The Prodigy - Classic or Dud ?

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.

The Prodigy as an influence on dubstep yeah thats obvious but I don’t hear a lot of that aggression and menace (or breakbeats for that matter) in David Guetta of Aviici. Although that maybe has more to do with the uselessness of “EDM” as a genre name.

I’d say contemporary stadium house acts like Faithless were much more of a precursor to that.

All of their albums have gone to number 1 in the UK! Even the really shit ones! By the time that 2004 album came out they were completely anachronistic, but by 2009 they sort of made sense again. That was after two or three years of blog house and nu-rave and various indie bands checking them as a formative influence etc. I remember Invaders Must Die being half-decent in places, but the one from last year was awful and they felt like dinosaurs.

At some point, probably pre-97 in all honesty, it felt like their connection to dance music was severed. As opposed to, say, the Chemical Brothers, who even at their most indie-friendly always felt like they'd retained a feel for club culture, would put out maximalist bangers in between albums etc.

I think of Faithless as the Prodigy of trance, not as stadium house

Faithless, like Guetta & co fall between house and trance in a similar way.

I mean Rollo & Bliss were house producers first, taking in some elements from trance like those big buildups, just like Guetta, Axwell/Ingrosso, Aviici, Afrojack, all the EDM guys, it’s a pretty straight line through time.

Shit

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/53648551_10155821222102251_8165130350394081280_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_ht=scontent-lhr3-1.xx&oh=8d572e052f065576223cdf1b690d67e1&oe=5CDD10EB

aww, shit

Siegbran, I think that's a relatively narrow EDM definition?

I might be liberally clumping in the post-"dubstep" stuff under EDM, but my understanding (and limited experience) is that a large portion of the acts at modern EDM festivals is the drop-heavy rippling bass stuff. Which is more Prodigy-indebted, but much less radio friendly.

Half of the stuff thrown into dj sets by a couple edm acts that were playing at a side stage at a festival I was at last year were playing 90% stuff that sounded like post-Skrillex with rap vocals tossed in.

Hmm yeah that goes to show that EDM as a tag isn't very useful in discussing this stuff (in the wider definition even Moroder and the Pet Shop Boys fall under it), I was indeed more referring to the narrower "country/pop singer dropping inspirational lyrics over a huge anthemic build/drop" EDM, but yeah that (post)dubstep stuff is of course totally indebted to The Prodigy.

country/pop singer dropping inspirational lyrics over a huge anthemic build/drop

Based on admittedly anecdotal evidence, EDM's definition has narrowed down over the years, and this appears to be its prevalent meaning nowadays. I might be wrong, though.

my definition is "stuff that plays at events like Electric Daisy Carnival that isn't a legacy act or dance genre that I'd like (that is probably playing a small side stage for old people)"

The bit about the 5k is especially sad. I haven't been touched by serious depression or suicidal thoughts. I just know that for me, exercise is such a life-affirming activity.

I don't really know anything about Keith or the Prodigy, but there's been such an outpouring of grief from so many people I wouldn't have expected a connection. I'm sorry for all you who were fans.

that photo of keith running checks out - looks like he only started doing parkrun just a couple of weeks ago

http://www.parkrun.org.uk/results/athleteresultshistory/?athleteNumber=5457329

not bad times either for someone just starting out

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7800/46392084864_01710c36f3_c.jpg

The bit about the 5k is especially sad. I haven't been touched by serious depression or suicidal thoughts. I just know that for me, exercise is such a life-affirming activity.

Yeah, I've been doing parkrun for just over two years and personally know a couple of people who are in a much better place mentally since they started doing it. There's usually such a friendly community around the events too.

I'm listening to 'No Tourists'. It's... yeah, it sounds like what you'd expect it to sound like. But will anyone here vouch for post FOTL Prodigy?

Yes.

Yes but not in large quantities.

I'm not sure I'd particularly vouch for FoTL.

"Funky Shit" and "Serial Thrilla" might be the worst things they've ever recorded

The last track with the woman from Republica is rubbish as well.

Breathe and Firestarter haven't aged massively well. Smack My Bitch Up still bangs though.

And the Crispy Mills one still sounds surprisingly decent.

FOTL is a great EP ("Smack My Bitch Up", "Diesel Power", "Mindfields", "Narayan", "Climbatize") with some decent filler ("Firestarter", "Breathe") and some total horseshit (the rest, although "Fuel My Fire" is at least bad in an entertaining way)

That's solidly OTM.

Can't remember Climbatize though!

The instrumental towards the end.

I quite like Naryan. Climbatize is good in a "let's do Weather Experience again" way. The two lead singles are great but I never need to hear then again. Don't care much for the rest really.

"Diesel Power" rules

wow, i completely forgot "Fuel My Fire" existed... in my head it sounds pretty good.... but i think this might be an album where glancing at the tracklist and thinking about the hooks it seems like an all-killer-no-filler album, but i'm actually forgetting some exhausting digressions because WOW it's 56 minutes long?!

“Serial Thrilla” is 200% enervating

Yeah it’s too long for such a monochromatic album, but drop Firestarter (I never need to hear that ever again), Funky Shit and Fuel My Fire and you’re done.

"Smack My Bitch Up" is the single I've really tired of. "Breathe" got the most play on the alternative station I listened to in the 90s but I never hear it anymore and enjoy it nowadays. "Mindfields" and "Narayan" quietly the best tracks on the album

yeah now that you mention it, "Breathe" has not really been super overplayed, for how big it was that year. i don't think any of the more "electronica" side of 90s alt rock has crossed over to the "alt rock is now classic rock" thing. or even the relevant xm genre stations.