Essential Mix

Being the wrong side of 30 and therefore not being part of Radio One's target audience, I have not listened to Radio One for quite a few years. Radio One has a bit of a reputation for moving on DJs to pastures new to keep their audience young. In fact Radio Two now has a very similar DJ line up to Radio One 20 years ago.

If the show was a bit more specialised then the age of the DJ wouldn't matter so much, a good example being John Peel remaining on the station until his death. However, the likes of Judge Jules, Seb Fontaine, Danny Rampling, Fabio & Grooverider amongst others have long gone.

I was therefore surprised to discover recently that one show which still remains after all these years is the Essential Mix. It began in 1993 so is older than most of Radio One's target audience. It features DJs of all areas of dance music with a different guest DJ every week playing a 2 hour set. However, the sets do not purely consist of dance music, Spin Doctors - Two Princes and Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit being examples of non dance music which have appeared in sets.

For me, the essential mix that got me most excited back in the day was Force & Styles in 1997. They were the first ever hardcore DJs to do an essential mix, and I was very much into my happy hardcore at the time.

Wikipedia has a list of all essential mixes here. I have listened to several mixes from yesteryear recently and have found every mix I have searched for, mainly on Mixcloud or Soundcloud.