The second instalment of, the exclusive WCNS mixes, is provided by one half of the RPZ outfit, Hushpuppy. His mix, Sunshine Pop Happening, has opted for an off-kilter, summer vibe using classics and rarities from the 1960s. He has also included a very interesting piece on his views of the movement, music and culture surround the 60s and our perception of it (see below the player).

I think it’s good to hear something different, especially when combining modern mixing techniques with music, totally not designed with that in mind. We hope you enjoy it and also be sure to check out the first in the series, Mathew Craig’s Synthia.

Sean & David – La-De-Da
Blades of grass – Just Aah
Beach Boys – Busy doin nothing
Sugar Shoppe – Skip along sam
Mama Cass – Long time lovin you
Free Design – Umberellas
The Association – Goodbye Columbus
The Groop – Jet song
Harpers Bizarre – Hey, you in the crowd
Sundae Train – Love affair of two happy people
Lovin Spoonful – Do you believe in magic?
Orpheus – Lesley’s world
Chris Montez – The face I love
Sagittarius – I’m not living here
The Buckinghams – Don’t you care
Claudine – My guy
Nino & April – You’ll be needing me
Roger Nicholls – I can see only you
The Group – A famous myth

Download Sunshine Pop Happening here.

“Most peoples view of the late 1960′s is of a musical and social climate rocked by the explosion of the hippie revolution in Southern California.   An incredible cultural, musical and political upheaval that spread across the globe, signalling the beginning of the age of mass communication, the birth of a new contemporary protest politics, and the first global fashion movement transmitted through the wonders of the jet-age.

However, despite the cultural dominance of all that psychedelic insanity, not all american artists were drawn to the clarion call of the counter-culture.   There were still good,  clean-cut kids buying and more importantly making music.   In the later years of the 1960′s a massive movement of mainstream artists and groups were happy to flirt with the odd bit of flowery imagery, but for most of the time their super-sweet melodies and naive lyrics stuck resolutely to wholesome topics : innocent tales of boy meets girl, dreamy evocations of flowers or blades of grass (and that is grass thats NOT for smoking) or poetic, folksy musings on the modern age.

This populist and commercially successful sound was largely derided, often seen as reactionary and out of step, a-political or worse…conservative!  Record companies and larger more established producers began to create their own mainstream acts, conscious of the money to be made from co-opting the fashionable messages of the hippie scene and selling them on (if not out).  Groups like the Blades of Grass, The Buckinghams and Harpers Bizarre wrote good-time music for smart, groovy kids – the “neat-niks” and the “clean-agers”  - middle-class kids from the picket-fence suburban sprawl who dug the Monkees and the Beatles, but weren’t about to start growing their hair or smoking pot.

The breathless chanteuse Claudine was none other than Mrs Andy Williams (one of the Las Vegas pop kings of the 1950′s and an american TV institution) who could appeal to Playboy reading Republicans as well as right-thinking college boys, Chris Montez, a child star from the late Rock’n'Roll era was similarly re-invented with glossy production and given ultra smooth, bossa-tinged ballads and pop numbers.  The Beach Boys were still, at this point,  the smiling sun-kissed golden boys of American pop, with the subtle references of “busy doing nothing” to days of wondering around in a ditzy grass-induced high still tucked away on albums un-noticed.

But like many derided movements, the passing of time has allowed for this entire genre to be re-assessed.  Current obsessions with pop, and the possibilities of melody are drawing a lot of these sounds back into the public consciousness.  The joy and talent behind many of these compositions is undeniable and infectious, while the production values are often quite astounding – as the global resurgence of interest in the whole diaspora of Curt Boettcher (here with his Sagittarius project) has demonstrated.   It is unadulterated POP music, the mood is always up (often relentless so) and it springs from a creative time in history saturated with extraordinary positivity and hope for the future, a time literally of infinity possibilities, where it is perpetually summer and love is always in the air.”