Releases on Afe:
Music for Your Holidays [afe023cd]

Related releases:
A.A.V.V.: Teddy Bear Remix Project [afe024box]

Ever wondered about what may bring a young hispanic and a young german to make music together?

Let's start from the beginning: summer of 1996, a crowded discobar in Ibiza, two fat hours past midnight. The evening is heavy on Eighties revival, and the velvet voice of Sandy Marton is a cool ghost in the air.

Andreas Ramirez, tanned, hairy and foxy, is dancing tightly to the soft hips of Lisa Wolkspurz, a young and attractive german gal, whose presence here is justified by a hard-earned holiday along with her brother Peter and her boyfriend Klaus Wieder.

As the beat pumps on, Andreas gets closer and closer, feeling way macho, smiling and smirking, feeling great, completely gratified by the young german smiles and allusions: and as Sandy Marton fades in the initial refrain of Dead Or Alive's "You Spin Me Round", suddenly the firm touch of a hand becomes a presence on his shoulder.

About turning to see what's going on, a hard punch hits his face, and as he fell down, he sees the sarcastic grin of Klaus, screaming at him idioms he is unable to understand.

Andreas has never been the one who turns the other cheek and smiles, especially when he can't understand the reason: fatiguely getting straight again, his boiling blood forces him to attack Klaus, who in turn, avoids the charge, and hits Andreas with a strong elbow blast on his back.

The spanish tries to get up again but falls down. Black-outing from the rage, Klaus throws himself against the young spanish, kicking him furiously up until Peter comes in, trying to cool his soon to be brother-in-law: "Klaus, you're nothing short of an animal!!!! What the damn are you doing to this poor boy??? What really happened?"

"This bastard was dancing with Liza!" "What then? She's not your wife!!! She can dance with whoever she wishes to!!!"

Klaus won't hear any reason and punches Peter in the face. At which point, poor little crying Liza is totally upset:"Is this really the man I'm about to marry? That spanish guy was so cute and tender..." After which, a heavy glass pint breaks over Klaus head, putting him to sleep...

Hours later, in the hospital: Andreas comes out of the emergency rescue, his head wrapped in a gauze shroud, as if he was a mummy. Peter and Liza are there, waiting unanxiously to know something about Klaus's prognosis.

Seeing the young spanish, Liza promptly goes to him, and lays down a big bunch of excuses. Even if the experience has put a strain on the young spanish, he is all big-eyed and fluffy as he listens to Liza. Peter gets close and apologize too, and the three decide to move to a bar to have some tortillas, abandoning Klaus to his destiny.

And over tortilla, Andreas engages in a reproduction of the last thing he heard before losing senses: the refrain to "You Spin Me Round". Unluckily his broken jaws and swollen lips are of no help: and what comes out sounds like a fragmented and happy beat, crunched by a low-pass filter low on batteries.

Peter, a rampant DJ, is in ecstasy: "Andreas, you are a darn genius!!! This is great!!! Holy sheep!!!! You know I'm a DJ: we could play evenings together; you could be my vocalist !!! It would be a delirious success!!!"

"Yes you could", adds Liza, her hormones a rampant swarm. "You could come and stay at our place, in the Ruhr, it would be great fun!!!".

Some years later: Andreas and Liza, wedded and divorced, meet again at a party: on the day before, the now world famous duo won a TV DJ-rally, and it's still toasting about it on the next morning.

The two exes stare at each other longly before being able to whisper a word. Liza, swelling her heart, blushes and stay silent. "I think about you a lot", says Andreas. "I still held dearly to the teddy bear you presented me with the night after we made love for the first time, just before dropping off to sleep".

Liza starts an abrupt crying. "Oh, Andreas!!!", she sighs, and hugs him tightly. An unseen witness behind the corner, Peter listens to everything, sees her sister and his friend kissing once again, feeling happy. He longly has longed for that to happen. And in his head, the title for their next track is still ready.

....

Acapulco, February 2005: it has been a wonderful day. Over the ornamental roof of Glory Hotel, Andreas and Liza, Peter and his newly acquired partner Anjali are gazing at the sunset, sipping a Daiquiri after the other, swallowing in those sips the success that led them to their first platinum disc.

Down in the streets, ghetto-blasters and car boomboxes are playing at impossible volumes a thousand fractal versions of their latest glorious hit. Should you happen to lean from the balcony, you would see dozens of youngsters dancing a future-lounge rhythm, their bodies adorned by t-shirts that carries the faces of Wolkspurz & Ramirez, and just behind, the unmistakable silouhette of a teddy bear.

You could lean, but somehow, you stay there, lying down, filling your pupils with the burning orange of the setting sun, in a gentle and serene silence. Holding tight to what you care for most in the world, and a bright future ahead.

[Paolo Scaruffi, extract from the book "Avengers of Pop: new directions in modern music", (c) 2004 by the Author, used with his kind permission]