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The Wild Bunch

Posted: Friday - Mar 12th, 2010

wild-bunch-sketch

I started writing this post about The Wild Bunch a month or two back, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to talk about a crew that I actually know very little about. My lack of knowledge on these guys from their active days (1983-1986) makes sense, given that:

I was still rocking single digits in years back then, and
I lived in North America and these guys were from Bristol.

My interest in them mostly comes not from who The Wild Bunch were, but who some of the guys in the crew eventually became; after the Wild Bunch splintered up, Nellee Hooper went on to become a member of Jazzie B’s Soul II Soul soundsystem, Mushroom, Daddy G and 3D teamed up to become Massive Attack and Tricky would have a successful solo career as a vocalist/producer on his own after contributing to Massive Attack’s first two albums. All those post-Wild Bunch projects had a pretty profound effect on me personally.

Soul II Soul put me right on my ass the first time I heard “Keep On Movin’” on Energy 1200 back in 1989. Snagging their full album (on cassette, obviously) ended up being my very first dance music purchase.

Soul II Soul – Keep On Movin’
Club Classics, Vol 1 (1989)
http://www.dailymotion.com/videoxvfmt

Massive Attack’s first 2 albums got heavy heavy rotation on my stereo in the mid-90s. The video for “Karmacoma” was always on MuchMusic (back in the day when they actually played videos instead of the pap that’s on now) so I picked up a copy of the “Protection” LP and was instantly hooked. Soon after that buy I purchased Massive’s first album “Blue Lines”, which easily ranks on my Top 10 Albums of All Time list.

Massive Attack – Unfinished Sympathy
Blue Lines (1991)
http://www.dailymotion.com/videox5svr

Massive Attack – Karmacoma
Protection (1994)
http://www.dailymotion.com/videox1ae65

Tricky was another MuchMusic find; they were playing the video for “Overcome” on a regular basis. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more sombre, brooding tune on the airwaves in 1995, and given that I was a sombre, brooding teenager at the time it’s easy to see why I bought a copy of “Maxinquaye” soon afterward. It was a more challenging listen than any of Soul II Soul or Massive Attack’s output, but the weirdness of it made me a fan.

Tricky – Overcome
Maxinquaye (1995)

I was kind of shocked at first when I found out that these acts all had worked together previously in a UK soundsystem back in the mid-80s, but as I got used to the idea it started to make more sense. They were all on a similar wavelength but took different paths; dance music (Soul II Soul), mood music (Massive Attack) and hybrid rock/hip-hop (Tricky). They all had a relaxed approach to urban music, and they all showed a heavy soul influence.

You can see the common thread that runs through them all in “The Wild Bunch – Story of a Sound System”, a mix that crew retiree DJ Milo put together in 2002. The mix is a showcase of all the different styles (hip-hop, electro, disco, early house) the Wild Bunch pushed when they were up and running. Along with the tunes he used to play, Milo includes short clips of Wild Bunch performances complete with crowd noises to give the listener an idea of what kind of party Bristol’s finest soundsystem hosted.

The Wild Bunch
[excerpt from "Bombin'"]