Bonkers Part 1

 

Today is 25 years since the first Bonkers album was released. I've been planning to write something about it for some time and keep thinking of more and more to write, to the point where a single post would be ridiculously long so I'm going to do it in weekly installments instead.

At the time you still had the likes of United Dance, Hardcore Heaven and Helter Skelter putting out compilations. It was Bonkers though that lasted the rest of the decade and then came back in the 21st century so in terms of popularity and longevity, Bonkers is the biggest Happy Hardcore compilation series.

It was both a blessing and a curse to the Happy Hardcore scene. The fact it was out there in record stores being bought by the masses was proof that Happy Hardcore had it's place in the dance music world. At the same time the name Bonkers and the cartoon covers meant the music was almost playing up to the negative stereotype it had been given.

Whilst Hixxy and Sharkey are both big names is the history of the scene, at the time Hixxy had only just played his first Helter Skelter the month before and Sharkey was an MC who had only just started DJing. What they were best known for though was the record "Toytown".

"Toytown" was also a blessing and curse to the scene. It was such a massive tune at the time, there was no getting away from it. But it's an undeniably cheesy record which in turn inspired other cheesy records that helped Happy Hardcore get it's reputation as being a bit of a joke. It divides opinion, personally I'm not a fan of "Toytown".

My introduction to Bonkers came via a friend who told me he'd just bought a compilation mixed by Hixxy and Sharkey and then gave me a copy of it.

Unsurprisingly the opening track on the Hixxy mix is "Toytown". It's a vocal mix with a bit of screeching over the top. As someone who doesn't like "Toytown, this wasn't a great start but I totally understand why this was done. Next up was the nearly as cheesy "Party Time" by Dougal & Eruption, but it's a cheesy record I like. 

A couple of Hixxy tracks followed before another Dougal track alongside Hopscotch, "Steam Train". This is the only record on there I dislike more than "Toytown". It's definitely amongst the worst Happy Hardcore records of all time.

Fortunately there isn't really a bad record for the rest of the mix. A bit cheesy yes but great fun to listen to. There's a good variety of artists in there too including Highlander and Bass D & King Matthew from Holland. It ends with a fantastic remix of "Now Is The Time" by Scott Brown.

Having owned this on a copied tape it was straight into the Sharkey mix which begins with the excellent "Truth" by Marc Smith & Sharkey followed by "All Systems Go" by Force & Styles. This trio of tunes was the most listened to part for me.

It was before trancecore/freeform was a thing, but its fair to say the Sharkey mix is a lot more serious sounding than the Hixxy one. It wasn't completely free of cheese though with tunes like "Bonkers Anthem" by Druid & Sharkey. 

Around the first half of the Sharkey mix was on one tape and the second half on another. The second half didn't get as much of a listen. I thought the best tunes in the second half were "Techno Round The World" by A Sense Of Summer and "Wonderland" by Force & Styles, but I'd got these tunes on many tapes. The chunk of Druid & Sharkey compositions didn't really do it for me.

It's difficult to choose which is the best mix as both have their good and bad points. Hixxy's mix is a cheese fest, no two ways about it. But when you're best known for a record like "Toytown", and are mixing an album called "Bonkers" for the first time it would be a bit of a let down if it was any different. Sharkey's mix more or less makes the point that it's not all cheesy, but the downside is it gets a bit boring at times.

In what was an era of a number of one off happy hardcore compilations I wasn't expecting there to be a Bonkers 2. But there was and there will be more on that next week.