Your mother told you not to watch Stephen King's It, but, being the bratty rebel you were, you just had to defy your domestic matriarch and sneak off to your friend's house to see it anyway.
After that tragic trauma, your carefree innocence was no more (oh, Lenore)-deflowered by the overwhelming fear of chuckles and painted faces. Watching Homey the Clown-Damon Wayans' waggish parody of the bane of your existence-was even a daunting chore.
But after years of therapy and daily affirmations, you finally thought your coulrophobia was over. Then, you saw him on MTV.
He's more petrifying than Tammy Faye Baker after a Mary Kay makeover. Keith Flint, that's the curmudgeon's name-the only face of the British techno quartet, Prodigy, that people seem to remember. I swear he borrows Shirley Manson's liquid eyeliner.
Obstreperous and visually stimulating (or galling) though Flint may be, the prodigal arson is not the musical genius that alternateens believe or want him to be.
The mastermind behind it all is that little quiet guy away from the spotlight-Liam Howlett, the "Prodigy" himself, whose puissant presence is known through his electronic opuses. After a three-year hiatus, Howlett, the precocious computer nerd and Shostakovich-like composer, brings it home on the band's new mainstream pageantry, The Fat of the Land.
Sure, you can call Prodigy sell-outs. After all, they are the Ginzu knife of alternative music kitchen with two unofficial anthems of electronica, "Firestarter" and "Breathe," to their credit.
Gone are the days of innocuous-sounding but nonetheless stirring tracks as "Everybody's in the Place," "Charly" and "Out of Space." Now, heavy industrial noise beset by Flint and spawn-of-Satan Maxim's rabid vocals becomes the raw Prodigy sound.
According to the press release, the reason behind Prodigy's musical shape-shifting was to "recreate the energy and escapist good times of the dance world, but with songs that carry some of the liberation of rock."
In an attempt to flee the burgeoning popularity of the increasingly watered-down rave scene, Howlett co-opted the sounds that the revolutionary dance culture originally repudiated: good ol' piss-in-your-Cheerios rock n' roll.
Despite the irony, The Fat of the Land still provides quite a journey through the sonic cosmos of Prodigy-leaping boundaries of time and genre. If you look beyond the vacuous commercialism, you can still catch a glimpse of their clutching charisma that gripped the European rave scene by its unshaven armpit hair.
Throughout the album, syncopated breakbeats striated with bold and catchy shouts slash through the steadily pulsating cadence like a psychopathic samurai. Amidst this intricate layer of bellicose tumult, jarring guitar-driven force meets unfaltering, adrenaline-pumping bassline, while surreal samples orbit around them. The result? A rampant riot of an album.
Without a vestige of misogyny, the first track, "Smack My Bitch Up," gives you a poignant reality check like a two-bit hustler. Next stop is "Breathe," a quick look at a high-impact Lamaze class lead by none other than your friendly neighborhood instructors, Flint and Maxim, who make Gavin "Machinehead" Rossdale look like a pretty pansy with asthma.
In "Diesel Power," guest-rapper Kool Keith, a.k.a. Dr. Octagon, takes it back to old school with a Public Enemy-like flair, while "Narayan," a collaborative effort with Kula Shaker's Crispian Mills, transports you to the far-East through stern samples of monotonous chants. What struck me most about Prodigy's metamorphosis, however, was the last track: a remake of L7's "Fuel My Fire" that hearkens the seminal punk sounds of the Sex Pistols sandwiched between synthesized grooves.
But you haven't actually "experienced" Prodigy until you've seen them on stage, where they come alive like a mad scientist's appalling creation. While wayward stage-hog Keith and voodoo-child Maxim stir up mass pandemonium, the group's very own Frankenstein, dancer Leeroy Thornhill, deftly flaunts his thang. (Who said image is nothing?)
I dedicate this entire paragraph to my boy Leeroy, who gets completely shafted with a 24K rod on the band's videos. This one's for you, big guy. Thornhill, a stunning 6' 9" Nubian god who makes me purr like a Persian kitty, resembles a monster power forward with a sleek physique that would give both Dean Smith and Rick Pitino instant boners; however, his nimble movements, synchronized with clamor and dementia, become the physical embodiment of Prodigy's trademark speed-of-light blare.
Like a skilled soldier, Thornhill dodges the insurgent beats strafed toward him at unremitting 150+ bpm by Howlett with the ease of someone of Gary Coleman's stature and George Cinton's rhythm and soul. Damn, I want him.
Check out Leeroy along with the rest of his prodigious posse on the last leg of Lollapalooza '97, as they kick it with Perry Ferrell and take over Orbital's place as the emissaries of electronica. Expect to be ensnared in their unnerving maelstrom of sensory overload.
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