In mid-1991 (at the age of ten) I started listening to contemporary non-children's music - mainly dance back then. T99's 'Anastacia' (Scirocco Edit) was one of the key tracks much loved in the very early days.

Home taping happened a lot - partly from compilation CDs borrowed from the local library (House Party, Turn Up The Bass, Techno Trance, Move The House, etcetera) but mostly from the radio. Radio was important: the Dutch broadcasting organisation 'Veronica' and dance shows like For Those Who Like To Groove and TROS Dance Trax (all were broadcast on Radio 3).

I was obsessed by the first two 2 Unlimited albums. That's why the list above is sorted from Z to A/0 instead of in the usual alphabetical order - that would look quite off-putting.

I read pop magazines like 'Hitkrant', providing something about 2 Unlimited nearly weekly, and every week I went to the record store to pick up the newest Top 40/Mega Top 50 chart sheet. This was the pre-internet era.

Much-loved older tracks

I was very focused on recent releases, although some pre mid-1991 songs were also played; mostly danceable and released from around 1987 onwards.

These are some examples of delayed late-80s-to-mid-1991 joy. I remember playing them a lot in that era, probably after hearing them on Radio 3 and slightly older compilations, like the first 13/14 TUTB CDs.


Some old disco classics (like Boney M - Ma Baker and Foxy - Get off) and danceable Madonna hits were also appreciated.

In fact there's not that much to say about this chapter. Danceable happy-go-lucky music dominated. I was still home taping a lot and borrowed dance compilations like Mega Dance and Now Dance Hits from the local library. I listened to Radio 538, Radio 3 FM (since 538 was often hard to receive) and the local dance station Radio Atlantis/Channel X. I read magazines like Hitkrant and watched the Dutch music video station TMF.

By the end of high school, I got internet. You can read more about that below.

As said above: during my final year of high school, I got internet. The dial-up version, at the most 1 hour a day, with the famous modem bleeps, provided by WorldOnline. I was searching for pics and fonts to use on my first 'pc made' cassette tape artwork.

Besides this, was checking the home pages of radio stations and TMF now. That TMF site published things like their 'high rotation' playlist. Back then I was also very interested in Radio 538's 'Make It Or Break It' item, presenting new releases 2 times a day (often recorded on a cassette tape) and also published online.

Aside from the availability of internet the era was fairly similar to the previous one, when it came to me & music. This era actually lasted until summer 2000. After that, the emerging internet started to influence my musical tastes.