Sykonee's 'Sportsing' Surveys: NORMAN COOK

The man, the myth, the legend: Norman Cook. Everyone knows at least a couple songs out of his catalogue, whether they want to or not. To this day, I'll hear Praise You on a grocery store speaker, or Right Here, Right Now at a sporting event. What about the rest, though? With a career spanning some forty years, surely he's done more to be known for other than tunes like The Rockafeller Skank.

Some, yes, but I realized my own knowledge of these various bands, productions, and projects was severely lacking. Heck, I only have two of his Fatboy Slim albums as it is - well, if you consider a 'kiddie clean version' a proper copy of Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars. Digging through Mr. Cook's extended discography, however, yields plenty of material to sift through, more than enough to satisfy my survey requirements. Sounds about right to finally know the rest of the Norman Cook story, as Paul Harvey might say. (he'd never say that ...don't know if Paul Havery would even know what a Fatboy Slim is)













Well, that was a lot more music than I was expecting, especially so in the acid jazz lane. And yet, I still feel like I only scratched the surface, so much of Norman's career defined by DJing accomplishments as much as anything he did in the production booth. Wish I could say much of it inspired me to nab a few more items proper-like, but it does appear I already got the cream of the crop.

That one dusted, think it's about time I tackle a band that, while maybe not be the best for 'sportsing' to, has been on the perifery of my curiosity: Stereolab! I've a feeling it'll be a rather... challenging outing, especially coming off the 'what you hear is what you get' simplism of Norman Cook.

Fatboy Slim - Better Living Through Chemistry

Skint/Astralwerks: 1996/1997

For a time, I considered this the superior Fatboy Slim album: no overplayed hits or blatant crossover appeal. Norman Cook's big-beat debut was pure underground t'ings, for the underground heads who kept things under the ground. Or something.

Then I came to learn of Mr. Cook's storied career, how he'd been responsible for the goofy Pizzaman project, and that his Fatboy Slim moniker was just the latest (and most successful) of a long line of chart-topping achievements. Goodness, does that mean everything I thought and believed about this album was a lie, a misled assumption that couldn't be helped due to the lack of available knowledge while residing in such a far-flung corner of North America? Must I re-assess my enjoyment of Better Living Through Chemistry?

Well, there is an air of bandwagon jumping here. Cook broke out the Fatboy moniker with the single Everybody Needs A 303, a fun acid jam for sure (and a winner of a title!), but clearly riding on the wave of acid anthems that Josh Wink's Higher State Of Consciousness set off. Not that I suspect insidious intents in making the tune on Norman's part. Nay, here's a silly one-off alias for a one-off single and oh my God, this thing is blowing up in the clubs! Maybe there's some potential after all.

UK interest in breakbeats that sounded as big as rock 'n' roll of yore was taking off, and sampling funk and soul was always a major part of that scene. Well, ol' Norman had a woodshed full of records from years of DJing he could pilfer. Surely there's enough material there to knock out a full-length album's worth of 303 retreads? Well, maybe.

I'd honestly forgotten how loopy this album is. Yeah, they layer and build and all, but compared to the songwriting leaps the Fatboy project took in subsequent albums, this is some raw, basic stuff. The second half in particular doesn't do much to dispel the notion Better Living Through Chemistry was made mostly in service of capitalizing on a big single. The chill, psychedelic outing of Santa Cruz and trip-hop funk of The Weekend Starts Here show off some diversity, but generally there's only so much acid builds with big breaks can do before it all starts sounding the same.

Fortunately, the Astralwerks version added a couple winners, some of my favourite Fatboy Slim jams ever! Michael Jackson is Norman at his best with cheeky sampling, rockin' leads, and wailin' hooks with beats to back 'em up. Meanwhile, Next To Nothing is another chill outing like Santa Cruz, and a strong, proper capper on an album that originally got redundant by Milwaukee's end.

Whether Better Living Through Chemistry doesn't hold up as well as I remembered is irrelevant though, as its status as a Very Important record is already enshrined. The Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust may have kicked off big beat, but this solidified it as a genre with big things ahead of it.

Various - LateNightTales: Fatboy Slim

LateNightTales: 2007

This was a release I was supposed to review at TranceCritic, but totally flaked on because I had no idea how to approach it. For one thing, I knew very little about LateNightTales, other than it was yet another compilation series dedicated to showcasing the esoteric tastes of musicians and DJs. Fair enough, but with Back To Mine, Choice, DJ-Kicks (sometimes), and who knows what else doing the same thing, I had difficulty drumming up interest in this one. Second of all, the music contained within is very, very, very un-electronic, and for a website that already frequently skewed away from its main focus (trance!), going that far off our beaten path probably wasn't wise (or just bad for traffic). So now that I'm writing on a blog dedicated to all electronic music, but often skew towards heavy metal, prog rock, and even country (but not Western – I do have standards here), finally tackling Fatboy Slim's contribution to LateNightTales just be honky-dory.

I don't know if it's a running theme with this series, but Monsieur Normane Cookie opted for something akin to a mixtape here. He even goes at length in the liner notes about the lost art of the craft, which strikes me as odd even for 2007. I'll grant all the kiddie-Joes out there likely don't care much about it, but almost every music connoisseur I know of appreciates the concept of mixtaping, if not the practical application of it.

And as this is a mixtape mix, there’s hardly any mixing at all; mostly quick blending as a song ends and another begins, if even that. Frankly, I doubt anyone could reasonably mix this music anyway. It opens with a bunch of sunny, psychedelic rock by the likes of Nick Lowe, Mink de Ville, and The Modern Lovers that screams ‘70s, only to follow it up with a run of obscure funk, soul, and reggae of the same era. Oh yeah, Fatboy Slim’s penchant for fun-time music’s in full effect here, and as a bloke who’s undoubtedly gathered tons of vinyl in his time, Mr. Cook’s gonna give us one heck of a history lesson on this stuff.

Since this is such old music meant for singles and radio play, they all breeze by in a hurry, no track exceeding four minutes. There are a few recognizable names in the back half (Willie Nelson, The Velvet Underground, Taj Mahal, Sly & The Family Stone), often rubbing shoulders with utter unknowns like ‘60s r&b outfit The Sandpebbles and calypso singer (plus actor) Robert Mitchum. And of course there’s cute novelty bits like Vince Guaraldi Trio’s Linus And Lucy (yes, from those Peanuts cartoons), Fatboy Slim doing a Senor Coconut-ish cover of Kraftwerk’s Radioactivity (!!), and ending everything with some poetry as recited by Bootsy Collins (!!?).

So an entertaining CD, all said, though not the most essential. If you don’t mind taking a stroll down music roads less travelled, this volume of LateNightTales is a handy soundtrack.

Fatboy Slim - Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars (Clean Version)

Astralwerks: 2000

In some ways, I'm more embarrassed to have this CD than even ICP. Why should I, a grown adult, have a “Kiddies' Clean Version”? Well, it was a gift, but the tongue-in-cheek label on the cover strikes me as deliberately insulting on the manufacturer's part. This isn't just the 'Clean Version', like many hip-hop pop albums offer, oh no. This is for the children, for we at Astralwerks, we thought about the children, oh how we thought about the children. We even moved the image over a little, so the sun no longer peeks through the woman's cooch – hell, you can't even tell it's a woman anymore, much less the sun creating those rays of light. Isn't that better than our usual antics of totally replacing the cover image for stateside distribution?

Norman Cook's Fatboy project was incredibly popular when he released Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars, his prior album offering two or three ultra-mega hits that we still hear today. So that there would be a 'Clean' option for his follow-up doesn't surprise me. It's still baffling why it'd been thought of only for the kids though (what kind of teenager wouldn't get the one with crude language?).

And what major changes can we expect on this “Kiddies' Clean Version”? Star 69's been cut. Yeah, no surprise on that one. Not a big deal losing it though, as beyond the lyrical gimmick, it was a mediocre tune. There's also a slight edit of “what the fuck” in Song For Shelter, which makes- wait! Why didn't they just edit the 'fuck's out of Star 69 too, keeping the track?

Frankly, that's all I can tell's been 'cleaned up'. It's been well over a decade since I've heard the original version, so if some naughty language from Macy Gray or Bootsy Collins was edited out, I don't know anymore. Come to think of it, I don't think it matters where this album's concerned, as Halfway... is a surprisingly mature sounding effort on Cook's part compared to the rest of his discography.

Yeah, he's had his classy moments, but folks were buying up his albums by the boatloads for the big beat party anthems. Halfway... has a couple offerings as such, like Ya Mama and Drop The Hate, yet Cook sounds bored with these cuts, just going through the big beat motions. Far more intriguing (and re-playable because they aren't so dated to late '90s music) are the blues, gospel, funk, and soul offerings. And even with all the crafty beats and samples Cook throws into his tunes, the guest vocalists (including the memorable husky voice of then-soul-queen Macy Gray) help excel what could have been little more than homage to some of ol' Norman's musical upbringing.

Put simply, Halfway... is easily Fatboy Slim's most consistent album, and maybe even his best. Unlike his other albums, which have big hits and forgettable filler, these are all songs I have no problem returning to and keeping lodged in my head.