And soon enough I’ll add the youtube links, so we can all nostagically trod down memory lane 