When the cassette was the currency in music and vinyl represented the alpha and omega of DJs, a musical saga was born as ignored by critics as it was adored by record stores and the general public: Max Mix. Pronounce it by prolonging the “a”, as if you were listening to one of these mixes of dance floor hits, seasoned with effects as rudimentary as they were groundbreaking, which flooded the market in the eighties and nineties with the signature of Toni Peret, DJ, announcer and protagonist of Toni Peret and his brothers of rhythm (Applehead Team). An autobiographical book that travels through the intrahistory of these megamixes that began to be recorded in a Barcelona apartment with the smell of tape and reached – almost insultingly for some – number one on the sales charts.
The tour includes machine music, Eurodance, Paco Pil, Mike Platinas, Pocholo Martínez Bordiu, Encarna Sánchez (Encarna de noche), a dose of reggaeton, kidnappings, bribes, many platinum records and Crónicas Marcianas. Take a breath.
Toni Peret did not take drugs, he drank cigars although he never got drunk and he regularly attended mass, this was the man who starred in the most successful era of the Max Mix sound after enrolling at only 21 years old in an adventure where he was forced to work for more than 14 hours from Monday to Sunday and sleeping on a mattress next to the mixing console. It was all worth it for that young man who began his career in the Radio Miramar studios in Plaza Catalunya, driven by his love for musical technology. There he played his first album and had his first show from 4 to 10 in the morning. “I loved getting up at 3 to go to the radio,” Peret recalls about a time when he met radio greats and clashed with some of them, such as Encarna Sánchez, who was doing a program in the studio next door. and he complained about the volume of the music his neighbor was playing. “She started screaming and I, who was going through everything, told her to shut up. Nobody would swallow her, she was unbearable.”
After making his first mixes with Revox tape recorders, he went on to work at Radio Minuto, the first radio format in Spain, while visiting clubs like Studio 54 or Chic and listening to the first mixes from the Blanco y Negro record company. Until Max Music signed him along with Jose Maria Castells to replace Mike Platinas and Javier Ussía, responsible for the first two Max Mix. “We planted something that did not exist, which was the culture of the DJ, we were the first, Mike Platinas, Raúl Orellana, Castells, Ussía and I, there was no one else at the beginning.” There was so much ignorance about the figure of the DJ that when they went out to play in clubs they had to explain to the public that they should dance. “I remember a performance at Scorpia where people stood still watching us, waiting to see what we would do. I had to take the microphone and tell them that it was about them dancing. When the gig was over, the crowd heard: ‘Shit!'”
The first Max Mix signed by Peret and Castells (third in the series) was a success that sold 200,000 copies, a figure that was doubled in the fourth installment thanks to one of the many commercial tricks that the book recounts. “Above all, it was because of a marketing operation titled Make your megamix. Young people at that time wondered how all those effects were made, and they were told: do you want to learn? Buy the album. It was all a deception, because they taught how to make montages with cassette tapes, something I have never done.”
These commercial techniques bore the signature of Miguel Degá, shady co-founder of Max Music who years later commissioned hitmen to murder his partner. “Degá was a great guru and at the same time he was like his godfather, he was scary but he was also someone who you entered his office and left wanting to take on the world.” Under his command, the production company did not hesitate to bribe a high-ranking official of Los 40 Principales in Barcelona, ??to whom they gave a chalet in L’Ametlla. “He showed up at the studio to listen to our albums – Peret remembers of that manager – and curiously the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the top 40 were from Max Music. They also had a customs Civil Guard on their payroll who would not let in the records from Blanco y Negro”, the competing record company.
With capitalist regularity, the mixes flooded the market adapting to the fashion of the moment, and thus the Compañía Total, Bolero Mix, Ibiza Mix, Lo duro, Rambo Total, Bombazo Mix or Currupipi Mix were born. “There was even a mix of Mexican bands because we opened Max Music México; They sent me the songs and I mixed it,” explains Peret, who never saw problems in making this type of compilations. “There is no reason to criticize commercial music, which reaches many people.” In his opinion, the perfect song “is the one that three generations dance, the grandmother, the mother and the girl. It is said that summer success does not have quality, but it does have quality, as commercial music it has a lot of quality.”
“In the eighties, disco music was the ugly duckling,” recalls Peret. “I really like that Pet Shop Boys have come to renowned festivals like Sónar, but at that time they said it was disgusting disco music.” Critics, especially the pop-rock sectors, vilified everything that could not be represented on stage with a guitar, drums, keyboard and bass.”
This criticism of music extended to its creator, who sitting in front of his tape recorder was not considered an artist, something that matched Peret’s character. “I was too lazy to go on promotions, I’m a radio guy,” he says, although now he regrets not having taken advantage of the success of those years. “If I had believed it more, maybe it would have gained more popularity.” A regret that comes late, when streaming and home software have long since extinguished the megamix star. They languished in the 2000s and Peret moved to the Vale Music record company, where he experienced from within the collaboration with Crónicas Marciana s and Operación Triunfo, a triumph for the small company against the record giants, “they were very slow while we, being small “We had a very quick reaction.”
Peret went on to serve as artistic director, preparing compilations, “but they laughed in my face because at that time we sold 400,000 copies every week with the O T galas.” This success allowed him to publish albums such as Ministry of Sound, cultura de club while he was in charge of introducing a then unknown music called reggaeton to the Spanish market. He also participated in Hotel Glam, “they are all cool experiences, I spent many nights trying to get Pocholo to sign a contract for me, sometimes Dinio came a little drunk,” he remembers of the Cuban, for whom he produced Making Love.
“I’m not complaining about anything, I’m just asking to go to Sónar,” says Peret, laughing, “you could consider it, I’d be very excited.” While waiting for the call, he currently runs a cocktail bar in Barcelona and is recording a docuseries about the megamix years with Producciones del Barrio, while presenting the program El megakiss on Kiss FM to certify that first love, which for he was the radio, lasts forever.
