Bonkers Part 14

 

I could tell you the first upfront hardcore event I went to, but I honestly can't remember what the last one was. What I do know is that the first one was Helter Skelter at The Sanctuary and the last one would have been some small local club hosting a hardcore event.

Basically when I started going to upfront hardcore events again, I liked it enough to go to an event that wasn't too much effort but I didn't like it enough to travel to Birmingham for HTID or Shepton Mallet for Slammin Vinyl. The Sanctuary wasn't too far away, but by the time this Bonkers came out it had been closed for almost a year.

The fact of the matter was that I never consciously decided to stop going to upfront hardcore events, I just realised one day that I'd stopped going to them. I would still go to old skool nights though which makes it a bit more difficult to remember, but by the time Bonkers 14 came out I'm pretty certain I'd been to my last upfront hardcore event.

I also considered buying Bonkers 14, but I looked at how many remixes were on the track listing and decided no. Around the same time the Clubland Xtreme Hardcore series had started. I thought maybe that would cater for the cheese to appeal to the kids and Bonkers could be for those of us who had been around a while. I never listened to one to find out, until now.

Hixxy was the biggest culprit in terms of remixes with 8 of the 16 tracks being remixes. This included yet another remix of "Set You Free" and "Pretty Green Eyes" which definitely put me off buying it.

The opening track marked a return to Bonkers for the first time in the 21st century to Ramos and Supreme. They were doing the trancecore/freeform thing in the late 90s before disappearing for a few years. This comeback was very much down the cheesy route though. The same could be said for the opening few tracks. The GEOS track is one with MC Marley demonstrating once again why MCs shouldn't appear on tunes.

We then get a load of remixes until a track with MC Storm also demonstrating why MCs shouldn't appear on tunes. The final two tracks weren't that cheesy, but I didn't think much to them either.

Onto the Sharkey mix, and it a funny way it starts off as a refreshing change to the cheese fest that was Hixxy's mix. But if the Bonkers albums only ever consisted of the Sharkey mixes I would never have bought them.

A reviewer on discogs sums up the Sharkey mix when they say: well it's not bad, but after listening to it a few times I don't remember any of it.

The CD that's most likely to dictate whether I missed out on not buying this though is the Scott Brown one. The opening track sounds like a Clubland advert and is followed by 2 remixes. The latter grabs my attention until I realise it's an inferior version of a track on an earlier Bonkers. The same can be said about track 6 "Rock You Softly 2005".

It then turns into a bit of a cheese fest on tracks 9 - 11 including a remix of the god awful "You're My Angel" by Styles & Breeze. It then redeems itself with track 12 with a remix of a tune I'd never heard before. Then it's into the gabber section, which is definitely the best bit of the whole compilation.

Finally there's the Dougal mix. Lots of Essential Platinum records on there as expected. There's also an AATW record which is a hardcore mix of the commercial dance version of "Shining Down" by Force & Styles by United in Dance who are Dougal, Gammer and Styles.

Also on the mix is the only Next Generation record of the album which isn't a remix which is "Getting High" by Brisk & Ham. Unfortunately it's a rip off of "Higher Love" by Steve Winwood and a bit rubbish.

Appearing on Bonkers albums for the first time in the 21st century is Seduction who had come out of retirement, started a label called Maximum Impact and an event called Uproar. Also making their 21st century debut is Vibes who never went away but has never been very prolific at making records.

The interesting one is track 4 by Transit who are Chris Brown & Brad Carter. In the 90s Chris Brown was best known as Eruption and Brad Carter engineered lots of hardcore tunes. Away from hardcore they formed Ruff Driverz and Transit is noted as being an alias of theirs. However I'm not sure whether this was them returning to hardcore or this is a remix of an old track or a non-hardcore track. I've never read anything to suggest they did return to the scene at all.

The fact we had all these DJs/producers of yesteryear returning to the scene and that AATW had their own hardcore compilations would suggest hardcore was doing alright at this point in time.

In a way though, that was part of the problem. Look at any style of music that's had a degree of commercial appeal and you'll find it's the cheese that sells. Therefore they way to capitalise on that success is to make cheese.

All that said, Bonkers 14 was not that well received. I've seen some internet discussion saying Bonkers 15 was a big improvement. I'll find out whether it was next.