Dance Paradise @ Great Yarmouth Seafront, Great Yarmouth 25/11/1995

 

Druid

One of the eye openers of 1995 which I'm sure I've mentioned before is how often we come to the end of an era, or the end of the era is in sight. In the case of this particular event it's the penultimate Dance Paradise event as we knew it.

There would be another Dance Paradise in early 1996 before it would disappear until the end of 1997. At the end of 1997 they would make a brief return which lasted into 1998, but had changed their music policy to club music with a dress code to match.

One thing I did read about this event was that police search a large number of people which in turn lead to a large number of arrests and was covered by BBC and ITV TV crews. This may have influenced their decision to change their direction, obviously people would be just as likely to do drugs at these future events but raves had bigger reputations for that sort of thing than clubs.

There were multiple arenas at this event, but just the hardcore sets that made it onto tape. Not the first time this had happened at an event but I understand there was more pressure to pay royalties to drum & bass producers who's tunes appeared on tapes so some promoters thought it wasn't worth the hassle.

I've gone with the Druid set for the simple fact it was the first tape I listened to and deemed it good enough to post plus the fact I don't think I've posted a Druid set yet.

The 2nd half of the set is very much geared towards Dutch and Scottish tunes, but interestingly around half way through the set he opts for "Juicy Cuts Vol.1" by Juicy Cuts rather than "Love U More" by Paul Elstak i.e. the English version which is more or less the same.

These are the new for 1995 tunes:

D.J. Mix It - Just Take Your Time

Uranus - Flowed On A Vibe

DJ Ham - Is Anybody Out There

Scott Brown with Bass-D & King Matthew - The People Love It

DJ Force & The Evolution - Simply Electric

Sonicdriver - Standing On Top

2 Left Feet - Reggy's Nightmare

Billy "Daniel" Bunter - Voyage

The Vampire - Clap 2 This

Juicy Cuts - Vol.2

I don't ever recall hearing "Flowed On A Vibe" by Uranus before. It's a Dutch record on the Druid set and I like it. Another record of note is "Simply Electric" by Force & the Evolution. To my knowledge it was the final Force & the Evolution record and there was a new mix in 1996 which was credited to Force & Styles.

Elsewhere we have HMS and Clarkee playing back to back which is as mad as it sounds. Also a Dougal and Vibes back to back set which would no doubt have been the first set I would have listened to back in the day. 

Also a Mastervibe set where he features a few drum & bass tunes. I would say proof the 2 genres could still mix together at the time, but I've read in an interview that Mastervibe always wanted to play drum & bass but resorted to hardcore sets because he struggled to get drum & bass bookings so this was clearly a statement of intent.

Bonkers Part 17

 

Having a best of compilation to me means one of two things. Either things are going so well that enough people are willing to buy an album they don't really need to complete the collection or there isn't enough decent new material to put on the compilation so you release a best of to keep the momentum going.

The title "Best of Bonkers" was a little misleading though as it would imply every tune that appears on it has appeared on previous Bonkers albums, but they haven't. I guess it's a bit like a bands greatest hits album which includes a couple of unreleased tracks to give the incentive to buy it to those who already own all the albums.

The majority of tracks on the Hixxy and Recon mix hadn't appeared on any previous Bonkers albums. Some of the tracks also date back to before Bonkers existed. All of the tracks on there are from the 20th century.

As a result this is actually a pretty good mix. What's perhaps a little surprising is that the second half of the mix is predominantly Dutch. We've had records from Holland appearing on many of the previous Bonkers album but perhaps not in that sort of quantity.

Joining Sharkey on his mix and making his Bonkers debut is Druid. He was one of the DJs who went down the trancecore/freeform route in the 90s. He also wrote "Bonkers Anthem" with Sharkey, which appears on this mix.

As this is a best of though it's not strictly a freeform set with the opening track being "Toytown". It's a bit of a surprise to see it in the Sharkey mix rather than the Hixxy one, but then it was written by Hixxy and Sharkey.

Without looking back through all the Bonkers track listings, it looks like the bulk of the other tunes previously appeared in Sharkey mixes.

Finally we have a Scott Brown mix which sees him on his own again. As a result we get a mix of mostly Scott Brown records, all of which appeared in previous Scott Brown mixes. 

What became apparent was that this Bonkers album was marking the end of an era because the next Bonkers to come out was called "Bonkers 17: Rebooted". A bit strange given it came out the same year, but I'll take a look into how exactly it was rebooted next week.