Review: Fresh FM’s House Top 1000 of all time
May27
Last weekend dutch radiostation Fresh FM aired The House Top 1000 of all time. In the recent weeks listeners could vote for their favorite house tracks from the early days of house music until 2005. The show started last friday and went on until last monday 8PM.
That’s 80 hours of the best house music in a row. Although some minor things went wrong, it was obvious that Fresh FM did their best to make it a great show to remember. They had dj’s and guest appearances by people who are actually in the chart, Robin ‘Jaydee’ Albers, Kevin Saunderson, Wessel ‘LA Style’ van Diepen, Remy, Armin van Buuren, Mark van Dale and many others. Awesome to hear those background stories on so many tracks.
To my big surprise the list contained not only usual suspects from the 1989-1994 era but also from more recent years. That made the list a very diverse one: music styles change from year to year and that’s why you could here a new york style garage banger right before a trance track. Or an absolute solid classic like ‘Can You Feel It’ by Mr. Fingers followed by one of the first mainstream drum ‘n bass tracks ‘Ain’t Talking Bout Dub’ by Apollo 440. It made the show really fun to listen to.
Special moment for me was when they reached number 656. The two djs, Peter van Leeuwen and Robin Albers realized that The Blunted Dummies – House 4 All was to be next. They didn’t agree on the low position of this track, it was in their personal top 5 – and mine as well, but they didn’t complain about it. And that’s why this House Top 1000 was such a success: the chart didn’t really matter that much, it was all about enjoying and celebrating good house music.
On monday morning I was in the Fresh FM studio to support Frank Schildkamp in the early hours and saw the people who were there were having that same spirit. And getting comments from people from Germany, USA and even Australia sure helps and is something to be really proud of if you are a local (!) radiostation.
I was on twitter when they reached the top 10 and noticed lots of people tweeting about it. There is no national trend overview yet on Twitter, but I’m sure #ht1000 would have been in it that moment.
Although I realize that it’s a lot of work to put such a show together, I hope Fresh FM started a new tradition. I’m ready for next year!
In case you missed it, the whole list is to be found on Fresh Fm’s website, were you will find a classics stream as well.
We’re halfway the month, so it’s time for a new episode of the Underground Dance Sessions. Not as underground as some previous editions, more crossover this time, still with some club bangers and with a little relaxness towards the end. The tracklist contains a lot of big names. It seems that most of the coming summer tunes by those producers were released the past few weeks. Ofcourse this mixtape contains One by SHM (best track of the year already?) and other gems like An Old Technique by Funkerman & Fedde le Grand. Also featured is a Vandalism remix of Hey Hey by Denis Ferrer. This is the third remix of this track in de UDS series. Kid Kaio and Loopers really pulled it off with Brandy & Monica, resulting in a bootleg that features this mix as well.