the very first moment i enjoyed dance music was on a sunny saturday afternoon, july 23, 1994, driving along a little stretch of road between zandvoort and amsterdam, in the netherlands.
i was 17, right? hormonal, pubescent, cocky. not entirely different from how i am now—at 28. i suppose i must’ve been at least a little bit more innocent, no?
before the start of my final year of high school, i spent another summer in germany, visiting friends from my stay the previous year, and also hanging out with mike, the new german exchange student that my family had hosted in indiana.
although i felt mature and worldly and philosophical and intelligent for my age, mike was living a mature, european, young adult life which made me oh so jealous. upon arriving at his family’s mansion in kassel [a posh suburb outside of frankfurt], i was blown away by how modern and well thought-out it all was. industrial design [of course], with everything [music, lighting, fireplace, garage door] hooked in to b&o remote controls.
what impressed me the most, though, was just how adult mike’s bedroom was. he had his own office, with computer and fax and file cabinets and bookshelves. his room was very modern and… for a teenager, clean!
that first afternoon, after a very friendly afternoon barbecue, mike and i retreated to his bedroom to catch up. i was immediately drawn to his cd collection—he must have had 100 cds! for a teenager in 1994, this was a very impressive feat.
i started flipping through his brushed-aluminum rack, but didn’t recognize any of the titles. whereas my east german friend lars enjoyed many of my favorite artists, like depeche mode, erasure, the scorpions and die fantastischen vier, my west german friend mike had nothing but weird techno music.
he played chirpy bleepy electronic music at every opportunity, trying to brainwash my [at the time] alternative/grungey self into liking it. i started to get a little bit annoyed, the teenager in me thinking, why can’t this german freak just listen to normal music?
mike’s supercool friends, timo [a.k.a. manuel] and tille [a.k.a. tille met dem brille] adopted me, and the four of us were inseparable throughout the summer. we’d ride mopeds around, go swimming, head into the city, and just generally cause teenage mayhem throughout suburban frankfurt.
timo, tille and mike
one night i ended up at a hausparty, and the gang tried again to get me hooked on their crazy techno music. the host of the party had just scored an extended 12″ single of kraftwerk‘s classic, minimalist anthem, autobahn, and excitedly described to me how much i’d love it, using 12-syllable-long words that i couldn’t quite translate.
the record played for 12 minutes, and everyone at the party gathered around the plattenspieler, in awe.
i rolled my eyes, rejecting their attempt to educate me. the sadness in their eyes was apparent, but they weren’t ready to give up—yet.
the following weekend, we’d planned a road trip up to holland, to a little coastal resort outside amsterdam, called zandvoort. we’d be camping on the beach, and our car was loaded with tents, a sun umbrella, a few cases of beer, and junk food. teenager paradise.
on the drive up the autobahn in timo‘s clunky old volkswagen, the windows were rolled down, and tinny techno was booming out of the crappy old speakers. every homemade mix tape featured rave/techno/ambient classics that they all knew and loved, and as our journey progressed, holiday giddiness overtook the three of them, and they were practically dancing in their seats, bouncing and clapping and high-fiving each other, shouting oh, das ist geil! [that is cool!] or ach, supercool!, with their whole arms flailing out the windows, building boxes and doing other wild dance moves.
i felt left out, but just wasn’t feeling the music. i’d tried so hard to have an open mind, but the tinny techno beats just weren’t moving me in the same way a soulful guitar ballad or morose depeche mode synthline could. hey—i was a teenager, and i knew what i liked.
then, just as we’d pulled off the autobahn onto a little beach road, i heard this song. this subtle, harmless techno song, coming out of the volkswagen’s crappy little speakers. building, building, building… slowly.
i’m sure a lot of it was just the excitement of the trip, the setting of the summer sun outside the window, enjoying the company of my supercool german friends. but, at that moment, i suddenly got it… i felt it, i understood it, and i knew why this song was so good.
the track, of course, is the legendary café del mar by energy 52, one of the first critically-acclaimed trance records. some might argue it helped launch the trance genre, and helped spawn rave culture. for me, i know it’s the first bit of electronic music, of dance music, that got my mind, my heart and my body excited about a song.
when i left kassel at the end of the summer, mike snuck the single for café del mar into my suitcase. sadly, it got played to death, and i got rid of the scratched plastic disc years ago. but, whenever anyone mentions techno music, or the famous namesake of the song [the café del mar area of ibiza], i smile, and in my mind try to imitate that crazy, arm-flailing-out-the-car-window dance that mike timo and tille mit dem brille were doing as we sped up to zandvoort for that wild weekend trip.
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