2 Unlimited

BEATS, RHYMES & LIFE
R E W O U N D: 1 9 9 5
W  H  E  R  E     W  O  R  D  S     F  A  I  L    ,     M  U  S  I  C     S  P  E  A  K  S

Let's cast our minds back to the autumn of 1995. 2 Unlimited had already released the last single from their third album, and were embarking on a victory lap with greatest hits collection, Hits Unlimited. The album contained three new songs, including lead single Do What's Good For Me, of which Billboard magazine wrote: "The ongoing wave of pop-NRG dance acts enjoying radio prominence owes a massive debt to this ever-hot European duo for getting the party started. Sadly, the act has yet to achieve U.S. success à la such offspring as Real McCoy, but this jumpy li'l jam could easily change that. The bassline throbs infectiously, while the interplay of male rapping and female singing pops with palpable chemistry."

Do What's Good For Me is out now.
Hits Unlimited is out now.

2 Unlimited

DISCOGRAPHIC REWIND
W  H  E  R  E     W  O  R  D  S     F  A  I  L    ,     M  U  S  I  C     S  P  E  A  K  S

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there," wrote L. P. Hartley. On the basis of these (albeit tongue-in-cheek) 1995 interviews with Ray and Kule T (members of 2 Unlimited and MN8, respectively), I can only think "thank f**k for that".

It's hard to imagine any musician responding to the question "would you wear pastel pink?" with the sort of answers the "lads" give here. It's okay boys, no one thinks you're gay, and in a mere twenty years time, it'll be mandatory for hard men to wear pastel pink.

However, it's nice that Ray is "always cautious when he makes love", because he's afraid of dying of AIDS. Less nice is Kule T's confession that he's a dog kicker...

We were here

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7 Seconds

DISCOGRAPHIC

Youssou N'Dour - 7 Seconds (1994)

From the album The Guide

"7 Seconds is about the first positive 7 seconds in the life of a child just born not knowing about the problems and violence in our world." Neneh Cherry.

When I was a young lil teenager, I thought this was a 2 Unlimited tune. It wasn't. The Dutch beauties weren't the only big boy/girl act in 1994, as Ms. Cherry and Monsieur N'Dour proved...

MORE DISCOGRAPHIC

And if you like I will be around...

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Cast your mind back to the mid- to late 90s, and you might just remember Eurodance duo La Bouche, best known for Be My Lover and Sweet Dreams (not, thankfully, a cover of the Eurythmics hit).

A product of the infamous Frank Farian (of Milli Vanilli fame), La Bouche comprised vocalist Melanie Thornton and Lane McCray. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the group was an attempt to cash in on the success of 2 Unlimited, who originated the female singer/male rapper formula.

Regardless of Thornton's vocal talents, there's no denying that La Bouche were but a poor man's 2 Unlimited, without any of the charm, sex appeal or oomph! Thornton was ice cold, and McCray seems to have got the gig by virtue of being A Black Guy. Farian might just as well have inserted a cardboard cutout of 2 Unlimited's Ray Slijngaard and achieved a better result than McCray's embarassing "rapper dude".

When La Bouche were big, I was but a young kid, and so have a certain affection for them. Just hearing Be My Lover or my personal favourite, I Love To Love, takes me right back to adolescent Saturday morning music video shows, after a night in the only gay bar in town (on those occasions I was unlucky enough to make it back to my own home).

Melanie Thornton was killed in a plane crash in November 2001, just as her solo career was taking off. And no one seemed to notice - there was September 11 to worry about, and the near-simultaneous deaths of the bigger stars Aaliyah, and Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes.

You might not have heard of La Bouche, or Melanie Thornton. Or maybe you just forgot about this silly little slice of pop nonsense. I'm hoping you can take a moment to remember a young woman whose star once burned brightly.

The last La Bouche single I heard, before they faded from my radar, was You Won't Forget Me in 1997.

Funny, that.

No one ever suddenly became depraved

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Nothing like the rain

DISCO
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What's your number one song of all time?

Not your current fling, the one playing every 15 minutes on the radio and the music channels (the ones that still play actual music). I'm talking about that one tune you always go back to, that's forever playing at the back of your mind. Like that ex you can't shake. The cornerstone of your very existence. THAT special song that's yours, and yours alone.

For me that song is Nothing Like The Rain, by 2 Unlimited.

Imagine for one moment you're an awkward, introverted adolescent. A deeply depressed loner. A teenage virgin in a country that doesn't want you, and where you don't belong anyway.

I was.

17-years-old, in a relentlessly white place populated with dry, white people. Not Irish or German or French, just plain white. Trust me, there's a difference. Australians: devoid of colour, culture, history, and somehow, soul...

Okay, so maybe it wasn't just Australia in the late '90s. Maybe it wasn't just those cold, cruel, blank subur-bots. Maybe suburbia is like that everywhere. Would I have been better off back in Northern Ireland, racked by war and terror?

Maybe not.

So, for a while, that tortured 17-year-old escaped into books, and became a nerd. You don't have to think about reality when there's somewhere else to go. The trouble is, you can sink too deep into books, and into your own world. You don't learn how to relate to Other People in books. Neither do you learn how to get between the sheets, between the pages.

The young Garçon Stupide had little interest in music at that time. Just a little Annie Lennox, nothing else. Nothing from my generation. Pearl Jam? Metallica? Nirvana? That was music for the other kids, the pastie Aussies in black t-shirts. What else was there?

There was a TV show I watched in those days in the early evening. I don't even remember what it was - probably some sit-com from Britain, from home. At 6.25pm, before the next show started at 6.30pm, they'd show a random music video as filler (for the benefit of American readers, both the UK and Australia have highly regarded taxpayer-funded broadcasters that don't show adverts).

So there I was: aloof, totally disengaged from my own peers, in a world of my own. It's about 6.25pm on 12th October 1995. I'm waiting impatiently for the next show to start, sighing impatiently as the video starts. More teen garbage.

And then I see him, moving through the blue, all muscular shoulders, and smooth brown biceps, chanting. Is this what they call rap?

There's nothing like the rain / Nothing like the rain / To come and wash away / Away the pain

Ever been drawn to something or someone against your will? The current's so strong I'm pulled in deeper and deeper. I hit the record button on the VCR (remember those?) right then.

Let me ask a question / Where do we go from here / Playing games to pass the time / That's okay / 'Cos time is on our side

So the song goes. Did that desperately sad 17-year-old have any idea how pertinent the lyrics were, or did he just see Him?

If I make a promise / I'll never let you down / Love will always break your heart / So they say / But we can turn that 'round

Everything changed from that point on. Shamefully, I tipped all my books into the bin. There was only the music after that. And then The Scene, the life, the boys, the sex, escape to New York... Everything followed from this one music video.

This one music video really was that important to me. Call it a trigger.

It's there, can you feel it? / A chance to change your world if you want it / You can give up a lot but don't give in / Be ready for your break when it comes your way / Today I say, "Hey, be prepared" / A break in the clouds - you will be heard / Raise your voice, stake your claim / After the storm, after the rain...

The young Garçon Stupide tried to love other songs about rain. Madonna's Rain was kinda cool. But nothing compares to this slick, sexy "electro ballad" from 1995. It's still amazing, everytime I watch it, and I have done countless times since. It's beyond beautiful. The not-like-in-American-videos dancing! The black fish! The flowers! The cascading water! The bass... boom boom-boom boom-Boom-BOOM-boom! And the guy! Boy oh boy, the guy... Ray Slijngaard is sexy. The kind of pretty you can imagine in sailor suits modelling Jean Paul Gaultier. He might not be the best rapper in the world (this is pop, kids) but I could listen to him all day.

Maybe it's just me.

Discographic: Nothing Like The Rain

THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED AND HAS BEEN MOVED.

YOU CAN FIND IT HERE.

ka-os|theory

You Have A Girl Brain

Those crazy boffins over at New Scientist.com (where, I'm sure, you kids are regulars) have come up with some brain scans that "provide the most compelling evidence yet that being gay or straight is a biologically fixed trait."

Yes indeed, your brain (and mine) is built like that of a straight female. In layman's terms, this means that if you sliced off the top of your skull, and the the tops of, say, George Dubya's and Oprah Winfrey's skulls, your little ole brain would resemble Miss Winfrey's and not Dubya's. This is probably a good thing. I could have said Paris Hilton and Nelson Mandela, but that wouldn't really have worked, would it?

In any case, some broad in a white coat called Ivanka Savic, who works for the Karolinska Institute (which sounds like something out of Lost) in Sweden (yes, really) has been faffing about with MRI scans, PET scans and peoples amygdala, which isn't as rude as it sounds (unfortunately). Should you wish to learn more, click the link above, because I can't really be bothered getting into it. Brain symmetry is a terrible bore.

Furthermore, I can't imagine what sort of picture I'd attach to this article, other than one of someone's brain, and that ain't gonna sell copy, so here's one of something completely unrelated.

Round Is Better

How many of you joyless, digital generation downloaders actually own a CD? Or even an LP? Because let's face it, you probably place more importance in the prestige of your shiny (gremlin-prone) iPod than in the music that's on it, right? Click click click, download a few megabytes of sound and play it back as an inferior MP3. Oh, sure, you can hear a lot more music at once (without having to undertake the crippling, ardous task of actually changing a disc) but what you have, my friend, is quantity over quality. And no one else can see what you're listening to. Those tricks you bring home (or even, miracle of miracles, a date) can't fick through your collection to see what they're getting themselves into. Are you in a Lupe Fiasco, or a 50 Center? A Kylie bitch, or Angie Stoned? Do you grind to Usher, or D'Angelo?

Downloading music might have its advantages, but it's still tedious and unreliable. I hate it. It's the same as chatting to people online when you have no intention of meeting them - it's insincere. There's nothing like having a nice, shiny CD with a real cover and a real booklet, with real design. If I really love an album, I'll even hunt down the vinyl LP. And so, even though I don't own a record player, I have 12" LPs of D'Angelo's Voodoo, Maxwell's Embrya and Real Things by, ahem, 2 Unlimited. They look good - does the Windows icon representing Umbrella do anything for you?

It seems like I'm not the only one who feels this way either. Despite this, sales of CDs plummeted 10% last year (which is quite a lot, you know), and HMV has indicated that it aims to concentrate on the gaming market in the future.

I can actually remember buying my first CD (Annie Lennox's Medusa in 1995 - I was a late bloomer). Will the present generation of square-eyed geeks look back fondly on their first iTune? I don't think so somehow...