Bonkers Part 6

 

As mentioned in the Bonkers 5 post, the happy hardcore scene wasn't in a good place going into 1999 and something needed to change. I was therefore encouraged by the change in DJs for Bonkers 6. Hixxy and Sharkey were out and DJ SY and DJ Vibes were in.

As I was yet to hear Bonkers 5, this seemed a positive change based on Bonkers 4. At the time I hadn't been impressed with the Hixxy mix and I just couldn't get into the freeform music that Sharkey was playing. 

Despite this, Bonkers 6 was the only Bonkers to be released in the 20th century that I never listened to at all in the 20th century. Not sure why as I was starting to buy new happy hardcore again around this time, I bought the Helter Skelter "Lost In Music" tape pack as soon as I could which would have been April 1999, the same month this came out.

Dougal has now been promoted to CD1 and his mix gets off to a good start with "Shelter From A Dream" which is labelled as "Captured". He also played this tune in his back to back set with Hixxy at "Lost In Music" after they dedicated the set to a Helter Skelter regular who'd recently passed away and I instantly liked the tune. Decent follow up with "Sitar" by TKM but then it starts to go somewhat downhill.

The tune "Higher Ground" by Innovate is irritating. But it does come back to life with "The Chant" by Dougal & TKM. Just 8 of the 18 tracks in this mix are from Essential Platinum, the fact there were very few tunes coming out on the label by this point may have had something to do with that. Oddly the stand out tunes later on in the mix are the remixes of "Eye Opener", "See Me Climb" and "Space Invader". 

Overall the Dougal mix is a mixed bag which I guess is to be expected. Generally speaking it's the tunes that got played at the raves which are the better ones.

Onto the DJ SY mix and if there was ever any evidence we were running out of tunes in 1999 then this is it. There are 16 tracks and 11 of them are remixes. We also have the tune "Movin On" by SY and Demo which was never released but I suspect it's older than 1999 because Demo had seemingly left the scene by then. I do think it's the best tune in the mix though. 

What I will say is that despite it being so remix heavy, the overall mix isn't bad. I've found the first part growing on me with "Flowers In The Rain" being the highlight. The middle bit is the best bit, but then it goes down hill from the "What Is A DJ?" remix before slightly redeeming itself with the last track.

The Vibes mix as one would expect is unashamedly cheesy. In an era when DJs started going more trancey and trying to be taken more seriously, Vibes stuck to his guns. For me this was a welcome addition but at the same time if you want happy hardcore to get taken seriously by the masses then a Vibes mix probably isn't the best idea.

Overall it's an enjoyable mix and includes an unreleased Dougal track called "Look At The Stars" but I can see how it would suit a Vibes mix more than a Dougal one. I do however draw a line with "Clearly Now" which is followed by a remix of "Techno Wonderland" which has always been too cheesy for my liking.

A common complaint about DJs who mix compilations is the fact they predominantly play their own records. You can't have that complaint with the Vibes mix though with only one record credited to the man himself which is "Techno Wonderland". One could say even that isn't by Vibes as the original is by Steve Smeeth, someone nobody seems to know anything about and who only made that record which itself is just a sped up version of "Techno Wonderland" by Zoee.

This reached number 10 in the compilations chart which was pretty good for a scene that was dying. By this point people were saying they remember happy hardcore like it was a thing of the past. There were clubs hosting rave nights that took you back to the early 90s. I wasn't having any of it though, I was determined to prove that happy hardcore was still alive and well.

I couldn't deny the old nemesis that was commercial house and commercial trance was getting better. I'd previously complained it was too slow, but it was certainly getting faster on the trance side of things. The hard trance of Mark EG and M Zone at Helter Skelter had become a big attraction and wasn't really much faster than the commercial trance. But first and foremost I was still a raver.

Towards the end of the year something happened which I used as a point to prove that happy hardcore was still alive and well. Bonkers 7 was on the listening post at Our Price. More on that next week.