“Ich lieb dich nicht, du liebst mich nicht”

June 19, 2023 2:48 AM

Da da da (alternative), by Trio, was a top five hit single in 15 countries in 1982. (Joyful Top of the Pops version) (One hour version). In live performance, lead singer (and only surviving band member) Stephan Remmler played the Casio VL-1 keyboard using the Rock-1 rhythm preset and the Piano voice. (Previously: the demo melody on the Casio VL-1)
posted by Wordshore (38 comments total)

(dammit, wish there was even a brief edit window for FPPs)

That Top of the Pops version, but with the addition of the introduction by David "Kid" Jensen for a little more context.

Also, the Ariston washing machine advert.
posted by Wordshore at 3:06 AM on June 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

One of the first singles I ever bought. Simple, stupid and catchy as anything.
posted by YoungStencil at 3:10 AM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

This song was used in a (~97) Volkswagen commercial featuring an interracial gay couple out on a leisurely drive, enjoying each other's company. They trashpick a comfy chair and then re-trash it because it stinks. And then just drive around some more.
I get confused easily. There's this couple, these two men clearly in the comfortable stage of a relationship, married, and the song is I DON'T LOVE YOU, YOU DON'T LOVE ME
posted by bathysaurus ferox at 4:02 AM on June 19, 2023 [15 favorites]

(I took it as: they don't love the chair. But that's just me.)
posted by gimonca at 4:09 AM on June 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

How do you know they are gay and married? I saw that commercial a million times and never clocked that
posted by thedaniel at 4:12 AM on June 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

I’m certain there have been threads before about that commercial. Brilliant marketing which the gay community saw clearly connecting to them while many others saw it as just another commercial. A refectory embodiment of the don’t ask don’t tell stage of the progress of gay rights.
By that time the song was familiar to me, but I must have missed its initial stage of true popularity.
posted by meinvt at 4:55 AM on June 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

I had forgotten how spare the original was - Señor Coconut's cover version is what's in my library, and it gets a little lush. The official video is a tiki fever dream, but it's in English for whatever reason.
posted by Kyol at 5:25 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Because of that VW ad, this was the first MP3 I ever downloaded.

Over dialup.

It took 3 hours.
posted by hwyengr at 5:38 AM on June 19, 2023 [19 favorites]

I could have sworn Sesame Street did a cover, “Ba Na Na”, but I can’t find evidence anywhere…
posted by sixswitch at 5:45 AM on June 19, 2023

Brilliant marketing which the gay community saw clearly connecting to them while many others saw it as just another commercial. A refectory embodiment of the don’t ask don’t tell stage of the progress of gay rights.

Exhibit A here for "others" - I honestly thought those guys were just roommates fairly newly out of college. 20-somethings, scrounging for free furniture?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:04 AM on June 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

There's also a different version of the Da Da Da Music Video set in a busy pub and shot on film stock. I vaguely recall seeing on the late show a different edit of this version which turns violent and disturbing.
posted by ovvl at 6:16 AM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

When I worked at Microsoft in the 90s, they did these department meetings in one of their theater rooms, often with in-house videos made for humorous morale building. There was one with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer recreating the VW commercial, picking up a Linux computer on the side of the road, iirc.
posted by kokaku at 6:31 AM on June 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that I remember this from the VW commercial; I think that I've had the same experience, picking up something that was set out on the curb somewhere, driving for a bit, smelling the reason why it was put out, and putting it out on a different curb somewhere else.

Also, I at first thought that this was referring to this song from the Terminator soundtrack, but that's "ya ya ya ya," although it's still very kraut rock-ische (Lin Van Hek is actually from Australia, though).
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:42 AM on June 19, 2023

First hear this in 1982 at a school assembly. The kids who performed this were, somewhat obviously, the cool kids.

When we moved to Berlin I got a bit of a crash-course in Neue Deutsche Welle which as a genre is totally under-appreciated. The local radio would play Ideal, Meine Blue Augen and it was a couple years before I found out it was written in 1981.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:35 AM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's brilliant execution of marketing when you can connect with multiple demographics using the same ad.
posted by hwyengr at 7:54 AM on June 19, 2023

Germans in socks and sandals FTMFW.
posted by Meatbomb at 7:54 AM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Wasn’t there a persistent rumour that this had been written by a professor of music as a satire on pop?
posted by Phanx at 8:10 AM on June 19, 2023

A short interview of Trio and Klaus Voormann about why the song is minimalist in equipment use.
posted by Wordshore at 8:35 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure The Oblivians' cover (called "Ja Ja Ja") is a satire on pop.
posted by vibrotronica at 8:39 AM on June 19, 2023

Forgot to add The Oblivians also did Trio's "Sunday You Need Love".
posted by vibrotronica at 8:41 AM on June 19, 2023

I have the (written in a heart shape on the cover) "special priced mini LP" which includes:
Anna --lefmein lefmean
Da Da Da I don't love you you don't love me aha aha aha (long version)
Broken hearts for you and me

Energie
Sunday you need love Monday be alone
Ja Ja Ja (arrow points to it, says Yes Yes Yes

So another ToDo* thing around here is get one of the two broken turntables fixed.
posted by winesong at 8:44 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Crazy. One of my favorite earworms (Ohrwurm auf Deutsch). In all these years, I had never bothered to look for the music video.

It's perfect. Thanks for the post!
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 8:49 AM on June 19, 2023

Also I watched the commercial linked above, realized I'd seen it when it came out, and was thrilled then and now-- because it's obviously shot in East LA, home! I worked for many years just steps away from the bridges.
But yah I got the college roomies scrounging like you do. I'm glad it had other meanings and possibilities too!
posted by winesong at 8:49 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm now so old that I occasionally need a gulp of reflux medicine. Whenever I reach for the bottle I remember that Ariston ad and find myself singing "Gaviscon - and on - and on. Gaviscon - and on...."

(True story).
posted by Paul Slade at 9:02 AM on June 19, 2023

This was the first MP3 I ever downloaded, in 1997.
posted by avocet at 9:17 AM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was once at a punk show at the 688 in Atlanta, and the band, which so far had been guitar and drums, started off a song with that beat. I knew it from Trio, but a friend had recently showed me that it was literally a single button on a cheapo keyboard. I was a little drunk asshole, so I started heckling the band, "Casio! Casio!"
I don't know, we were all supposed to be cynical in those days, I guess.
When later in the show, they introduced another song with, "We're going to try the Casio again," I felt like I had won. Something.
posted by bitslayer at 9:56 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure The Oblivians' cover (called "Ja Ja Ja") yt is a satire on pop.

To be clear, Ja Ja Ja is a different Trio song, found on the same album as Da Da Da. Which, given is overt gimmickyness, is actually a pretty cool album.
posted by philip-random at 10:46 AM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

This had me confused for a couple hours now, since I was certain the album I owned contained "Hearts Are Trump" and "Tooralooralooraloo" (which gets stuck in my head frequently), neither of which are on the Trio Album. I've finally pieced together that I had the 1997 compilation CD "Da Da Da" released in the US, whose cover is very similar to the Trio Album.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 1:25 PM on June 19, 2023

It's kind of perfect in its minimalism.
posted by maxwelton at 2:05 PM on June 19, 2023

I honestly thought those guys were just roommates fairly newly out of college. 20-somethings, scrounging for free furniture?

Same.

Interesting how others interpret stuff.
posted by Ayn Marx at 3:31 PM on June 19, 2023

kokaku - I have seen that parody video! I think it was at a msft company meeting I was at in 1996 or 1997. I'm pretty sure Linux wasn't much of a threat at the time, so I think it was some commercial unix - maybe a Sun machine, since it had a recognizable logo? They also ran a parody-subtitled version of an actual commercial with models on a runway snarking. Something about "hey IBM, how's OS/2 doing?" in there, iirc.
posted by rmd1023 at 3:37 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ooh, those Ariston ads - didn't just bring back all the feels, but they must've been recorded from Scottish television, as they've got a tiny bit of this RBS Advert (1988) tacked on the end. I'm sure there was a longer, multi-looped Ariston ad that featured the tune too.

I recently picked up a working VL-Tone at a junk freedom day. As soon as I saw someone unpacking the box I screeched over and grabbed it: everyone else was too young to remember what it was. The volume pots are shitty, and the function selector works sometimes, but it still brings back the tiny keyboard magic
posted by scruss at 3:57 PM on June 19, 2023

rmd1023, a Sun workstation sounds more right. what department were you in? i was in the games qa group.
posted by kokaku at 5:14 PM on June 19, 2023

If you want loops, the VL-1 / VL-Tone is in the Internet Archive: Electronic Rhythm Archive
posted by scruss at 5:28 PM on June 19, 2023

Maybe 10 years ago I managed to pick up a VL-1 in a wee charity shop in the Scottish borders. I was practising transcribed bossa nova solos on it on park benches in the Botanic Gdns in Edinburgh. My students also loved that VL-1 (and we'd watch "Da da da"). With the VL-1 for the younger kids it also was almost like they felt "seen" because there was an instrument with tiny keys to match their hand size (much better than a grand piano).
posted by yoHighness at 12:32 AM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Forgot to add, allegedly the VL-1 was also the world's first commercial synthesizer (source). It does actually double as a pocket calculator (there's a mode for it). As I remember, someone I talked to back then claimed that Casio was at the time mostly making calculators and this was sort of an experiment only. Hence the dual functionality.
posted by yoHighness at 12:37 AM on June 20, 2023

Cultural question: were they referred to as "VL-1"s in North America? Because to me, I remember them being advertised and sold as "VL-Tone"s in the UK.

This also reminds me of the VL-Tone Songbook. I wonder if my brother still has his copy?
posted by scruss at 7:30 AM on June 20, 2023

I meant to post this yesterday, but better late than never.

I thought I heard a female voice in the song, which turned out to be Annette Humpe on background vocals. Even though I'm not familiar with any of the acts listed in her Wikipedia entry, she has had quite an extensive career (and is still alive :-))
posted by 41swans at 3:17 PM on June 20, 2023