pouët.net

probably cheesy Back in The U.K.
When it comes to German bands nobody can beat Modern Talking ;]



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kHl4FoK1Ys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNvUS-6PTbs

I was always curious - what is the German perception of Scooter?

They seem to be a mainstay of German culture, touring every year, some albums selling gold. They've had moderate success in the UK - one thing that is for sure is their production quality has always been top notch, even if some of the songs are awful. It's like they set the barrier high and low at the same time.

I've never known a group to make me think something is both amazing and cringe-worthy at the same time like Scooter do. They unashamedly rip from their heroes of the past and contemporary tracks, and then have HP blather some nonsense about an ice-cream van or Dave from Sheffield.

I guess it's their interpretation of KLF and the "Trancentral" concept, and Scooter Stadium Techno = KLF Stadium House. The KLF Stadium House era was intentionally big budget and over the top for arts sake. I remember being totally hypnotised by it when I was younger, as if KLF had an actual plot in the real world as opposed to two blokes prodding an Atari ST with a few midi devices hanging off it. Scooter seem to spend a lot of their time addressing their "posse" and sharing famous quotes like "It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice" - although moreso they foray into nonsense like "Please refrain from not smoking".

So what of Scooter? Are they a sort of kitsch dance-culture tribute act or an enduring cultural staple of Germany?

I still don't quite grasp how I keep coming back and even hearing a track like David Doesn't Eat and thinking "I don't know why I like this, but I really bloody do".

my two favourite tracks:
Rhapsody in E

Stuttgart


and another newer trancy tune:
Mesmerized

My favourite scooter.

Mine trumps your psonice. ;P

Maybe, but mine will blow yours up with it's built-in anti-armour cannon. (And if you're wondering where the ammo is stored, there's a second Vespa built for carrying ammo, and driven by a hot blond in a leather bikini, every bit as practical as a vespa as an anti-tank weapon).

Wouldn't the seat get a bit hot during firing?
Something more practical maybe -

rc55:
Scooter are one of the very few german music-acts that have success outside of germany...
...their record-company and every german music-institution (especially gema) love them, due to being a cow giving milk constantly for decades by now...
...but i personally dont know anyone listening to them, i guess only bad clubs play them and kids like their music.
They are superbly produced for sure...i think one of the 2 producers once said they did HyperHyper with an Amiga...but after that success they simply had the money for better equipment, while they most likely didnt have to spend their own money but got a nice studio thru their record-company ;) And yes, its not that hard to rip from everywhere and sound good while doing so with such professional studios.
Other german musicians didnt ever care about them until some Charts-Show in TV showed off what a career they already had and still have...since then they realised and Scooter is accepted as one of the few that have made it "internationally".

sorry for the amount of words, but you asked, i tried to answer :)

rc55: I lived in Germany for 5 years and it is simply impossible to escape Scooter there. Zap through any random youth oriented TV channel and you have a near 100% chance of catching a ringtone commercial offering multiple Scooter themes within minutes. Scooter playing in any but the biggest cities will be impossible to miss by means of local media, billboards, etc. All brassbands seem to be able to play Scooter songs. Scooter songs are played at sports events, at general audience parties, pubs, you name it, they all play Scooter (not all the time, but still). You can buy Scooter merchandise in tons of places and you actually sometimes see people wearing shirts and such in the streets. Etc etc etc

So yeah, there can be no doubt that Scooter is a cultural staple of Germany. Everybody with half a brain realises they've been making formulaic songs aimed directly at the lowest common denominator for decades, but the crowd cares less about the actual music and more about the state of mind associated with those songs so they'll probably keep having success for as long as they care to continue repeating themselves.

Highly recommended for your personal education:

hardy/havok: Thanks for the insights! :)

The whole 1st chapter kicked serious amount of ass.
Can't choose one fav.

BTW, in case you have something that's not listed here, I'd be happy to trade ;)

Scooter is one of those annoying side effects that are bound to happen when a period which is now often called "musical anarchy" in retrospective comes into full swing.
The formation began releasing under that name from 1993, when the Loveparade still was held on Kurfürstendamm and was classified as a demonstration and almost all kinds of electronic dance music got played during that event. For all intents and purposes, I recognised Scooter as a rather "western" phenomenon, since during the mid 1990s the youth in ex-GDR experienced a thing comparable to what the Brits named the "Summer of Love" in 1988 and 1989. Pirate parties, strictly underground stuff, hijacking of abandonned locations and so on. After the break-up of the GDR thousands of those locations popped up and got used - the legendary TRESOR being just the most famous of them.
Thus, formations like Scooter, even if their early material loosely resembled the sound of the time, generally were considered "unplayable sell out shit" ... well, just like every teenage generation distinguishes these things ;)
Even a well commercialised event such as the Mayday party, to which I attended in 1994 in Dortmund (some big-ass experience ;), didn't play their shit in the main hall because there were just enough acts around ( like RMB, Hardsequencer, Ilsa Gold a.s.o. ) that sounded the same but w/o the idiotic "hyper hyper" bollocks.

Actually, the "iditotic Hyper Hyper bollocks" came from Ultra-Sonic, who DID play at Mayday afaik.
Scooter were dissed from the beginning 'cause of their image; the whole underground techno scene thought they were some kind of managed boyband. That was not true back then of course - however, unfortunatey, today it is :P

Granted; it went on just like some meme on the internet today. Originated as an "inside thing" and gets picked up by the mainstream until it's all over the place. OTOH I visited the mainhall back then mostly for the "laser overkill", rest of the night we were tappin' on the acid floor ;)
We had a word for this Scooter phenomenon and just called it "Proleten- or Dorf- Techno" as it was rather a thing played at rural fairs ( Kirmes ) or big- room discotheques.
Since the whole thing gained such a steep memontum over just one or two years, the big media outfits were quick to pick up the trend -- especially VIVA -- and got the marketing machine on "Ramming Speed" by 1996.
I mean, I can vividly remember "over the rainbow" Marusha spinning the most obscure UK Hardcore in 1992 -- some of the tunes I could get my hands on now, 20 years after the fact -- on the then in jeopardy radio station DT64. Two years later that girl released some of the biggest crap that even outcrapped Scooter.

Hehe, Modern Talking (in Czech funny translation - Modry Tanky (Blue Tanks)) rulez!

Look at this russian late 80's band, they sing about Dieter Bohlen ("Dieter Bohlen doesn't smoke")

Scooter? No, totally not my cup of tea. I never liked it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8inINfuZmE

I love the original song, but I'm not sure if this cover is brilliant or just awkward.

Maybe so but it's a pretty unique formula.



LMAO get over yourself.

and the lowest common denominator of the year award goes to ready2die. congrats!

Keep trying to be funny Maali maybe some day you'll be successful.

scooter is BITS of techno scene. everybody lol. BITS is way cooler tho.

let's play some real german music instead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8cO3tZO2L4

### Song, People dancing ###

Do you guys remember Modo. I used to listen to this shit when I was in
elementary school. I remember "eins zwei polizei" and "super gut" cheesy as fuck!