Review: The Very Best Of DJ BoBo

I know now why Alec Empire is so angry.

As soon as I put the CD in, I fired off a quick email to two friends, one being the culprit who had innocently handed the CD to me earlier in the morning.

I'm listening to _The Very Best of DJ Bobo_ right now. I'll send some thoughts later after I've gone through the whole album (my gut reaction first impression is something like "the Derek Zoolander of EuroTechno", but that's most of the people I listen to in EuroTechno [like Sash!]).

I firmly stand by this initial description. Also, I'd like to apologize up front to Sash!. I didn't meant to drag him into this awful mess.

DJ BoBo, or Rene Baumann, is Swiss by birth, and a confectioner (baker) by training, but has been pretty influential in the European Pop scene, especially Switzerland and Germany since his debut single in '89. He's near the top of many notable top 10 and 100 lists for best selling German artists and most hits during the '90s. It doesn't seem as though he's lost any of the fan base or fame if his web site is any indication. He notes Phil Collins as his favorite singer.

For what it's worth, "The Very Best Of DJ BoBo" is passable. On the whole, musically, it's more or less comparable to Real McCoy. Pretty standard '90s Euro Pop. The one problem I have with it is that he's really really really stuck in Live Aid mode. BoBo makes Ace of Base look like Slayer. There's maybe two tracks in which he says or does anything musically that's challenging or gritty (only in "Shadows Of The Night" does he mention something in the begining about corpses and graves, but it's largely forgetable). This doesn't surprise me as much as it reflects the difference of Pop in the US and Pop in parts of Europe. Britney Spears is pretty provocative no matter which way you slice it. Sure, she's not provocative like Peaches, but it's meant to get teenage boys riled up and, consequently, make girls want to be just like her and listen to all her songs.

DJ BoBo, on the other hand, isn't racy at all, at least not in "The Very Best Of". His website, the english version of which is at http://djbobo.musicaliens.de/eng/index.html, has some more up-to-date photos of him than whats on the liner notes to the CD I have, and he appears more gritty there, with short hair and some fashionable mini-beard action. Also, some of his newer stuff may be more modern and potentially more lewd, but I doubt it. He strikes me as being about as caustic as pink fuzzy bunnies in Candyland.

Not that you necessarily need to be gritty or lewd or overly sexual in music. It's just my position that music that has real emotion to it is much better than music that doesn't. And most music put out by people prefacing themselves with "DJ" is usually something you could conceivably hear in a club of one type or another. Club music is usually sexual, since people go to clubs to dance and meet people, which implies at the very least a good beat (with the appropriate allowances for goth core, Belle & Sebastian-style indie rock, emo-kid stylings, and what not).

But then, Pop is pretty much packaged for the masses to buy and like. In the US, that demographic likes Britney Spears, but in Switzerland and Germany, they like DJ BoBo. He may be all the lewd they can handle. To each his own. I just get the feeling that he's too happy and too about world togetherness. It's the sorta thing I could imagine the 18-20 year old crowd of good kids listening to during reunification, right along with Hasslehoff, but that's about it.

Up until recently, you would have been able to download MP3s of the songs on this album. These days, you may want to either buy or borrow the album from someone, or try Kazaa and the like.