Yet another post that reinforces the notion that despite my best intentions, Flaming Pablum is little more than a loose aggregation of NYC nostalgia-porn and a rogues gallery of musician obituaries.
I was genuinely shocked and saddened to read, this morning, that Keith Flint of The Prodigy had taken his own life at the age of 49, especially so shortly after news of the respective deaths of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis and World Domination Enterprises’ Steve Jameson.
While rave culture was never really my particular thing, I’d always loved electronic music in its myriad forms, be it the crude, assaultive battery of Suicide, the magisterial precision of Kraftwerk or the elegiac minimalism of Wendy Carlos. By the dawn of the 90’s, however, I cannot say I was as invested in electronic club music (house, techno, rave, etc.). I was -- and remain -- simply more of a rock guy. It was for this reason that I warmed to the rise of Big Beat, a subgenre of electronic music that cribbed elements of rock song structure and swagger. One of said subgenre’s biggest proponents was The Prodigy.
I’d heard of the outfit –- not really a “band” per se, at the time -– from my days working at SPIN, but it wasn’t until 1993’s Music for the Jilted Generation that I started to take an interest, largely based on the profanity-laced number “Their Law,” featuring members of bedraggled Grebo beatboxers Pop Will Eat Itself. I mean, what’s there not to love about a pounding beat punctuated by periodic bursts of ”FUCK’EM, AND THEIR LAW!”?
But it was the next album, The Fat of the Land, presaged by the two crucial shots across the bow that were “Firestarter” and “Breathe,” that really solidified The Prodigy as a bona fide band, or at least a close approximation thereof.
While ostensibly a bristling document of electronic dance music, The Fat of the Land is also just a great, big dumb rock record in the same vein as, say, Electric by The Cult, Destroyer by Kiss or Kings of The Wild Frontier by Adam & the Ants. While most of my favorite records make an assertive statement of one form or another, there remains something to be said about music that just sounds cool and fun. That’s what big dumb rock records are for. Not everything has to be a po-faced manifesto. Silly, hollow and/or objectionable lyrics notwithstanding, The Fat of The Land revels in its own giddy vacuity. It pumps, pounds and prods, but it ultimately has nothing to say … and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Dance to it. Bang your head to it. Leap around to it. But don’t bother overanalyzing it. Beyond its infectiously pugnacious pulse, there is no there there.
It was his turn on this album -- particularly on those two afore-cited singles, but also the similarly ridiculous “Serial Thrilla” and “Fuel My Fire” -– that vaulted Keith Flint’s status to vocalist. Today’s headlines frame him somewhat astonishingly as the band’s “frontman,” when in truth he’d originally been relegated to “dancer” and/or mascot, not unlike Bez in the Happy Mondays, only on a different variety of stimulants. Keith’s performance in the video for “Firestarter” effectively changed all that, cementing him in the firmament, in the grand tradition of Sir John of Rotten, as the next great threat to the impressionable youth of England.
I knew “Firestarter” and “Breathe” were completely silly records the first time I heard them, but -– as mentioned above -– that didn’t stop me from falling completely in love with both of them. As I mentioned in an early post, both songs were put into maddeningly regular rotation on my sound system when I moved into my apartment on East 9th Street. When the full album landed in 1997, I of course snapped it right up, thrilling to the carefully cultivated imagery (ooh, look – he’s wearing a Varukers t-shirt!) and the pavement-cracking, beat-heavy production (for my money, the best track on the album, in the beat capacity, is “Diesel Power”). Certain tracks -– notably “Smack My Bitch Up” -– haven’t aged quite so well, for exceptionally obvious reasons, not that there were especially a-okay at the time, either.
As I mentioned of Facebook this morning, I vividly remember putting “Firestarter” on the jukebox at the late, lamented Stoned Crow on Washington Place about five or six times in a row. This prompted a fellow patron to get exceptionally cross with me and threaten to take my life. In retrospect, given my actions, this was actually a reasonable response to six or seven airings of the song. What can I say? Beer might have been involved.
The following June, the Prodigy came to the Hammerstein Ballroom here in NYC, and I happily attended. Much like the album it was still promoting, the live Prodigy production was an endearingly ridiculous circus of smoke, volume and overall ludicrousness. You can read Ann Powers’ very serious review of it here.
At this stage, I was going to post something about how strange I thought it was that the words “legendary” and “iconic” kept popping up in headlines regards to Keith, and how, while I very much count myself a fan of this particular era of The Prodigy, I don’t necessarily agree that these words are necessarily appropriate. Then, I thought better of it.
While “iconic” is inarguably overused these days, who am I to diminish the impact Keith Flint and The Prodigy had on their fans? Am I disappointed that said terms weren’t brandished as zealously with regard to the passing of Mark Hollis? Absolutely, but this isn’t a competition. It’s frankly tragic, regardless.
Rest in peace, Keith Flint. By all accounts, regardless of your bug-eyed stage persona, you were roundly regarded as a kind and decent human being in an industry not especially renowned for same. One only wishes that was enough to quell your inner conflicts and convince you to stick around.
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