Background
The Essential Mix is a weekly radio show broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and features all styles of electronic dance music. Originally the brainchild of Eddie Gordon, the producer of the show from the first broadcast in 1993 to 2001. In 1993, after months of receiving weekly mix shows on tape-cassette, featuring New York DJs Tony Humphries WRKS 98.7 Kiss FM and Frankie Knuckles WQHT HOT 97 FM, recorded and mailed religiously by US Billboard's Dance Editor Brian Chin, Eddie advised BBC Radio 1 that a weekly dance mix show with DJs of different genres of music would offer more variety and the chance for the ever burgeoning UK dance music scene to flourish with new emerging DJs as well as the internationally famous. Eddie further encouraged the DJs he scheduled to flex their musical knowledge as the broadcast was not essentially playing to a dance floor but to people listening in their homes all over the world and that a high number of listeners were recording the show on cassette to listen to later. Hence the need for a straight out "4 to the floor" seamless 130bpm mix for 2 hours was not totally necessary so the DJs could include more eclectic music or offer something different from their normal set. DJ Paul Oakenfold particularly grasped the concept and after sitting with Eddie to blueprint his December 1994 Essential Mix produced the now world famous Goa Mix which won a Silver Award in the Specialist Music Programme category at the 1998 Sony Radio Awards and in 2000 was voted the Best ever Essential Mix by the BBC Radio 1 listeners. Then DJ David Holmes in June 1997 created another 2 legendary hours in the history of the Essential Mix: His set a surprising journey from Nancy Wilson to Jimi Hendrix – redefined the DJ as a collector of musical history. In May 1998, DJ Ashley Beedle, known for his House music style completed a 2 hour Reggae mix to reveal his extensive knowledge of that genre of music and is blogged as the best reggae mix ever broadcast (see link Best Foot Forward).
The show has been hosted since its conception in 1993 by DJ Pete Tong who was also the first performer, broadcast on 30 October 1993. Every Friday late night/Saturday morning a two hour programme is broadcast, usually between the hours of 1 am and 3 am UK-time (the programme was previously broadcast between Saturday late night/Sunday morning 1 am and 3 am, and before that, between 2 am and 4 am and originally midnight and 2 am). The standard format of the show is an uninterrupted guest mix of two hours provided by an invited DJ, group or producer, introduced by Tong. The mix is usually studio recorded in advance.
Read more about this topic: Essential Mix
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)