Bonkers Part 7

 

It's October 1999 and things weren't looking good for happy hardcore. Demo was long gone as were events such as Vibealite and Pleasuredome. Eruption had moved onto more commercial dance music with Ruff Driverz and had sold United Dance to Slammin Vinyl. Seduction had recently played his last set at Helter Skelter before retiring and sold Hardcore Heaven to Slammin Vinyl. Billy Bunter was still around but now playing hard house. Slam was still around but had played a drum & bass set at his last Helter Skelter. Dreamscape had gone from the huge Shepton Mallet venue to The Pleasure Rooms which had a capacity similar to Milwaukee's which was the venue they outgrew in 1991. 

If all that wasn't enough, it had also just been announced that the Helter Skelter on new years eve will be the last. There was one silver lining though, Bonkers 7 had just come out and it was there to listen to on the listening post at Our Price. 

In reality though it was another nail in the coffin. I listened to it at the listening post and decided it wasn't good enough to buy. What I remember more than a lot of the music from that experience was noticing that there was less hair on the Dougal picture on the cover than usual. Then I went to Helter Skelter to see he'd had a haircut.

Hixxy was back instead of Vibes and it was the Hixxy mix which drew the most criticism. The track list may have implied several previously unheard of artists were getting tunes in the mix but the man behind all of these aliases was Hixxy, either on his own or with UFO.

What Hixxy and UFO had done was make a bunch of brand new tracks for the album which were deliberately different to previous efforts. Given what had been happening at the time, this didn't seem a bad approach because clearly something needed to change.

The problem was it was essential a trance mix. I personally like trance and I don't think this is a bad set. However, at the time happy hardcore was on it's last legs whereas trance was massive. To try and save happy hardcore by doing a trance set is a bit like trying to save Porsche by buying a Ferrari and sticking a Porsche badge on it.

I do however think it was a bit harsh to aim the criticism of Bonkers 7 to Hixxy when you consider the other 2 CDs. At least the Hixxy mix is trance and the music doesn't sound like it's trying to be anything else. Both the Dougal and DJ SY mixes on the whole sound like trance being done happy hardcore style or vice versa.

9 of the 16 tracks in the Dougal mix are on Essential Platinum, but only 3 of them were released. Most of them were poor but I do like "Night Breeze" which was one of the released ones and the last Essential Platinum release before the label went on hiatus. The stand out track though is "Lost Generation" by Scott Brown, not the first time one of his tunes has burst a Bonkers mix into life.

No such luck with the other Scott Brown tune "Healing Mind" which is Binary Finary sped up. It's not all trancey though, we have "Sunshine" by Force & Styles which was unreleased and "Another Day" by Frisky, but they're both irritating. The latter is followed by the surprise inclusion of a remix of "Shooting Star", the same one which appeared on Bonkers 5. What that did though was illustrate how poor the rest of the set was.

11 of the 16 tracks in the DJ SY set were either by or remixed by the man himself and the majority of these did get released. But again the only redeeming thing about the set is another Scott Brown tune "Basic Nature". 

Elsewhere in the set we have 3 tunes that feature MCs which is a big no no for me. Generally speaking I'm pro MCs at a rave if they know when to shut up, but recording a crowd hyping line on a record is just awful. Then we have a rip off of "Beautiful Stranger" which is one of the worst happy hardcore rip offs I've ever heard. The following track "We Can Do This" samples "No Scrubs" and is also a bit crap.

After Bonkers 7 came out the final Helter Skelter happened where Vinylgroover made the transition from happy hardcore DJ to hard house DJ and Slipmatt played his last hardcore set at Hardcore Heaven before moving onto house.

Although they continued to play happy hardcore, SY and Unknown started doing garage as Trick or Treat, Brisk and Ham started doing house as Stimulant DJs and Vibes did garage under his own name Shane Levan. 

Dreamscape dropped happy hardcore from it's raves and at Slammin Vinyl and United Dance they would have hard house and trance in the same arena as happy hardcore. Then came the news that Bonkers was no more.

But once something has ended the next thing that happens is a comeback. Bonkers would return in 2002 after a 3 year absence. To reflect this, these posts will return in 3 weeks time.