pack of blank Memorex, BASF or Maxells and a hi-fi system with a tape deck w/record button were all you needed to live up to that classic phrase ‘home taping is killing music’. Being an impressionable child as I was in the eighties, I did used to wonder if the police would come storming in one night and seize the endless amount of cassettes that myself and my older sister had stockpiled over the years. Although quite what they’d want with our variable success rate of pause-edit compilations never really dawned on my adolescent mind at the time! Fortunately, a man going by the name of Rich Color had more luck than me and my sister. Rich used to operate the now defunct Mastermix site (long dead), which offered an absolute shed-load of classic mastermixes from the 1980s, and from what I could gather, all caught by Rich himself, ‘close to the edit’. For those who don’t know, the mastermix is a series of tracks compressed into a relatively short space of time, usually populated with one-shot samples and, 20-odd years ago, some very primitive scratching (if you were lucky). The music was predominantly hip hop, but also strayed into house, techno and other styles. The format suited radio play, and I imagine that DJs of the time would often set a mastermix off, probably knowing full well they had plenty of time to nip outside for a cigarette or to take a leak! The mastermix found a home on mainstream as well as pirate broadcasts, and both sides of the atlantic were hungry to take up the quick-fire method of effectively shoe-horning a full show’s worth of selections into a tight section packed with mixing flair.
I have been sat on a stockpile of the mastermixes from Rich’s site for some time now, and have often attempted to make contact with a mind to asking his permission to offer them up to a wider audience. Sadly, all efforts went unanswered, so I have finally decided to put the mastermixes back out there via bosbos.net. Mastermix.org was obviously set up to share the wealth, as all the downloads were available on permanent links while the site was up. I can only assume that Rich suffered massive bandwidth problems due it’s popularity, a situation to which I can easily relate!
I will be posting up all the mastermixes and tid-bits from mastermix.org that are to hand, expect to hear some amusing listening, the all-important authentic tape hiss, and a few surprise guests along the way! The bit-rate quality isn’t the best in places, but do bear in mind that these were conversions from original cassettes that, from memory, I believe had been sat in Rich’s garage for some time - it’s great that he was able to salvage them in order for future generations to get their ears around, regardless of their sound quality. Don’t worry, they are at the very least listenable.
Starting proceedings is Big Apple Production Vol.1 (1982). Created by DJ Mikey D’Merola, this mastermix was actually pressed to acetate for use during DJ gigs at the time. A pirate bootleg did the rounds (with no credit for Mikey), and became so popular it was picked up by radio stations in New York. Coming from the early eighties, this one is heavy on the disco, but also manages to cram in some funk, soul, pop and punk. This mix would go on to become a widespread inspiration for many a mastermix to come. Enjoy it, and keep looking out for a whole lot more on the mastermix front here in future.
Mikey D’Merola: Big Apple Production Vol. 1 (12mins, 4.9MB) [rapidshare]
