From The Vaults: Bubbling Under- George Kranz- "Trommeltanz (Din Daa Daa)"

Doom doom doom blah CRASH!

Because I ran a paid piece today, I also wanted to run an article from last November for free subscribers that fits into this month’s 1980s theme. Unfortunately, this piece ran the day after the US elections, and I wanted to give it a second chance.

Welcome to Bubbling Under. Each week, I cover a musical artist who charted outside Billboard’s Hot 100. This week: George Kranz

Despite my love for really big overproduced 80s dance music, I actually had never heard this one until two years ago. To cut a long story short, I was super furious when my favourite Netflix show GLOW got cancelled. To the point where I got rid of the streaming service. I tried finding a similar show to fill the void, and for a while,e Physical seemed like a surefire bet. It had the amazing Rose Byrne in a leading role and was set in the ’80s. I mean, what could go wrong?

A lot.

The already shaky writing, for starters, got progressively worse as the series went on. Eventually, I gave up and didn’t bother with the critically lambasted third season. There was a silver lining, though.

It’s where I first heard today’s Bubbling Under post subject.

When I first saw George Kranz on the list I use for these posts, I was a bit worried there wouldn’t be enough info for a post. Of course, I was right, but wanted to do it anyway. This song is as catchy as Hell.

Basically, it’s just a big 80s dance beat with wild drums, synthesizers, beatboxing, and (I’m assuming) Kranz yelling things like:

“Bound da bound bound
Da doom doom blah
Bound da doom blah”

This goes on for six minutes in the unedited version. It probably sounds terrible to most people, but it’s fun and makes me want to dance.

So, as per usual, who is George Kranz?

Well, there’s not a lot of info to go by. I thought going in this would have to be part of a two-fer with another artist, but somehow I made my next sentence into an entire piece. George Kranz is a percussionist and dance music artist from somewhere in Germany and he was born in 1956. Lots to work with, right?

“Din Daa Daa” peaked at #1 for two weeks on the Billboard dance charts before narrowly missing the Hot 100 at #110. The track is considered a classic which was (apparently? I can’t hear it) sampled in another, more widely heard dance classic:

Digging a little deeper, I found out Kranz had previously been the drummer for the German band Zeitgeist. The band broke up in 1983 and Kranz went solo.

Zeitgeist did release about four 45’s on their home country. There’s zero info on 45cat regarding the releases. “Frankenstein’s Kinder” has some cuckoo clock sounds and female punk vocals.

I’m not shocked Kranz had a punk/new wave background because “Din Daa Daa” had that same frantic energy, only polished up for a dance music audience.

Subsequent releases did what I just described and polished the sound up for a more pop sensibility:

Discogs tells me that Zeitgeist did release three albums between 1981-1983. I was hoping to find German TV footage of the band, but my search turned out to be fruitless.

But anyway, back to Kranz’ solo career. “Din Daa Daa” or “Trommeltanz” as North American pressings called it was a huge dance smash. While trying to dig deeper, I found out the track was produced by Christopher Franke of Tangerine Dream. Tangerine Dream are one of those bands I need to play more of. I only really know their film score work for Risky Business.

Tom Cruise dancing around to “Din Daa Daa” while yelling out “Blah! Blah! CRASH!!!” would have been more entertaining than that “iconic” Bob Seger scene we got.

For a couple of reasons, I’m going to compare “Din Daa Daa” to another 80s song that I also love and am more familiar with, “White Horse” by Laid Back. Unlike “Din Daa Daa”, “White Horse” briefly pierced the Top 40 in the US and Canada. “White Horse” has the same big energy as “Din Daa Daa” but is less manic and more structured for a pop audience, which is perhaps why it fared better:

The other reason I am comparing the two tracks is because “White Horse” is also the track that replaced “Din Daa Daa” at the top of the Billboard dance charts.

Over the years, several remixes were released. I’m not a huge fan of 80’s songs being remixed with 90’s production values, so we’ll skip over that. They also really tried hard to make “Din Daa Daa” happen in the UK, where I would think it could have fared better as a pop hit, but the highest it ever got was #88.

Kranz did have a couple of follow-up singles in Germany, none of which appear to have been released elsewhere.

Here he is on German TV with “Your Touch”:

You have to hand it to him for doing a more structured pop song and not “Din Daa Daa II” but it’s also comically awful. I get why he didn’t have much luck following his debut up.

In 1987, he did make one attempt at another dance smash. Kranz teamed up with Michael Cretu, the European music producer known for acts such as Sandra, to record a single called “I’ve Got The Beat (Magic Sticks)”.

This is pretty fun in a sort of “big cheesy 80’s” sort of way, and I could have seen this being a huge European hit.

Anyway, aside from various remixes of “Din Daa Daa” and a single with Jamaican reggae band Third World (“Now That We’ve Got Love”) called “Woh Yooh”, that’s about it for Kranz. I’ll close this edition off with “Woh Yooh” which combines reggae with Kranz’s beatboxing. It actually sort of works:

Wednesday: Haircut 100.