Bonkers Part 2

It had been nearly a year since the first Bonkers came out which was a very long time in those days. My friend who had given me a copy of that first album told me that Hixxy and Sharkey were back with a second and that he'd bought it.

Once again I got a copy of it. Before that though he was telling me what he made of it. He told me one of the stand out tunes on Hixxy's mix was "Now You've Got" by Antisocial (aka Hixxy and Sunset Regime). Looking at the tracklisting, that was one of a small number of tunes I didn't know. 

With the Sharkey mix he wasn't so complimentary. He said that the only decent tunes on it were "Genesis" by Sharkey & Trixxy and "UR Everything" by Helix.

When I got my copy and gave it a listen I discovered that "Now You've Got" is in fact "Get Into Love" which I already knew. Another error on the tracklisting was "Your Mine" by Demo was listed as "Your Mind" and "The Big Bang" by Vinylgroover was listed as "Wham Bam".

The two Demo tunes, his other being "I've Got A Feeling" were probably my favourite tunes in the mix. Much of the mix was tunes from "Essential Platinum" which was Hixxy's label at the time. 

The lack of "Toytown" and "Steam Train" meant that this was probably a better mix than his one on the first album. I liked the majority of the tunes, but the problem for me personally is that I think I had every tune on a tape somewhere else. The only one I'm not sure about is the opening track "Living The Dream" by Evolve. 

That isn't a criticism though. Inevitably there would have been many people who didn't buy tape packs and the fact the tape packs had these tunes shows it was a got representation of what was happening at the time. It just didn't really add anything to my collection.

Onto the Sharkey mix and my mate had a point. Trancecore had arrived and Sharkey was part of that, but it's not really my cup of tea. To me trancecore was taking the fun out of happy hardcore but was still too fast to really be taken seriously.

I also think "Genesis" and "UR Everything" are the best tunes on the album, probably because I don't think they're tunes you'd really describe as being trancecore. There are other decent tunes on there like "Body Slam" by Bang the Future. Overall though it's a pretty forgettable set.

The first Bonkers album got listened to a lot more than the second one. 

When I had a clear out of tapes years ago I converted the majority of them to MP3. I didn't bother converting Bonkers 2 though because I'd got all the tunes from the Hixxy mix elsewhere and I never really listened to the Sharkey mix.

Now Bonkers 2 had happened it seemed only a matter of time before we'd see Bonkers 3. More on that next week.