Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers were an 80’s novelty pop music act. Jive Bunny’s three number one hits were ‘Swing the mood’, ‘That’s what I like’ and ‘Let’s party’. All three songs used sampling and synthesisers to combine pop music from the early rock and roll era together into a medley. The results were somewhat like the earlier act Stars on 45, who actually hired ‘sound-alike’ singers and musicians to recreate the music from scratch.
Each song used a sampled instrumental theme to join the songs together, in much the same way as dance music megamixes. ‘Swing the mood’ used Glenn Miller’s famous ‘In the mood’ (a recording dating back to 1939). It was no. 1 for 5 weeks on the UK singles chart in 1989.
‘That’s what I like’ featured the theme music from the television police drama Hawaii Five-O, while ‘Let’s party’ used ‘March of the Mods’ (also known as the Finnjenka Dance). Both these tracks made number 1 in the UK as well.
Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers were in reality a father and son DJ team from Hetton near Sunderland in South Yorkshire. The original idea was from Les Hemstock on the DJ-only Mastermix DJ service. Andy Pickles (the son) then became the front man largely on his own. John Pickles (the father) was never actually in the band, but the owner of the label and effectively the manager. They have continued to work under the name, but with less chart success. Andy Pickles later went on to found hard house record label Tidy Trax with fellow DJ Amadeus Mozart.
The album ‘Ultimate 80s party’ (2001) contained their version of Kim Wilde’s Kids in America.
Kim about Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers
When asked whether Jive Bunny was allowed to do a cover version of one of her songs, Kim Wilde replied: ‘I would protest against that. Jive Bunny is just out to make fun of everybody. I don’t feel I should be part of that.’ (1)
Interview source
(1) Kim Wilde seeks contradictions In: Het Nieuwsblad (Belgium), 1990.