Released 7 July 1994 Length varying lengths | Format 12", CDS, Downloads | |
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Recorded 14 June 1993,1 Ceu Só Estudios, Portugal Genre Spoken word, Ambient, House Music, progressive house, Electro house, Trance Music, Uplifting trance, Drum and bass, Breakbeat, Dubstep, Synthpop, UK garage, Techno, Trip hop, Hip hop, Art rock Label Sweatlodge, Kaos, Tribal, Twisted Records (U.S.), Twisted Records (UK), Plastic City, Armada Music, kontor records, 24 Records, Skint, Bosphorus etc. | ||
So Get Up, written and vocalized by Ithaka, also known as Ithaka Darin Pappas, is a 1993 spoken-word Electronic dance music vocal-poem more frequently credited to the Portuguese house music production duo Underground Sound of Lisbon and the German Trance music duo, Cosmic Gate.
Contents
- Lyrics
- The So Get Up controversy
- VersionsRemixesUsesSampling
- 1993
- 1994
- 1995
- 1997
- 2000
- 2001
- 2002
- 2003
- 2004
- 2005
- 2007
- 2008
- 2009
- 2012
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- References
Ithaka Darin Pappas lived and recorded in Lisbon, Portugal from 1992-1998. His poem So Get Up (then entitled "So Get Up, The End Of The Earth Is Upon Us") was written and first vocalized in January 1993 for a program called "Bairro Quatro" on Rádio Comercial in Lisbon. The station's sound technician, Pedro Costa, recorded Ithaka's voice live on-air. Two months later, in March 1993, a techno-pop demo was made in Manchester, England with a student engineer/producer. The initial 'publicly released, physically manufactured' musical element backing the poem was created in 1994 by DJ Vibe & Doctor J aka Underground Sound Of Lisbon (or USL) who invited Ithaka (at that time using an alias name, Korvowrong) to rerecord the poem as a guest vocalist on their first release.
USL's nine-minute Progressive house version of So Get Up appeared on the B-side of their "Chapter One" 12-inch vinyl release. In Portugal this was distributed by Kaos Records, and worldwide by Tribal UK and Twisted Records (U.S.). It soon became a major Portuguese dance music "national anthem" and influenced a large populace of Portuguese youth to get interested in house music, famous for Ithaka's shouting "So get up, forget the past, the end of the world is upon us! Pretty soon it will all turn to dust!"
In 1994, the UK edition of the single (now as A side), had several remixes by Danny Tenaglia and Junior Vasquez as well as an original mix and a cappella version. This first international edition sold approximately 50,000 copies.
Thru the last two decades, So Get Up under varying titles such as; "Get Up", "Get Up, Go Insane!", "The End Of The Earth", "Hardventure", "Headcharge", "Forget The Past", "Trance Line", etc. has been remixed, sampled and released in a multitude of EDM styles on the records of; Fatboy Slim, Stretch & Verne, 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, and many others.
In 2003, Miss Kittin used the entire "So Get Up" poem as part of the intro on her album Radio Caroline Vol.1.
A small quantity of legal and registered remixes have been made of So Get Up, but because an a capella was included in the first U.S. and U.K. releases on Tribal Records, rouge musical versions using the vocal have snow-balled out of control. Hundreds of House, Progressive House, Trance, Techno, Tech House, Rock, Dubstep and Grabber producers have simply placed the So Get Up vocal on their own instrumentals and called them their own (sometimes with subtle title changes, but often just as "So Get Up"). To date, there are now at least 1029 released remixes using the Ithaka Darin Pappas' original vocal recording. As of late 2016, So Get Up now hold the distinction of being the most remixed vocal a cappella in musical history (Guinness World Record Holder 2016 ).
So Get Up by its individual producers and DJs has been played/performed at large-scale dance parties around the global such as the Electric Daisy Carnival in New York and Orlando (2016) as interpreted by Cosmic Gate. In early 2017, Armin Van Buuren opened a vinyl set at his own A State of Trance festival in Utrecht, Netherlands by playing the "So Get Up" a Capella from 1994.
Lyrics
The end of the earth is upon us. Pretty soon it’ll all turn to dust. So get up. Forget the past. Go outside and have a blast. Go a thousand miles in a jet airplane. Go out of your mind go insane. To a place you never been before. Eat ice cream our you’ll lick the floor. 'Cause, the end of the earth is upon us. Pretty soon it’ll all turn to dust. Goodbye my friends. Goodbye world. I’ll see you in the next life.
The "So Get Up" controversy
In 1993, Ithaka had originally written and recited the poem called So Get Up (The End Of The Earth Is Upon Us) for his weekly segment of a program called Quatro Bairro on Rádio Comercial in Lisbon, Portugal. The next year he rerecorded it as a guest performer to be the primary vocal of a B-Side single for the Portuguese dance music group called Underground Sound Of Lisbon. The song became an instant national hit and was soon released internationally as a ten-mix, double vinyl set on New York's Tribal Records (a subsidiary of I.R.S. Records/E.M.I. Records). The song climbed to 1st place on the Billboard's Independent Dance Music Charts for the U.K. – and number 52nd in the United States.
Since 1995, the song has been remixed over a thousand times including versions by such greats as Fat Boy Slim, Junior Vasquez, Danny Tenaglia, Cosmic Gate and has appeared on over one-hundred compilations with combined sales in the millions. As the original music has been stripped away by each succeeding producer, the only singularly unifying element of all 1000+ mixes of So Get Up is Ithaka's poem and his vocals. Ironically the song, which was considered the first modern "Portuguese" musical export, was released without even a featuring Ithaka credit, even though Ithaka (a Californian who was only temporarily residing in Lisbon) is the primary publishing rights owner of the track and never a member of the Underground Sound Of Lisbon project. Reportedly no actual record royalties were ever paid to Ithaka Darin Pappas.
In 2013, German Trance superstars, Cosmic Gate, also excluded Ithaka's vocal/lyrical credit even though they licensed the entire "So Get Up" a Capella. Without a doubt, Cosmic Gate's version of has become the biggest commercial success of So Get Up to date. In October of 2013, it charted at #1 on Beatport's trance music charts after being featured on Armin Van Buuren's compilation A State Of Trance 2013, on Hardwell On Air Episode 133 and on Cosmic Gate's album Start to Feel (2014), with additional mixes by Pelari, Alex di Stefano and Ben Gold. It has been a festival favorite for the group since its release, being performed at Amsterdam Dance Event, Electric Daisy Carnival, Ultra Music Festival and on Cosmic Gate's own world tour.
Versions/Remixes/Uses/Sampling
Documented uses of vocal & poem, So Get Up [by Ithaka Darin Pappas ©1993] in modern music appearing under varying titles. Poem was originally recorded for Radio Cómercial in Lisbon, Portugal in 1993. However, most musical versions have stemmed from illegal uses/sampling of the a cappella version that was recorded for Underground Sound Of Lisbon in Portugal, 1994. Note: This list includes both legal and unauthorized uses.