The Prodigy - Classic or Dud ?

Sorry, Instagram, not Twitter, if that matters.

Oh no! RIP.

God fucking damn it. The Fat of the Land was the album I needed to open my mind to a whole lot of electronic music to which I'd been stupidly dismissive before, an important record for me.

Such a fucking shame. Used to play Outer Space and No Good on repeat as a teen

For a lot of people in the UK the Prodigy *was* the sound of being a teenager in the 90s, and the Fat of the Land era in particular was something you felt you outgrew and moved on from very quickly, and it's now comfortably recycled into the wedding disco canon. Difficult to overstate the shock and excitement of seeing Firestarter and Breathe on Top of the Pops and wondering where the hell it was all going to go and Keith was the central image and voice in all of that.

As it turned out it went nowhere much - I got used to dismissing that stuff as largely irrelevant to current dance music but it's also impossible to imagine whole swathes of current music, specifically EDM and everything that sounds like it, developing in quite the same way without it. And the subsequent descent into hamminess doesn't matter either, because I'd always assumed that Keith would end up doing and AC/DC, still churning round the festival circuit doing Firestarter into his 60s, becoming one of those self-parodic acts that resolutely refused to change. Damn.

Matt, completely agree. By the time Firestarter became a hit, I didn't much care for the Prodigy. Too cartoonish. But I could see how one could love the punk/dance combo. Dangerous? Lol no. But Keith was so much fun. Very sad ending. I can understand Liam's anger.

The Prodigy were a huge band for me as a teenager and ...Jilted Generation was very much my gateway into dance music. Matt DC OTM about the shock and now-ness of Firestarter, it felt massive. RIP Keith.

I absolutely loved The Prodigy, from the moment I heard Android I was obsessed with tracking that EP down, then Experience hit and I was along for the ride all the way including Fat Of The Land. They completely dropped off the face of the earth after that, was that Liam's writers block?

I was a teenager when The Fat of the Land came out and its sense of menace bowled me over, as you'd expect. It felt more modern and forward-looking than Marilyn Manson's contemporaneous schlock and Keith was a big part of that, no matter how easy it has become to dismiss them in the interim (cf. Pitchfork's retrospective review). I had a harder time connecting with Music for the Jilted Generation, which genuinely felt like it came from a different era at the time, but those reservations evaporated a few years later.

None of my classmates were into them, which helped fuel the mystique.

I loved Jilted Generation and I guess saw it as a ~mature statement~ after the purer rave fun of Experience, and Firestarter was def a massive cultural event as everyone said, but I also slightly resented the new rockishness and what I saw as forced attempts to be edgy. (Weirdly getting "Their Law" - rock guitars, PWEI collab - on some free NME or Select tape was the thing that made me go and buy Jilted so I don't know what changed!)

It was only rewatching the videos years later - not sure where it's from but there's a good making of Firestarter video on youtube - that I realised just how hilarious and unexpectedly camp Keith's performances were and felt bad for not appreciating the glorious silliness properly at the time.

Anyway. Poor guy.

(There's a BBC obit now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47442312 )

“They completely dropped off the face of the earth after that” - I remember there was a really long wait for their next single after Fat of the Land. It was “Baby’s got a temper” and it was fantastically bad. Liam tried to write another album on the same style but it didn’t work, and by the time they made a comeback it was too late and the material wasn’t as strong. “Girls” is great for the first two minutes but gets boring after that. I wonder if having to write material for Flint and Maxim to deliver gave Liam a creative push he didn’t have otherwise - the later stuff didn’t utilise them as much.

It’s odd having an icon from the rave era dying. In my mind 1989 was just (counts) 2019... twenty years ago? Longer than ten years. Can’t possibly be longer than twenty years. Next we’ll be crying about those lovable funsters Altern-8. Would anybody miss the Utah Saints?

I wonder if the band will carry on. Most of their classic early tunes were just Liam and whatever sampler he used at the time - “Out of Space”, “No Good”, even “Poison” and “Voodoo People” etc didn’t have Keith doing vocals. But their two most popular hits were dominated by Keith.

Would anybody miss the Utah Saints?

hi!

Oh god Poison was indeed great. One of these bands you never revisit. Well, I don't. Great for when you're a teen. You buy the record, play it and then delve deeper into the dance scene. A great gateway but just that.

surprised to read that all their albums bar the first one debuted at number one on the UK Charts (think that's right). I definitely stopped caring after Fat Of The Land but the first two albums had a profound effect on me.

One of these bands you never revisit.

I was doing a playlist last week for my 30th wedding anniversary and couldn't decide between No Good and Everyone In The Place. Couldn't believe how old those songs were and, of course, how long I'd been married.

Picked No Good incidentally.

I wonder if having to write material for Flint and Maxim to deliver gave Liam a creative push he didn’t have otherwise - the later stuff didn’t utilise them as much.

Maybe not the most key detail at the moment but The Prodigy records from Invaders Must Die onwards actually use a fair bit more of their two frontmen than any prior era - Keith didn’t get a turn on lead vocals until “Firestarter”, and near as I can tell that and “Baby’s Got A Temper” were the only proper verse-chorus verse songs either of them did with the group (as opposed to more catchphrasey rave-MC stuff, which is how they’d be heavily utilized in newer Prodigy material). I guess it speaks to how key Keith and Maxim have been to the overall effect of The Prodigy that it took me a long time to realize that.
Speaking of which, Liam’s obviously and understandably broken up about this but if he and Maxim want to keep having a go at it I’d certainly support them, and I doubt I’m alone in that.

xp also “No Good” is very much the right pick.

I wouldn't call them strictly an entry point, I was already pretty deep into techno and house when The Prodigy came along, they just had the hardest hitting breaks around. But then I was also fully on board with hardcore, schranz, neurofunk, dubstep etc.

(i mean after that, obv)

How were the Prodigy received in the US? Was it only really Fat Of The Land that had a significant commercial/cultural impact? They're a household name in the UK and even if their relevance waned after maybe the fourth album, they'd made enough of a mark on the public conscience to be counted as a legendary British act so to speak

Music For A Jilted Generation remains to my ears one of the most evil-sounding pop records of all time. I guess I was the right age but it was such a contrast from the smilier rave stylings of the first album. Like the point in the night where things take a dark turn, people start looking like ogres and demons and everything's just dripping with grey slimey rave juice. Fat of the Land tried to go one darker but instead ended up sounding a bit comical. I love the Peep Show take-off of that era - 'This is outrageous / This is contagious'

I'm surprised to read the The Fat of the Land went double platinum stateside, because it didn't feel big to me at the time. I see that "Firestarter" made it to #30 on the US singles chart, which sounds about right: a decently big pop song but not a blockbuster. That was their only song that had any impact in the USA iirc.

Fat of the Land was a #1 album stateside, I think

That's right, and double platinum like I said, but the singles didn't hit like that.

breathe and smack my bitch up were all over us modern rock radio in '97

Fat of the Land came out in that weird moment where dance music came above ground in the US for a moment, but the majority of the interest ended up concentrated on acts that were less dancefloor-ready and more easily packaged as vocal hook-enabled commercial jingles, viable as "live" performers, or able to create music videos that held interest.

The Prodigy hit all three of those. FOTL had a rock sensibility and both Keith Flint's vocals and stage presence were instrumental in that appeal. Although he's not in the video, when I reached college in '99 swapping music and videos on the college network had taken off and every single network share had the Firestarter video.

I was laughing at a recent twitter thread asking why ravers in the US in 2019 are so weirdly aggressive. Really, The Prodigy -- and specifically FOTL -- are the dads of the US EDM festival scene.

indeed - MTV was pushing Fatboy Slim & the Chems a lot, but The Prodigy had a lead singer and were a lot more "band-like", plus their image sorta fit in with the Limp Bizkit-style 'alternative punk' look that you saw all the time back then. They hadn't really figured out how to deal with groups that didn't have a 'frontman' so it's not a surprise that The Prodigy were the ambassadors of "electronica"

oh fuck :(

RIP

The Prodigy was really a big deal in the U.S., I remember when Firestarter dropped on the radio it really *did* sound a lot different and people were immediately hooked by that track. It was released really far in advance of the album, so it built up this huge level of anticipation that the next great band was about to hit. I bought the CD almost immediately upon its release and while it wasn't really a total classic for me, it did hook me and get me interested in digging into this "electronica" thing. I think the deal with these guys and Keith Flint was they sounded huge and absurd and fun, in a year when the biggest single was Candle in the Wind '97.

I had just hopped on a British Airways flight to London the weekend that The Fat of the Land topped the American chart. During the month I spent in the United Kingdom, I listened to the BBC several times, during which "Smack My Bitch Up" was ubiquitous or seemed so. I heard it on car radios as I walked from my flat in Russell Square to one of the many bookshops on Tottenham Court Road. When I returned to the States, "Firestarter" and "Breathe" were all over modern/alternative radio. In many ways they augured the macho turn that this chart would take in the late Clinton years. But I still love those singles.

It came out the summer before I went to university, it was pretty much the only thing we played in the car on the first holiday I ever went on with my friends. I think I've only ever owned it on a shitty copied cassette and streaming it now I'm amazed to discover it actually has bass.

Serial Thrilla is still rubbish, Mindfields is pretty good though.

Prodigy headlined the last Lollapalooza tour in '97

https://www.lollapalooza.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Lolla97.jpg

rip.

really enjoyed the show i attended in 1998, the smack my bitch up tour. they were supported by foo fighters, so it was a bit of a dream line-up for me at 14.

weird role to have in a group, to be a frontman but only do vocals on a few songs.

actually it would've been 1997 and i was 13

breathe and smack my bitch up were all over us modern rock radio in '97

― call all destroyer, Monday, March 4, 2019 9:02 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mtv too

when i was a kid i didn't understand and was scared of them but "breathe" was still the coolest thing i'd ever heard

I had a total brainfart, the ubiquitous video on college computer network shares was "smack my bitch up" obviously

firestarter was probably in there, but much further down the list

Unexpected and touching tribute from James Blunt of all people.

At the Q Awards years ago, when @NoelGallagher was saying he was leaving Ibiza because I’d moved there, and @DamonAlbarn refused to be in the same picture as me, and @PaulWellerHQ was saying he’d rather eat his own shit than work with me, Keith Flint came over, gave me a hug, and

— James Blunt (@JamesBlunt) March 4, 2019

(2nd part)

said how thrilled he was for my success.

Keith, I only met you once, but I shed a tear at the news of your death. In our business, there are no prizes for being kind, but if there was, that Grammy would be yours.

— James Blunt (@JamesBlunt) March 4, 2019

Using the death of someone who was kind to you once to offload a bunch of pent-up grudges you've held for years is an odd approach to paying tribute to someone. Takes all sorts, I suppose. That last sentence is premium Blunt cheese, too. Quality.

I like that story. Sounds like it was Noel, Damon, Paul, and the rest with the grudges! Good on Keith for showing kindness to an "easy target", if you will.

And yeah, this news gutted me.

Blunt does come across as surprisingly self-aware and self-mocking on Twitter, so I really doubt he's doing any more than shrugging at his open-mic-night-guy-meets-Westlife reputation than airing a grudge here

when i was a kid i didn't understand and was scared of them but "breathe" was still the coolest thing i'd ever heard

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Monday, March 4, 2019 12:37 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was like 20 at the time but same

Sensing that slow burn arc of the Prodigy going from hearing "Charly" randomly in 91/92 to where it crested in 97 here was really kinda amazing.

Show I most regret missing because of the insanity of the context -- the Moby/Prodigy tour in early 1993 in Orange County, when they played a long-standing rock/country venue in South County. That had seats and tables. I still wonder what the fuck that was like.

Here's the one contemporary documentation of that show I know of:

http://articles.latimes.com/1993-01-14/news/ol-1377_1_techno-music

Pretty nice piece by our own somewhat erstwhile AlexinNY:
https://vassifer.blogs.com/alexinnyc/2019/03/goodbye-to-keith-flint.html

It seems as easy to imagine a Prodigy Moby bill in 93 it seems hard to imagine one in 97.

“They completely dropped off the face of the earth after that” - I remember there was a really long wait for their next single after Fat of the Land. It was “Baby’s got a temper” and it was fantastically bad.

the Fat Of The Land breakthrough was just so big (over a year after the huge Firestarter breakthrough,& three years after the Jilted etc etc), and so protracted in a still physical-media-dominant world, that they just spent two years touring bigger and bigger venues. Once they stopped, Howlett supposedly spent... six months? fiddling and nitpicking his Breezeblock mix into The Dirtchamber Sessions, before the whole enterprise collapsed exhausted and Leeroy sloped off.

Baby's Got A Temper sounded nakedly desperate at the time (trying to generate a Prodigy single by sampling Firestarter over a song about Rohypnol by Keith's rock band?), but the public, the band and Flint all seemed mutually happy to pretend it never happened ASAP.

FOTL-era Prodge as precursor to '10s EDM is OTM, except instead of having a goon leap around having fun and shouting, the kids had to latch onto the bloke at the back engaging in online slagging matches on edgelord-brostep.com/forum for their audience identification. What I'm saying, I think, is that for want of a few more Keith Flints, we could be without Comicsgate and Proud Boys today.