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Jim Z spills the beans - 2
In the second part of our interview with Jimmy Z, he discusses Wild's CDs, Wild's music and a few other things..
7) Do you have any favourites amongst the Wild CDs? I loved 'anthems', and I thought 1, 6 and 8 were cool.
I liked volumes 2 and 7, because they didn't do so well. I felt sorry for them!
All the Wild CD's are great.
8) The first half of Wild FM 8 - disk 2 is all disco house..
Was this something you set out to do? Have you tried to get a slab of a particular genre here?
Is this something that happenned on earlier Wild Discs?
We've always aimed to have satisfy two elements on the Wild CD's - a commercial element and a harder, more credible element
- marrying good commercial dance with crossover underground dance hits which go 'commecial', which is really what the whole Wild format is about.
Wild 8, like every other Wild CD, reflects dance music which was big at that particular point in time - loads of disco house coming out from the UK, loads of harder klubb stuff from Germany/Europe, with a smattering of hi nrg euro in between.
By grouping together the disco house on Disc Two, we found it was the best way to present the music without taking away from itself and taking away from the harder klubb songs on the CD.
On earlier Wild volumes, the first CD was always a more commercial, medium energy gig, and the second CD was a more cutting edge, or harder slab of music - more like the stuff you'd hear in a nightclub; but on the whole, it all sounds like the same Wild FM music to most people.
9) Do you have many of the Hitz CDs? Any faves amongst them?
They are somewhere here...I liked the one with "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls - that's my favourite. (That's Original Hitz 4)
10) When Hitz started, the idea of hearing megamixes on the radio (outside tiny public radio stations) was unheard of.
Are megamixes still in demand on-air?
Megamixes were a big thing a couple of years ago when "euro hi nrg" music was big and loads of compilations from Europe came out with megamixes on them.
The megamix fit the style of the music at the time - really cheesy, showpony, "look at me - watch me dance!" hi energy music.
You see, you don't really make a megamix out of deep house or drum 'n' bass music because it is a more modest music scene.
We will always include a megamix on the Wild CD's because it adds value to the compilation - and it's a memorable, unique thing about the compilation which has also helped boost the careers of DJ's like Nick Skitz, Diego V, Alex K..
and on the next Wild 9 CD the megamix will be produced by new talent DJ Simmo.
11) Have there been many changes in the sound of Wild over the
broadcasts? What about the styles of music being requested?
Yes - recently commercial dance for Wild FM has diversified - as reflected
by the variety of styles in more recent volumes of the Wild CDs.
The current dance scene looks like this - hi nrg euro has pretty much died
(but it's coming back again, believe it or not! in the wake of the
euro-trance scene).
Commercial dance has gone a little more pop oriented and mainstream to a
slightly lower tempo, basic melodies and minimilistic - like for example,
Blue by Eiffel 65 or 2 Times by Ann Lee.
Disco house - house music which borrows from & samples old 70's disco hits -
looks like it will hang around for a while with other forms of house music.
Harder club music has emerged from the German 'Klubbheads' era and is now
turning towards harder, more bangin' four-beats-to-a-bar techno. A trendy
hybrid of club music has gone towards a new fad titled "euro-trance" - hard
club music with euro synth chords and an uplifting trance-like quality.
Euro-trance has been big in the UK (at clubs like Gatecrasher, Cream &
Ministry of Sound) and is slowly trickling onto the dance clubs of
Australia.
12) I remember during your first or second broadcast,
you were playing Jellyhead's "Crush" a lot by request.
I heard the release in Australia was accelerated due to this.
What's your version?
What about other songs that have appeared on the charts,
or artists that have got some good exposure due to Wild?
Like several dance stations around Australia, Wild FM has its handful of
hits that have been launched from airplay on the radio station alone.
Some of those hits, from memory, include On The Bible by Deuce, A Little Bit
by Pandora and a countless number of songs we share with other community
radio stations, like for example Broken Bones by Love Inc, anything by the
Vengaboys, Its Like That by Run DMC (we even got a plaque from MDS for that
one) which helped the record companies give them the necessary momentum to
climb up into the Top 40 charts.
13) You've started doing interstate OB's -what's the deal?
Just something different, something real mad - listening to a nightclub live
in another city. The wires were in the ground, and the technology was all
there, so we thought, "let's connect them up and do it".
Thanks so much for your time Jim.. we'd better let you
get back to work.
Thanks heaps for asking me to do this questionaire interview!
I hope I got all the answers right. :)
All the best, Jim