Charley says you should always trust a scheming pussycat

 

In summer 1991, the electronic dance music act The Prodigy had a top ten hit with Charly. It led a craze of telly-sampling rave hits, and started a long career for the Prodge who went on to have ten more top ten singles.

The iconic miaowing cat sample was taken from a series of public information films made in 1973, with the titular cat being voiced by DJ and presenter Kenny Everett.

This much we know.

However, I am hear to tell you that Charley the cat from the original films was, and I'm sorry to say this, a bad cat. (Yes Charley, not Charly. For some reason, the Prodigy, ahem, dropped the e.)

That's right. Charley the cat was a bad, bad cat. Here's why. Let's go through each of the Charley films produced by the government's Central Office of Information.

Charley film 1: Falling in the Water

Charley the bad cat leads a small boy away from his father during a fishing expedition. While showing off, Charley the bad cat jumps over a puddle and falls into a pond. Charley the bad cat ends up freezing wet and wrapped in a towel, spoiling everyone's day.

Charley film 2: In The Kitchen

In the family kitchen, Charley the bad cat is startled by a pot of over-boiling water and the fatty spit of frying sausages. Charley the bad cat then walks out of the room, directly behind the legs of the family's mother, who is chopping vegetables with sharp knives, probably. Dangerous.

Charley film 3: Matches

While playing with alphabet blocks with a small boy, Charley the bad cat dives onto the table and scatters everything everywhere. During the mayhem, he pushes a box of matches towards the small boy, who proceeds to reach for the matches, presumably for arsonistic reasons. At the end of the video clip, Charley the bad cat and the small boy walk off, leaving the matches scattered on the table.

Charley film 4: Mummy Should Know

After doing handstands carelessly in a back passageway, Charley the bad cat prevents a small boy from hanging out with his friends. Instead of socialising with his peer group, the small boy is forced to go to the park with his mum while Charley the bad cat eats a fish, no doubt stolen from a fishmonger on the way to a park. 

Charley film 5: Charley's Tea Party

While tearing around the house with inconsiderate abandon, Charley the bad cat claws at a table cloth. Charley the bad cat tugs the cloth so hard, he brings the table's contents crashing to the floor and destroys an entire tea set, a loaf of bread, and a plate of cod. I suspect this is a metaphorical and literal swipe at Jesus's feeding of the five thousand with loaves and fishes. Charley the bad cat ends up badly scalded, and appears to have torn up the tablecloth to use as bandages.

Charley film 6: Strangers

As a small boy is playing on the swings in a local park, a very nice stranger offers to show him some puppies. Charley the bad cat pulls the boy back and, not for the first time, prevents the boy from making friends with someone who's not a cat. Charley the bad cat is rewarded for his gaslighting with a big juicy fish, while the friendless small boy has to make do with an apple.

So there you have it. The Prodigy launched their lengthy career on the back of a manipulative moggy who seemed intent on destroying the social life of an innocent child. Public information films? Feline red flags, more like.

Watch out, Custard our of Roobarb and Custard. I'm coming for you next.

Further Fats: The Prodigy's Invaders Must Die: tingly breakdowns and a trouserful of fun (2009)

Further cats: You can watch all of the Charley films, and much more besides, in the National Archives^

Charley illustration: Fat Roland

Prodigy's Experience turns 30: that's a lot of small furry animals

The Prodigy's debut album Experience was released 30 years ago this week. It only seems like yesterday! 

Which is nonsense. 30 years is flipping ages ago. Shrews tend to live for less than 12 months. 30 years is over 30 full shrew generations. In human years, this means Experience came out during the reign of Julius Caesar. I hope you're following me on this.

I'm not sure Experience did much to separate the Prodigy from the xylophone-clonking mass of novelty ravers at the time. Their transformation into aggressive firestarters was some years down the line. But Charly pouncing into the top ten in summer 1991 was quite the landmark moment.

The best thing about that album is it's daft. Look at the lyrics. "Feel the bass come down on me  baby… Give me a number one, give me a number two.. . I take your brain to another dimension, pay close attention."

And whatever that cartoon cat was miaowing about. The boy tells us he was mewling road safety messages. I'm not convinced. Personally, I think Little Johnny 2D-face was gaslighting that poor cat. Let it dance into the road, you monster. Let it high five the cats eyes. 

This was originally meant to be a deep analysis of Experience, track by track, with 3,000-word essays and everything. However, I'm too busy listening to the new Bjork album to, er, pay close attention. Let's just say it's a classic that sounds as wild now as it ever did. Even better, actually, now we can consider Experience without the shadow of Jilted Generation, Fat Of The Land and all the chart-topping tomfoolery that came along with them. 

Let's finish this with some Amazon reviews of Experience. Really pay tribute to a great album. 

the album i received is absolutely shocking quality it jumps on every track, such a shame - one star

Record just doesn’t work, keeps skipping and jumping. Not pleased with this product - one star

I ordered it twice and both times the records jumped! Very disappointed - one star

The record arrived warped and not even close to being level. It wobbles on our record player - one star

Ordered Prodigy - Experience.... received Jimi Hendrix album. Rubbish - one star

Oh. Erm. Oops. 

Crabby birthday: The Prodigy's Fat Of The Land turns 25

The Prodigy's Fat Of The Land was released 25 years ago today. It was the fastest selling UK album of all time, and propelled the Prodge to the top of the charts with Firestarter and Breathe.

The album cover featured a zoomed-in shot of gecarcinus lateralis, otherwise know as a Bermuda land crab. It's a species of crab that is quite happy to hang out on beaches without rock pools, as long as the sand is moist enough for its gills to operate. They tend to be vegetarian, but will chomp on animal matter if needs be. Crab facts!

I'd make a cake to celebrate this anniversary, but the Prodigy never struck me as a cake kind of band. They seemed to hang out in grotty basements while writhing in threatening ways. Feels like an unhealthy place for a cake.

Fat Of The Land was incendiary. The single Smack My Bitch Up attracted claims of misogyny. Yeah, the word bitch is ugly, but I betcha if the protagonist in the video hadn't been a woman, no-one would have batted an eyelid at the video's hellraising. They should have got me to star in it. I would have stayed in listening to Future Sound of London and playing Boggle.

The album also gave us Keith Flint, God rest his sausages. The pointy-haired bovver boy became the face of rebellion in the 1990s. Keith Flint was quite happy to hang out on beaches without rock pools, and would chomp on animal matter if needs be. Apparently, Keith used to go on motorcycle rides with the saxophonist of Madness. That's an actual fact and not some nonsense about crabs. Who knew.

Music for the Jilted Generation was a more artistically interesting album as it turned a band bordering on novelty rave into a serious act. But Fat Of The Land might the most important. Along with the Shamen, it thrust proper dance music into the uber-mainstream while, perhaps unlike the Shamen,  losing little of its musical power.

It didn't impress everyone. To finish off this short waffle, here are some reviewers who didn't get along with the fat, the land and everything between.

Leftin, Amazon
Sexist lyrics set to appalling neo-metal/house bilge. One star.

Anonymous review, Entertainment.ie
I didn't want to admit it. I refused to accept it. But somewhere in my brain, the honesty section probably, something was telling me that it was a piece of sh*t.

boogie woogie king, Amazon
ID RATHER HAVE CRABS THAN LISTEN TO THIS!!

ozzystylez, Rate Your Music
I listened to this in my car the other day. The bass kicks hard and my car has reasonably good speakers. But I found myself turning it down as I drove through areas with a lot of people on the road in case they laughed at me for listening to such a cheesy, dated and worn out record.

Carlos Mancilla, Amazon
The album arrived a little bent at the top corner leaving a wrinkle in the cardboard.

Peter Barczak, Amazon
Only bought cos it was a penny. Not played it yet. Three stars.

All of these reviewers need rock pools for survival, and so are limited in the range of beaches available to them. Happy birthday, Fat Of The Land.

Further Fats: A History Of The Prodigy For People That Can't Be Bothered Reading The Wikipedia Article (2009)

Dance music fans, I have bad news about Christmas

Every now and then, mega cool dance music dominates the charts.

Yeah, I said "mega cool". Deal with it, kids.

Like the time the Chemical Brothers' Setting Sun topped the charts in 1996, the same year the Prodigy took the top spot twice. Or the moment Kraftwerk knocked Shakin' Stevens off number one. Or 21st century bangers breaking past a mush of identikit dance records such as Mint Royale's Singin' In The Rain or Kiesza's Hideaway.

The bad news is that Santa is having none of this. He hates dance music. He's your crusty old grandpa banging on the ceiling with a walking stick, or in his case, an elf. There has never been a mega cool dance hit as Christmas number one.

There must be some Christmas chart toppers with dance elements, right? A pearl among the oysters, a bit of gristle amid the constant stream of watery gravy, something credible besides Jimmy Osmond, Cliff Richard, all the Band Aids and Shayne flipping Ward.

Wait. Yazoo's Only You was Christmas number one in 1983. Vince Clarke! Alison Moyet! Synths! Except this was the a cappella version by The Flying Pickets: not dancey at all. Dammit.

What else? Not much. Mr Blobby's self-titled 1993 Chrimbo chart-topper was a dance music track, with its horrendously outdated Stock Aitken Waterman rhythms. But it can't count: it was a children's singalong with a bunch of kids who deserved to be sent up t'chimneys.

Apart from one track I'm yet to mention, that's it. Everything else is ballads, charity singles or people singing about sausage rolls. If Christmas was a nightclub, it would have been long bulldozed to make way for an Asda. I believe in the power of redemption, such as celebrity chefs doing interesting things with the long maligned sprout, but there is no hope here: the Christmas chart topper will never be a mega cool dance hit.

Except...

There is a pure, club-thumping dance track that made it to number one. It had samples, a roof-raising build-up and key change, and a pretty nifty breakbeat. That's right. Bob the Builder's Can We Fix It? is the most danceable festive number one in history.

Has Bob fixed it? Yes, he has. Have a listen: that's a proper skippy breakbeat right there. Even better, he knocked Westlife off the top of the charts when he became the Christmas chart-topper in 2000. Santa Claus is squeezing down your chimney, and he's armed with a cartoon wrench and Neil Morrissey dressed a reindeer.

Thank you, Bob. Or should I call you Robert? You truly are the most mega cool king of Chrimbo.

*publishes blog post*

*fast-forward to later that night*

*Fat Roland's bedroom, a rattle of chains in the darkness*

FATS: Whaaa? What's that? Who's there?
GHOST: Wooooah. It's me. The ghost of blogs past.
FATS: What do you want? Is it money? Lard? Take the lard! I only keep it on my bedside table for comfort.
GHOST: Whooaah. I'm here to tell you off about that blog post you did. The one about Christmas. Wooooaaaah!
FATS: Since when did ghosts get internet?
GHOST: You didn't mention the Pet Shop Boys Always On My Mind and the Human League's Don't You Want Me. Woooah.
FATS: Can I go back to bed? I've not finished making my Christmas candle and I need to break into my neighbour's first thing to get more earwax.
GHOST: Woooah. You deliberately missed out two of the biggest electronic music hits of all time to make some vapid point about dance music and Christmas. Seriously, dude. It renders your whole point moot. Woah.
FATS: Listen here, matey, get back inside that wardrobe. I'm going to push you back inside that spooky flipping wardrobe.
GHOST: Yikes! Do you always dress like that for bed? That's going to chafe, surely.
FATS: Hey, if it's good enough for Noel Edmonds, it's good enough fo—

*cuts to black*

Pictured above: Glasgow Sound Control's window display at Christmas taken by Agent Banana

Further Fats: Fat Roland's number one album chart death rant (2010)

Further Fats: If it goes bleep, it may or may not be EDM (2013)

On my mind: The Guardian's 100 greatest UK No 1s

The Guardian's 100 greatest UK No 1s had some pretty good selections. It's hard to go wrong when you're picking 100 highlights from fewer than 1,500 songs, most of which are hogwash. Take a random year as an example: 1999 number ones by Chef, The Offspring, Boyzone or the Mambo No 5 bloke were hardly going to trouble the list.

Pet Shop Boys' topped their poll, which is entirely the correct choice. Their take on Elvis's Always On My Mind has an incredible energy, like a firework exploding in the boot of a car – I've always considered this the best Christmas number one, so I'm happy to extend it to the best chart topper of all time. Sadly, the Guardian opted for West End Girls as the greatest number one; any fool knows that the other PSB number ones, Heart and It's A Sin, are better than 'Girls. Pfffrt. Just you wait till I get you home, The Guardian.

The Chemical Brothers were just inside their top 50, while the Prodigy soared into their top ten, troubling the likes of Michael Jackson and the Human League. Steve 'Silk' Hurley's Jack Your Body was also in the mix, with it being labelled as "the most minimal No 1 of all time". Black Box and Daft Punk were included, although the latter's only number one song is hardly their best.

Killer made it into their list, with the Guardian praising its perfect design, as did I just last week. Kraftwerk's The Model is also in there, with a welcome shout-out to its brilliant flip-side Computer Love. And while we're doing k-words, the KLF's 3am Eternal made it quite high up the list, proving the ancients of Mu-Mu still have some mojo. This made me sad that Last Train To Trancentral never got to number one. Still, all of these were great to see.

They chose Snap!'s Rhythm Is a Dancer, which I'm sure they were as serious as gout about, but I would have probably have gone for Snap!'s other number one, The Power. That track was so strange and discordant, confusing my head at the time before my heart fell in love with it. The Power knocked Beats International's Dub Be Good To Me off the top spot – another missed contender in this list.

They should have included Pump Up The Volume by MARRS, which incidentally stands for band members Martyn, Alex, Rudy, Russell and Steve. They're like ABBA but with less knitwear. The band didn't get on, and it was a miracle they ever released anything, never mind create a chart-topping acid house classic. And how on earth The Guardian missed The Shamen's Ebeneezer Goode, I have no idea.

There were some outsider choices I would have like to have seen, and would have no doubt made a top 200. For the 1990s, I love the indie spirit of White Town's pin-sharp Your Woman ("So much for all your highbrow Marxist ways, just use me up and then you walk away"), while I mourn the exclusion of Flat Beat by Mr Oizo, which was a blow to yellow puppets everywhere.

There are some 21st century outsiders I'd liked to have seen: Rihanna's Diamonds (they chose Umbrella); Duck Sauce's Barbra Streisand; David Guetta's epic Titanium; Tinie Tempah's Scunthorpe-namechecking Pass Out. Nothing much interesting to say about them – I just like the tunes, dammit.

Like I say, it's an easy list to generally get right, even for people like me who find it difficult to focus on anything before 1987. And not a single mention of Lou Bega's fifth Mambo, despite its remarkable lyric "It's all good, let me dump it, please set in the trumpet". Pardon?

Further Fats: Delirious' bid for number one: the rock delusion? (2010)

Whatever happened to the cheeky New Year number one? (2013)

Orbital tweeting Dick and Dom is all the goodness we need right now

We're all agreed that Twitter is an open sewer. A torrent of streaming mouth bums. The equivalent of a cavalcade of Celine Dion albums smashing into your face until the end of time. 

But every now and then, there is a moment of hope. A silver lining around the cloud of guff. That glimmer of goodness came in this tweet: 

Orbital are chatting to Dick and Dom. Everything's going to be okay. pic.twitter.com/Z6ksQLllyC

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) April 2, 2020

 

And here it is again with, for reason whatsoever, kittens: 

That's right. Techno behemoths Orbital had a nice how-do-you-do exchange with children's telly legends Dick and Dom. 

I suspect a collaboration is afoot. Acid Pants In Da Bungalow. Satan In Da Bungalow. Da Box In Da Bungalow. You get the idea. 

Orbital once made a video with Play School presenter Brian Cant. Play School had different shaped windows for children to look through, no doubt reflecting the big-fish small-fish cardboard-box shapes made by ravers. Also, they had a giant egg person called Humpty, which sounds like a standard hallucination at Shroom if you ask me. 

Shroom was a nightclub, by the way. It was important in the development of acid house and that happy smiley face symbol you see everywhere. Shroom rhymes with Button Moon, which was a children's programme about a pot-headed man who had astral visions and spent most of his time using kitchen utensils to get high.

As I said in that Brian Cant blog post, kid's characters have played a part in club culture. The Prodigy sampled Charly the cat for their debut hit in 1991, and Global Communication's Mark Pritchard scored an early top ten as Shaft with a raved-up Roobarb And Custard theme tune. My most scratched seven-inch, destroyed from overuse, is probably Smart E's druggie kids anthem Sesame's Treet. You can guess what that samples.

I'll get back to my 1995 albums contest soon. I just thought I'd share this moment of levity amid the chaos. A happy face amid the scowls. A thumbs-up amid the angry fists. A sunbeam amid the drizzle. A parking space amid the lack of parking spaces. A nice pair of trousers amid the dirty undies. Ew. I'll stop now.

Further Fats: It's a magic carpet ride, every door will open wide to happy people like you (2007)

Further Fats: Live tweeting at the Brits - the full text (2009)

Best electronic albums of 2019: five

5 – Special Request - Vortex (Houndstooth)

In 2019, Special Request released a billion albums. He fired them at our faces like a tennis ball cannon. There were albums everywhere: on the floor, down our trousers, down the back of the sofa, down the plug hole. Someone get me a plunger: SR's fired out another one.

In October, he released the galactic r'n'b of Offworld, and a stonker it was too. In June, he gave us the brilliant Bedroom Tapes, taken from old cassettes he found in a house move. But since I'm only allowing him one album, it's May's storming Vortex that makes the list.

Vortex is a speed-fuelled hymn to BPM: the breakbeats trip over each other to see who can get to the finish line fastest. You think things are hectic, but then tracks like Fett and (deep breath) A Gargantuan Melting Face Floating Effortlessly Through The Stratosphere join the speedway and kick everything else to the hard shoulder.

There's a line to be drawn from peak smash 'n' grab 1990s Prodigy to Special Request's wonderfully futuristic visions. Vortex will leave you gasping — but don't gasp too much or he'll fire another album at your gob.

(While this blog post was hovering in my drafts, Special Request dropped the fourth of his promised 2019 albums. Too late for consideration here, but click here to have a listen: the title perfectly summarises his balls-out attitude to music production this year.)



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

Best electronic albums of 2018: twenty

20 – The Prodigy – No Tourists (Take Me To The Hospital)

The other day, I rounded the frozen peas isle in Aldi and a group of 102-year-olds set upon me, zimmer frames bashing my shins, false teeth nibbling my nose.

That didn’t happen, but I would imagine this is what the Prodigy’s seventh album felt like to some people. Surely their temper has been tempered with age?

Liam Howlett originally intended No Tourists to be an EP, but the electronic angst flowed out of him. Just listen to the furious saw lead of Light Up The Sky, or the cheeky f-bomb in Boom Boom Tap.

This is the Prodigy at their naughtiest and freshest, and although we’ll never get the Jilted Generation back, this older generation still has some bite.



Scroll all of the best 2018 electronic albums by clicking here.

A special message from thingy from the Prodigy

Hello there, I am Kevin from the Prodigy or whatever my name is. I would like to tell you about Need Some1, my brand new single wot is out on gramophone.

Need Some1 sounds like Jilted Generation on spice, and it's got guitar riffs, sirens and an extended kazoo solo.

Excuse me, I just need to get the phone. Hello? Oh hi Tarquin. We're losing the kazoo solo? That's a shame. Okay bye, love to Elspeth.

Where was I? Oh yes. My brand new single contains a sample from Loleatta Holloway. You might remember her from being the shouty voice from Black Box, or from being the shouty voice from Marky Mark, or from being the shouty voice from that time I hid in her garden pretending to be a gnome.

I like being in the Prodigy and when Fat Raymond (it's Fat Roland - FR) asked me to write this, I was dead excited. I created a new Word document and began to write because I'm a file starter, a twisted file starter.

Thanks for reading everyone. Yours sincerely, Steve from the Prodigy whatever his name is really must google it before publishi--

1997: what the flip was going on?

Someone tweeted about 1997 being an incredible year for music. Can't remember who. (Cool story, Fats.)

And yeah, there was Daft Punk and Propellerheads and Prodigy and Chemical Brothers and Roni Size. You were right, tweety person, you were right. 1997 was a great year for music.

It's good to measure these things so let's get specific. I decided to look at the singles chart exactly 20 years ago. 23rd June 1997. Let's wallow in a memorable year of fantastic tunes, shall we?

1. Puff Daddy's mawkish I'll Be Missing You was number one. Okay. Not so great. But all the good songs get to number two, right?

2. Bitter Sweet Symphony. And there's the good number two. Never did make it to the top of the charts. THANKS, Puff.

3. Mmm Bop by Hanson.  Three flesh muppets talking nonsense. Oh dear.

4. Ocean Colour Scene? Bog off. I'd drain the oceans and watch all aqua life writhe and die before listening to this shambles again.

I'm not convinced this is really working. Let's speed things up. Time to skip some numbers and get to the real meat of this burger of musical joy.

9. Guiding Star by Cast. Possibly the most annoying band of the 90s, and the band I have heckled the loudest. Make them stop.

11. Celine Dion? Crumbs. I'd forgotten about the boat-mouthed siren that was Celine. Ouch.

18. Savage Garden?! Worst S-band name ever. Apart from Shed Seven. And Salad.

22. The Friends theme tune that was in the charts forever. I'd rather have the clap clap clap clap.

This is terrible. This week in 1997 was a travesty. Jon Bon Jovi, Sarah Brightman, Brand New Heavies, Wet Wet Wet. All this chart proves is that 1997 was a verruca on the foot of the 1990s - and even then it's not a foot, it's just some weeping stump on the diseased leg of the 20th century.

No wait. I've found something.

87. The Saint by Orbital. Not their most remembered track, but with 11 weeks in the chart and a high point of number 3, it remains their best charting single. Kept off the top spot in April 1997 by I Believe I Can Fly and Song 2.

Yay! Told you 1997 was good.

Yeesh.

Big beat's gonna work it out, maybe, perhaps not

From grunge to g-funk, from trip hop to Brit pop, there’s one thing you can be sure of about the 1990s: the one forgotten genre might be big beat.

Everyone knows the artists. The Chemical (Dust) Brothers blasted the roof off the place with Brother’s Gonna Work It Out, Fatboy Slim had a party in his head with Gangster Trippin and even if people don’t know the band name, they may well recognise Bentley Rhythm Ace (pictured).

But as a name, I reckon there’ll be a lot of younger people who don’t know “big beat”. The label kinda got swallowed up by the cool Britannia thing. Or perhaps it shed its identity when it went massively mainstream: see the Prodigy’s Firestarter or The Propellorheads’ History Repeating.

Maybe it just became known as video game music. Maybe, as Acid Ted suggests, it just got a bit embarrassing.

Not that labels matter that much, but big beat acted as a useful curatorial guide when picking tracks in my early DJing days. For example, there was a great block rockin’ underground in the shape of Brassic Beats and Heavenly Social, with the likes of Req, Cut La Roc, Monkey Mafia and the Skint Records founder Midfield General.

There’s a longer piece in this, and I may well pen something for Electronic Sound. In the meantime, to test my theory, I’m going to be shaking teenagers by the shoulders until they name all the 1990s music styles.

Who knew “let go of me, Fats, you idiot” was a genre?

Prodigy: new album and single and, probably, membership to the National Trust

The Day Is My Enemy is the name of the first studio album for six years from beatpunk fire-botherers Prodigy.

Liam Prodge has already described the new album as “pure violent energy”, and with track titles like Wall Of Death, The Death Ray and, er, Ibiza, he’s not wrong.

But you have to wonder how much fight is left in the old boys. Their artwork is a cute little fox. Look at its little ears. Alright, it’s probably going to bite your face off, but you'll hardly find a fox in a pill-spittled chill-out room in the corner of a heaving club.

If John Lydon went all buttery and the bloke from Scooter did a Kerry Katona, then it’s not too much of a stretch to expect half this new album to be a nature documentary. Smack My Badger Up. Less night owls, more… actual owls.

The Day Is My Enemy is an anagram of Tiny-Eyed Mayhems and Eh, Yes My Dynamite. What do you think it means? Let the National Trust know. They’re waiting for your call.

Anyhoo, here's the first single. It's called Nasty and it's probably directed by David Attenborough.



Further Fats: A History Of The Prodigy For People That Can't Be Bothered Reading The Wikipedia Article (2009)

The devil has all the best IDM: Front 242 and The Prodigy

Here I am, on Hallowe'en night, choosing my favourite IDM / electronica to accompany your fright-filled evening of pumpkin soup, bad clothes and legal doorstep extortion. See the other posts in this series here. See the introduction to the whole thing here.

Artists: Front 242 / The Prodigy
Track: Religion (Prodigy Bass Under Siege Mix)
Single: Religion
Year: 1993

Front 242 are ideal for Hallowe'en, but I remember getting this 12" and realising it showed the ghostly grandfathers of EDM returning from the grave to subvert the rave aesthetic only to be confronted by a bunch of fire-startin' punk upstarts wielding sticks and chanting "you think you're hard? Try THIS!" For its time, it was an astonishing remix.

Oh, that and the track's called Religion and it has someone screaming "burn you down". Aaah, Hallowe'en for all the family! Seriously, though. Don't burn me down. I wouldn't like it and I've just had me nails done.

So Greater Music Police have been tweeting every 999 call...

Call 1: Report of murder of deputy sheriff and his immediate superior. One suspect in custody. Keeps asking what rhymes with 'lion'.

Call 2: Silly-haired man found igniting blazes. Has apparent tourettes.

Call 3: Five black Americans arrested for using course language to police officer. Seemed to object to our "badge and mother-effing traffic gun."

Call 4: Four post-punk Londoners Three reggae-pilfering new wavers* arrested impersonating officers of the law. The blondest one waffled about tantric sex: re-arrested for being a gobshite.

Call 5: Scotsman and Liverpudlian caught driving around in an old police car, towing an ice cream van. Cargo included heavy artillery, a list of northern cities and several dead sheep.

Call 6: Eccentric man-child caught breaking and entering before attacking a woman, leaving bloodstains on the carpet. Victim's name is Annie.

Call 7: Australian woman found bludgeoned by river. Rose found in mouth of victim. A wiley Hugo Weaving lookalike was seen fleeing scene.

Call 8: Welshman complaining of theft of sun from heart. Was asked to remove balaclava but refused.

Call 9: Young men in chemical masks found in a hypnotic st-8. Had to activ-8 back-up. Won't stop bloody dancing.

Call 10: Smirking gangsters caught running around robbing banks. Evidence of cartoon-dog-based drug taking.

Call 11: Fight broken up between reptiles and local petty criminals. Eye masks seem colour co-ordinated with Teletubbies. Started doing dance routines. Probably mentally unstable: did not intervene.

Call 808: Report of sample theft by Manchester ravers...

If you want some time to figure some of these out, try to ignore the tags below this post!

*see comments section

A History Of The Prodigy For People That Can't Be Bothered Reading The Wikipedia Article

Maimed

In the 1970s, thousands of children were killed or maimed on Britain's roads. A cutesy animated kid and his cat warned us to take more care. The Prodigy turned this innocent bairn into a drug-hoovering club gibbon with debut hit Charly. Rave was born, and Kenny Everett, who voiced the cat, died of shock.

Trumped

While Sesame Street and Trumpton birthed kids 'n' drugs anthems photocopied from the Charly original, the Prodigy retreated into the studio to record an album. Experience was a crap name, and the music, although iconic, became a joke in grunge-obsessed Britain. Still, they proved techno bands could turn out a decent album.

Burnt

Experience was beaten to the Mercury Music Prize by Manchester band M People: the repercussions of this were felt 15 years later when the B Of The Bang sculpture fell apart. Alex Garland, who designed the Experience's cover, went on to write the screenplay for 28 Days Later in which Manchester was burnt to the ground. M People have won nothing since.

Goaded

On mid-90s follow-up Music for the Jilted Generation, the Prodge sidled up to sweaty crusties Pop Will Eat Itself to stamp their feet against the Criminal Justice Bill. So many voodoo people bought this album, they became the same establishment they so hated. They goaded people with "the poison" and "the remedy" simultaneously, which seems like a pretty toothless threat to me.

Sandwiched

After D:Ream won the election for "New" Labour, the Prodigy did wonders for the sale of Stella with abuse anthem Smack My Bitch Up. The video for this single used lesbianism in a way that only Katy Perry could wish for.  Parent album The Fat Of The Land turned band member Keith into a spiky-haired firestarting freak. It was quite the in-thing to be "psychosomatic addict insane". Fat Of The Land was the sixth most successful LP of 1997 in the UK, sandwiched between Celine Dion and the Spice Girls. There are so many potential jokes here, but I'm ignoring every one of 'em.

Things
Between 1997 and 2008, the Prodge did quite a lot of things that precisely nobody cares about.

Ends.

So there it is. All you need to know about the Prodigy. They have come a long way since what is offically known as their 'Kenny Everett phase'. The dear old Prodders have returned with an album of nuanced ballads called Invaders Must Die. Like a flesh-eating disease, it has grown on me, and I fear I was a little harsh in my review last week.

If this scant biography was too long for you to read, settle for this even briefer biog posted by a friend on my Facebook page:

"Band formed, did stuff, went away, did more stuff a bit later. Shouted a lot."

The Prodigy's Invaders Must Die: tingly breakdowns and a trouserful of fun

So Invaders Must Die is the big comeback from the Prodigy, huh?

Here's what the professional reviewers think. The Independent reckons it's a fairly toothless exercise. The Grauniad reckons they're rehashing old material with limited success.  Drowned In Sound blames the Prodigy for the existence of the pants-poor stag party junglists Pendulum.

The Times, which in many ways is the natural home of punk techno, was delighted that Invaders was the "big, brilliant, dumb rave album we have secretly wanted them to make for the past ten years". NME.com hasn't posted its thoughts on the album, although their review of current top ten single Omen chucks us the cutting-edge bone of "it doesn't get a lot more old school than this". Snappy.

Spin Magazine celebrates the Prodigy's "tingly breakdowns" instead of their older style "bratty prattle". Now that's what I call delightful journalism.

What's my non-professional opinion? It's a relief to see a bunch of ageing punksters rediscover their mojo to some extent. But watching The Prodge block-rock their bitch up so many moons since their rave origins... well, it's a bit like Johnny Rotten pretending to be a rebel when all along he just wanted to advertise butter.

Okay, they've got big-teeth rock monster Dave Grohl guesting on the album, but that's where the problem lies. Last generation's white-gloved ravers and nihilistic Cobainers are this generation's MTV junkies. That's what the Prodigy are now: a glorious, hard-edged dance act designed for gigantic stages and wide-screen tellyboxes. Which is fine, but please don't mistake that with the punk spirit that gave birth to rave.

But let's put the negatives aside, into this little shiny box of negatives which I am going to hide under my bed and only bring out when I am in a long-term relationship and I'm running out of passive-aggressive snipes with which to wither away our fading love.

The Prodigy bring a mentalness to the charts which is both primary coloured and full of interesting shades. Punk or no punk, they're one big trouserful of fun, and if that's what you want with the Prodders (and what else would you want?), Invaders Must Die works.

To use a ridiculous analogy, if Fat Of The Land was Fargo, and Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned was The Ladykillers, then Invaders Must Die is Burn After Reading. I do wish it was No Country For Old Men, but still, it's good enough for me.

Global Gathering is just one of the places their live show will invade this summer.  I will be setting fire to my copy of the Times and using it as a primitive light stick at the earliest opportunity.

Warp Records does not taste of desks, claim experts

Richard "n" Judy, Boddingtons and Warp Records all quit the north for the big bright lights of, er, somewhere down south.

Nobody watches Richard and Judy anymore.  Boddingtons now tastes of desks.  But it worked in Warp Records' favour, because by moving within spitting distance of Hampstead Heath, it brought them closer to the NEWS.

Yes, that's right.  The NEWS.  It may have escaped your attention-deficit, but legendary techno label Warp Records isn't all about music.  Toward the back end of last year, they released the whole back catalogue of the legendary radio programme On The Hour.  On two glorious deluxe CD packages.

For those unaware of this classic parody series, the audio-only YouTubeness I embedded above gives you a taste of Chris Morris' paeon to rolling news, before rolling news was invented.

There are more rich pickings at the On The Hour media/events interface here.

And another thing.  If you thought radio was too sedate for you, have a listen to the Prodigy filling in for Zane Lowe on Radio 1.  You should be able to still listen to the show if you're quick, although the link was naffed up when I tried.  It should be a big year for the Proj, as I mentioned in my review of 2009 electronica releases.

A throat-pawing, arm-wrestling, mallet-bashing preview of 2009 (part one)

The reverberating acid begins as a hum, the kind of hum that settles on your tummy, but it rises and rises with ferocity, up your chest, until a miffed guitar riff paws at your thoat.

And a robot voice announces: "WE ARE THE PRODIGY."

And so to 2009, and no prizes for guessing electronic music's most anticipated release of this year.

Three storming albums (Experience, Jilted Generation, Fat Of The Land). Then there was the Album-Five-Years-Ago-That-No-One-Really-Remembers-Coz-Everyone-Still-Blithers-On-About-Smack-My-Bitch-Up-Which-Is-12-Years-Old-Yes-I-Know-Get-Over-It. I don't think that was the exact title.

Anyhoo, watch out for the Prodigy's new LP, Invaders Must Die, in March.

Allow that, my sweet reader, to be an introduction to my preview of some other albums that will caress our earlobes in 2009.

My guide is in no way comprehensive, nor is it even accurate. I have probably missed a number of major titles, and quite frankly 99% of sales in '09 will be X-Factor related, so it's all an exercise in futility.

January.

The remnants of Add N To X have teamed up with space rockers Fuxa for a looping joy of a single Add N To Fu(x)a. I hope it's a taste of more to come from this pair.

Following his well-received album Just A Souvenir, Squarepusher will release an EP of "dancefloor psychedelia" called Numbers Lucent. If the Square one isn't nominated for the next Mercury Music Prize, I'll eat my slipmats.

The shoe-collecting Telefon Tel Aviv will flop out their first full-length offering for five years. When Immolate Yourself hits, it could be one of the best discs of the year.

February.

The Eft will waft its way from Samandtheplants, while Susumu Yokota - whose hypnotic The Boy And The Tree album was used liberally on Sunday's Top Gear Vietnam special - will explore a more vocal sound for his new Mother LP.

Not to be outdone by the Prodigy, Massive Attack will attempt a monumental return with the provisionally-titled Weather Underground. The double-album of "gothic soul" is pretty much shrouded in hushness, but it is rumoured by the rumour mill that Tom Waits will feature. That's even cooler than Hot Chip's single with Robert Wyatt a couple of months back.

If the Prodigy and Massive Attack had an arm wrestle, who would win? Please discuss.

Finally for February, there's Harmonic 313's When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence, but I've already covered this so I ought to hush my mouth.

Next?

In the second half of my preview, I will cover March, then skip the rest of the year really quickly as though I don't care. I do care, but you try getting accurate release information six months in advance.

I'll also reveal the artist I'm positively frothing at the mouth over for 2009. A clue? He's a genre-buster from Glasgow and he uses the word "shite" a lot.

Faerie's at the bottom of your piano: harpists please stand up and wait

I used to be a musical prodigy, you know.

No, not that kind of Prodigy. Keith and his rave monkeys were always musical, even to the point of getting mashed up with Enya.

No, I was the next Mozart. When I popped out of the womb, I was straight onto those ivories, tinkling them until they were totally tinkled out. My parents booked me lessons in piano and music theory, and, do you know what, I was a bit of a whizz.

But then rave happened. Pianos were 'establishment' and synths were 'underground', so I dropped the classical in favour of amazing Junos that could make helicopter sounds.

Which brings me to the reason for this post.

Faerie’s Aire And Death Waltz isn't a real waltz. It is the most wonderfully ridiculous musical score. I've included it in this post (above), but you can see a bigger version here.

I knew enough about scores to know that andante wasn't a way of cooking pasta. But I'm sure these notations weren't in my lessons, including instructions to "moon walk", "untie slip knot", "release the penguins" and for the harpists to "stand up and wait".

It's frigging genius, which is something I would say if I was the type of person to use pretend swear words.

See more fun and imaginative surrealist scores at Thrilling Wonder. The first person to prove they have played any one of these wins a Fat Roland slow dance.

Did you just shudder?