Mixermatosis

 

When I was cataloguing my CD collection during the COVID lockdown, I came across several that my parents had bought. One that I found in the “various artists” section, Sixties Mix Two, reminded me of a late ‘80s musical trend that is little celebrated now – digital megamixes of rock-and-roll-era tracks, which peaked (or reached a nadir) with a short-lived phenomenon involving a cartoon rabbit...

The 1988 compilation Sixties Mix Two boasts on the sleeve 60 “original recordings”, implying that this wasn’t something to be taken for granted. This was probably due to the glut of cheap '50s/'60s compilations at the time featuring re-recordings of the original tracks by the original artists, but it also points to the predecessors of these types of megamixes. The early '80s saw several disco-style medleys hit the charts. The most famous of these were the Stars On 45 releases by Star Sound (which launched a wave of pastiches by contemporary acts such as Squeeze, Captain Sensible, and Chas and Dave), Tight Fit’s Back To The Sixties, and, most bizarrely, Louis Clark’s Hooked On Classics, a medley of classical pieces performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. These medleys continued into the late ‘80s, with Mirage’s Jack Mix singles, which stitched together disco and dance-pop hits with early house tracks. What most of these megamixes had in common was that they featured soundalike cover versions performed by session musicians.

Things started to change with the commercial availability of the sampler, which allowed artists to digitally record and play back sounds, manipulated by a keyboard or knob. Now, artists could remodel rather than remake music, directly from another record¹. The sampler became a mainstay among hip-hop and house producers, and 1987–1988 saw several “sampadelic” British hits that were influenced by both genres, such as M|A|R|R|S’s Pump Up The Volume, Bomb The Bass’s Beat Dis, and Coldcut’s Doctorin’ The House.

The rise of sampling technology coincided with the rise of the CD, which saw several “oldies” records from the ’50s and ‘60s digitally remastered and reissued (by the likes of Ace Records and Old Gold). The two worlds collided with the emergence of compilations such as Sixties Mix Two, which not only segued together original ‘60s recordings but also distorted them with digital loops and “stutters”. (Thanks to Sixties Mix Two, I still expect the Move vocalist Carl Wayne to sing “W-w-w-woke up this morning half asleep” every time I hear their 1967 hit Flowers In The Rain².)

This approach of mixing and manipulating oldies hits with digital sampling and stuttering, in an even more condensed form, would hit paydirt for one particular artist in 1989. Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, created by parent and son team Andy and John Pickles, cut and pasted snippets from oldies tracks using sampling technology. The faceless Mastermixers were represented on the record sleeves and promo videos by the eponymous cartoon rabbit. The act’s first single (and the first CD single I ever bought) was Swing The Mood, which segued ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll samples with swing standard In The Mood. It spent five weeks at number one, becoming one of the biggest-selling singles in the UK in 1989, and it even crossed over to the US Billboard pop chart.

As mentioned in the incisive Popular article about the song (which discusses the Jive Bunny phenomenon in a deeper cultural context), Swing The Mood seemed like an archetypal one-hit wonder, but two more number ones followed (matching a record achieved by Gerry and the Pacemakers and Frankie Goes to Hollywood) before diminishing chart returns in 1990-1991. In Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers' wake came a wave of tracks that adopted their megamix formula, from contemporary acts such as Snap!, Technotronic, and Bobby Brown to Boney M. and the Grease soundtrack.

Despite their huge commercial success, Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers were critically panned from all corners, and they are rarely heard today outside of lazy wedding DJs and Top Of The Pops repeats (where the Gary Glitter segment from their Christmas hit, Let’s Party, was inevitably exorcised). Years after their commercial peak, they continued to release budget “non-stop party” albums, often, ironically, featuring soundalike recordings of hit singles, much like the Stars On 45-style records they superseded. One thing I will give them credit for, along with Sixties Mix Two, is acting as a musical gateway drug, allowing me to delve into a rabbit hole (bunny hole?) of the sounds my parents grew up with. Oh baby, that’s what I like.

¹ Several early hip-hop DJs had already done this, of course - most notably, Grandmaster Flash and his Adventures On The Wheels Of Steel single. However, that had mixed records live using three turntables.

² I also expect to hear farmyard animal noises, thanks to the 1994 comedy Smashie & Nicey: End Of An Era.