I couldn’t believe my eyes. One of my most hated records of our '80s time, a wretched commercial dance mix album called Max Mix, listed and selected in some of my favorite online dj stores… even Amaz*n! Wrapped under new anniversary editions, with expanded tracks, trifold color vinyl boxes and ultimate seductive editions (straight to the heart of Spanish Gen Xers) bringing the whole phenomenon back to life! The first four volumes of the dj megamix series produced in Spain between 1985 and 1992 (a total of 12 volumes) have come back from the well deserved land of the dead, to haunt us all again with its cheesy loops, kindergarten scratches and boite disco songs. Marketing checkmate or embarrasing souvenir? Maybe just another postmodern rehabilitation in our free for-all-times.
Before we start: do you know what we are talking about? Brace yourself and play:
This is a classic DMC style megamix, based on a selection of disco tracks from the label Max Music (mainly italian disco and a few USA licenses, like Viola Wills’ Gonna Get Along…), mixed and juxtaposed (for 11 minutes) by a tandem of catalonian djs named Mike Platinas and Javier Ussia (apparently followed -at the time- by a small cult of clubbers in the Costa Brava area). They often said the megamix concept came from the first DMC Championship they attended together in 1982 (!). Dead wrong since the first competition was celebrated in 1985, precisely when they released the first Max Mix poison. Historically, it makes more sense to give a fair tribute to pioneers such as Ben Liebrand (broadcasting from the Radio Veronica station in the Netherlands, and probably the greatest pop megamixer of all time) and Alan Coulthard (the mixtape wizard and original ambassador of the DMC since their first release in 1983), as the original masters. Do check these two examples here below:
The first Grandmix (1983) was originally named ‘MonsterMix’.
DMC Mixtape #1 Floorfillers - Volume 1(Feb 1983)
Can you feel the OUTSTANDING difference? Notice how - musical tastes apart - one can still enjoy Liebrand and Coulthard’s sessions, while Platinas & Ussia sound like a carnival shooting gallery. Fair enough, the talents of the two Spanish djs (specially Platinas) were constricted by the forceful use of Max Music’s only catalogue. Still… what a terrible pudding that was!
For many of us (Spanish kids) at the time, the first half of the ‘80s was the discovery of breakdance and hip-hop culture. The access to records, radio, or dj mixes was superlimited: unless you lived close to a Northamerican base, such as Torrejon in Madrid, sourcing physical objects through contacts (jeans, caps, vinyl, shoes) and treasure radio shows. Films like Beat Street (1984) were an epiphany, with scenes like Doble K’s mixtape (blowing our minds out! and a direct reference for some of the Max Mix tricks):
A few lucky ones knew or had seen the cornerstone of the movemet, Wild Style (1982), and vhs copies were going hand to hand, house to house, to watch and learn the breaks scene of Gransmaster Flash in the kitchen:
That’s our real hero. The master of the breaks, the wizard of scratchin’, the lord of the decks, the Darth Vader of the slide fader, he had the knowledge, the technique, the attitude and the untouchable record of being the first, like he expressed in his own words:
“I was first. I don’t care who’s better, who’s worse. My contribution is first. Because first is forever. That’s the way it goes down in the history books”.
THE ADVENTURES OF GRANDMASTER FLASH ON THE WHEELS OF STEEL. 1981, Sugar Hill Records.
Disco versus funk megamixes
Street black culture, hip-hop, funk and even disco were very much a thing for a (Spanish) minority. I was 11 years old when Flash released what I think is the first real megamix of history. Live and raw, baby. I was introduced to club culture, black music and disco by my (seven years) older brother, who started going to danceclubs around that time, and very soon he had the chance to dj in a small club in Madrid. The first mixtape he brought home from the club was a series of tracks played one after the other with a short fade. We were crazy, though, about Rapper’s Delight or Indeep’s Last night a DJ saved my life. Choices were pointing a direction for a music life…
Light european disco was strong in Spanish nightclubs during the early eighties, with the exception of a few joints playing import US disco. For a society just merely out of a dictatorship in 1975, racial and cultural interactions were limited. The role of a DJ was unknown or undervalued, and the professional ones -regardless of the status of the club- had to often deal with endless requests, demanding mainstream hits including Manolo Escobar or other jump-and-sing classics. I still had to deal with that when I started djing in 1986.
Spanish RTVE explaining about discotheques in 1980
Disco classics in the form of megamixes were accepted, even cherished, by the mid-80s Spanish clubbers, ranging from 1979 Patrick Cowley’s I Feel Love 16 minutes epic to 1981 potpourri Stars on 45 (a total smash hit all around Europe). Were these the first pioneering crossover megamixes? Maybe, baby. But in order to produce, sell and bang a dj mix in Spain’s 1985, it had to be the way they did it with Max Mix.
Can you play Max Mix?
My first job as a dj was assisting my brother, specially during the evening shift (in Spain some nightclubs used to open from 7 to 10 pm for a teen crowd). I was sixteen, the elected dj in my breakin’ crew - Dj Mike - and I had no mixing technique at all. Just good taste for funk, totally unappopiate for my target audience, who would come asking for Simple Minds’ Don’t you forget about me, U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday or any song by The Smiths. Then you had the ones who were discovering DJ culture (massively because of Mike Platinas appeareances on tv). They’d ask if you could play Max Mix, on and on, for a few years. Friends would make jokes about your Dj aspirations, imitating the scratch sounds with their voices. Useless trying, for instance, to play Gil Scott-Heron‘s The Bottle, with the opening “uno, dos, tres, cuatro” words, because people would think it was the Max Mix opening, then getting very upset for not playing the whole thing (while exhausting yourself with explanations about the original source for the sample, etcetera).
In other words, Dj culture, during most of the decade was a nightmare, but a few mad pioneers were trying hard. Radios like Radio Vinilo in Madrid, clubs like Stone’s in Torrejon de Ardoz or Oh Madrid, with the tireless commitment of the Spanish branch of the Disco Mix Club -located in Level Records-, added forces to the explosion of hip-hop culture in the capital and Barcelona. Sincerely, the wide sucess of Max Mix and their djs was shameful, a circus show, the sad confirmation that someone had smelled the money. Even though we respected Platinas’ technique, we didn’t welcome happily when he won the first national DMC Championship in Spain. He was, sorry to say, the Mickey Mouse of the Spanish DJ culture (wearing suits and flower ties to the shows!). A character who ended up as runner up to the 1987 DMC world title.
The money, meanwhile, became a big thing for Max Music (the label producing Max Mix, as well as an endless list of compilations including Raul Orellana’s Bolero Mix or the obnoxious Ibiza Mix series). The megamix collection, twelve volumes, sold an astonishing 32 millon copies! Never before, never again, a dj music production related to the club culture would reach that kind of money. A business that eventually drove the founders of the label, and instigators of Max Mix, to almost killing each other, behaving like mobsters, in and out of the industry. This was revealed in the 2024 tv series Megamix brutal:
Sorry, no english subtitles
Be kind, don’t rewind
So, all things considered. Can we accept, embrace, even tolerate the return of Max Mix? According to Juno’s release notes for their shop (maybe hoping to sell a few hundred copies for new postmodern buyers):
“It's a great celebration of a much-overlooked aspect of 1980s dance music culture.”
Er, you won’t catch me blowing out candles for this birthday…