History
1999
The first release of 1999 was Andrew Morrison
& Friends with 'The Pompey Posse' / 'Peter Edney Speaking'.
'The Pompey Posse' was a cutting edge drum & bass track, including
samples of Andrew and his closest mates enjoying a Christmas Eve drinking
session in 1998. The "Dirty Mix" was the most requested track ever
at 'Frostbitten', having been banned from every radio station because of
its explicit sexual content and profuse swearing. The edited version
managed to painstakingly cut out every offensive item while retaining the
original's underground garage sound.
December 20th, 1999 saw another charity
release from Frostbyte with the 'Dave's Greatest *hits' compilation
album, containing all of his singles and remixes, plus some previously
unreleased material. All profits from the sale of this LP went to
further his feedback syndrome research in the jungle.
On the same day, Fußgängerzone
brought out their eagerly anticipated "greatest hits" collection, named
after their single 'Now, That’s What I Call Fußgängerzone!'.
This album was to Fußgängerzone what 'Substance' was to New
Order, cataloguing many of the band's A sides and B sides on two compact
discs (to hear a selection of tunes from the album, click on the CD
image below).
('Now, That's What I Call
Fußgängerzone!' "charted the band's phenomenal rise and was
akin to a juggernaut thundering through lo-fi city, popville and technotown
with a stop over at a Little Chef before carrying on to rockshire via funkopolis".)
No One Knows We're Dead (not realising
the impending significance of their band name) also released a single on
the 20th December featuring Fußgängerzone's celebrity minder
The
Ayatollah Of Rock 'n' Rollah. 'Laid' was a cover version
of the famous James single.
DISASTER!
Tragedy hit at the end of this year. Perhaps
the saddest day in the history of Frostbyte Records came on Christmas Day,
1999, when one of the original signings, No One Knows We're Dead were driving
to Kermit's family's home for the traditional roast dinner, held every
year. The duo had been drinking extremely heavily since the early
hours of the morning (in fact, non-stop since the previous night), and
The Quiff (who had never learnt to drive a car) had volunteered to drive
them both to lunch - mainly because Kermit had dared him to. The
roads were empty, yet The Quiff's judgement was impaired by alcohol and
fatigue, and their car (estimated to be doing close to 185mph) span off
the M27 motorway at Cosham, tumbling into the Portscreek. By the
time the emergency services arrived, it was too late. The Quiff's
blood alcohol level at the time of the postmortem two hours later, was
found to be sixteen times the legal drink drive limit.