Remixing 90s TV Theme Tunes - BBC's The Really Wild Show
Anyone remember The Really Wild Show?! It was a children's BBC program that started in 1986 and aired for 20 years up until 2006, focusing on wildlife and nature hosted by Howie Watkins, Chris Packham, Nick Baker and heartthrob Michaela Strachan.
The Really Wild Show
I used to watch this one a lot in the 1990s as I was growing up but it was the cheesy but really catchy theme tune that grabbed my attention. The cool cartoon animations and sound effects basically sum up the fun decade of the 90s in a nutshell. Here's a full episode I found which has the cheese in all it's glory - "Don't touch that dial"
Although the BBC turned up the "fromage" dial to its max in the intro above, the melody for the theme tune actually has its roots in a 1982 disco track called ELLOVEE-EE by Tony Sherman, which seems like a love song with the lyrics "L-O-V-E's what you mean to me, sexy lady".
Obviously the producers of the show only selected the small snippets of the original to feature in the theme tune. It might have been a little inappropriate to have those lyrics in the title of a children's TV program!!
Remix
Anyway, as my YouTube video rabbit hole took me on a journey that lead me to discover the original by Tony Sherman, I went to find it to see what it sounded like. I was beaming from ear to ear as it's a really good track with oodles of funk
How does one go about turning this into a drum & bass track though? Well, when your heart beats naturally at 170BPM, anything is possible!
So with that in mind, I sped up the original, made a few edits to help with the intro and filtered out the low frequencies so that I could add my own bassline to it. A little bit of delay (echo) on the original and put some effects like whooshes, builds and of course, the drum beat and percussion.
It's still a work in progress but I'm very much liking the way this is turning out and think with a few tweaks, it will be ready to go off to mastering and then we air this on some shows!
Hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane! I know I did :)
Nicky
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Great remix! And I remember the Really Wild show!
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Thanks man! Yeah an iconic program for any UK millennial!
I'm one year shy (early) of being a millennial (according to Wikipedia) being born in 1979!
Glad your back and active/social again!
!PIZZA
I guess that puts you in the Gen X league!
Thanks man, good to be back amongst it 🙂
I like to think of myself as spanning multiple generations :)
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I was a huge fan of the Really Wild Show and in the 90's met Michaela Strachan at Knebworth, Oasis' big gig, my mates and I were excited about that as you can imagine. We managed a very shy, "Hi...." and that was it. Wow what an amazing dose of Memory lane Nicky! Great remix - It's cheered me up!
I am tempted to go back to Wordpress just so that I can use Exxp and to build my Hive content into a regular site in some way.
Yes Nick! Loved the Really Wild Show too and really jealous you got to meet Michaela, sounds like it was a great gig for that alone! Really pleased this one has cheered you up, I was in a bit a nostalgic rut but this one has given me my fix! Still a little bit of tidying up to do but looking forward to finishing it and put it in a few DJ mixes!
I'd say it's worth having a wordpress site as it's easy enough to connect to Hive via Exxp, plus you can add a store if you end up selling things and customise it to however you want!
I'm guessing you do a lot of DJing then? Not something I've done but I know a few people who do. In 2019 I photographed a massive DJ event in Hampshire with a mix of local artists and some mainstream headliners, it was great being up on stage with them... it's worth writing a retrospective post about in fact.
I'll have a think about Wordpress. I was on there, came away from it but may go back to it.
I just did some livestreams online when I could for about 3 years or so before I had to step back from everything and recharge. It was more for fun doing live back to back mixes with a friend who is in the other end of the country! If I could ever do live in front of people, that would be epic! Just hope they won't clear the dancefloor haha! Yeah man, be good to read your retrospective!