Praise You proved to be the only #1 hit for Fatboy Slim.   I could have sworn there were a couple of others, but The Rockafeller Skank peaked at #6 while Right Here, Right Now, despite coming into the chart in April 1999 at #2, never managed to dislodge one of Westlife‘s forgettable numbers from the top.

It’s a single which cannot be unbuckled from its accompanying video, one I’m sure everyone of a certain age has seen loads of times, in which Spike Jonze and the fictional Torrance Dance Group deliver a guerilla-style flash-mob performance outside a cinema in Los Angeles, much to the bemusement of the members of the public queuing to get into the screening of whatever film they had bought tickets for. The whole thing is brilliantly captured, with quite a few of those watching-on clearly enjoying what they were seeing, and there’s some gentle booing when a member of staff, in an attempt to end the performance, switches-off the portable cassette player, the source of the music for the dance.

I’d like to think Praise You was good enough to find favour with the general public and would have been a huge hit even without the water cooler moments created by the promo.

mp3: Fatboy Slim – Praise You

There were two additional tracks on the CD single.  The first was otherwise unavailable, while the other was a remix of an earlier hit.

mp3 : Fatboy Slim – Sho Nuff
mp3 : Fatboy Slim – The Rockafella Skank (Mulder’s Urban Takeover Mix)

The former has a sample from one of those annoying one-hit singles that I can recall from my very early teen years. What I didn’t know until looking it up while writing this post was that the writer of Jeans On is actually a member of the British aristocracy.  Seriously!!!!

JC

It was back in June 2020 that I had a think about launching a new series, but it came to nothing, mainly as I found it to be too much hard work.  The idea was to breakdown a hit song to shine a light on the various samples it contained.  I started the series with Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim.  I ended the series with Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim.

But, guess what, I’m going to resurrect it, strictly as a one-off, with a look at a different Fatboy Slim single.

Gangster Trippin’ reached #3 in the UK singles charts in October 1998.

mp3: Fatboy Slim – Gangster Trippin’

The follow-up to The Rockafeller Skank, it was released two weeks in advance of the album You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby.  It was, without question, the golden age for Fatboy Slim, with the album reckoned to have shipped 5 million units worldwide while spending almost two years in the UK charts.

I’ll pick up now from wiki:-

The song contains samples from “Entropy” by DJ Shadow, “Word Play” and “The Turntablist Anthem” by the X-Ecutioners, “Beatbox Wash” by the Dust Junkys (this track contains the song’s chorus line), “Change the Mood” by Jackie Mittoo, “Sissy Walk” by Freedom Now Brothers, and “You Did It” by Ann Robinson.

The recognizable “We gotta kick that gangsta shit” sample comes from the first recorded live performance by jazz rap duo Pete Rock & CL Smooth (sampled by DJ Shadow on “Entropy”). In the radio cut, it was re-edited for censorship purposes.

In 2013, Nicky Lockett (aka MC Tunes) of the Dust Junkys won a three-year court case to recover unpaid royalties for use of his vocals in the main chorus of the song.

And here comes the breakdown.

Entropy dates from 1993. It is seventeen-plus minutes long. It was actually one side of a white-label shared single, with the reverse being Send Them by Asia Born, issued by Solesides, an underground hip label based in California.  Entropy is credited in full to DJ Shadow and The Groove Diggers, and consists of seven sections, all of which merge into one another to create, according to all music,  “one continuous track moving from upbeat deck-work and bin-shuddering beats through thick, downtempo head music.”

mp3: DJ Shadow and The Groove Diggers – Entropy

The sample taken by Fatboy Slim comes, initially at just after the four and a half minutes mark.  But, as noted above, DJ Shadow was himself sampling Pete Rock & CL Smooth.

Given that The X-Ecutioners were also sampled on Weapon of Choice, I’ll simply repeat that they are New York-based hip hop DJs/turntablists. Both Word Play and The Turntablist Anthem appear on their debut album, X-Pressions that was released in 1997.

mp3: The X-Ecutioners – Word Play
mp3: The X-Ecutioners – The Turntablist Anthem

Beatbox Wash was actually a b-side on the Dust Junky’s 1997 single, Living In The Pocket Of A Drug Queen.  I’ve long had a copy of their one and only album, Done and Dusted, picked up on a whim one day after hearing that Shawn Ryder was a fan.  I think I listened to it once and then filed it away.

mp3: Dust Junkys – Beatbox Wash

Change The Mood dates from 1978.  Jackie Mittoo, (born as Donat Roy Mittoo), was a Jamaican-born musician who emigrated to Canada in the mid-70s where he became a major part of the reggae scene in Toronto.  In later years he would work with a number of UK reggae acts including Sugar Minott, Musical Youth and UB40.  He also co-wrote, Armagideon Time, a song famously covered by The Clash as the b-side to London Calling. Jackie sadly died of cancer in 1990 at the young age of 42.

mp3: Jackie Mittoo – Change The Mood

Sissy Walk is a funky instrumental single released in 1969 by Freedom Now Brothers.  If Discogs is correct, it was their one and only single.

mp3: Freedom Now Brothers – Sissy Walk

The same funky horn sound can also be heard on another 1969 single:-

mp3: Ann Robinson – You Did It

Both singles came out on the Philadelphia-based label, All Brothers. As it turns out, You Did It was released first, with its backing track then forming a later 45.  One of the website devoted to Philly soul advises that Ann Robinson released just three singles in her career.  I’m afraid I can’t offer up any more info.

JC

This might be a one-off, or it might turn into an occasional series. It’s a series that will require a fair bit of digging and research and there will be extended periods of time when I can’t be bothered with that. But, as with everything else, the dancefloor is open to anyone wanting to try similar via a guest posting.

Weapon of Choice was a Top 10 hit for Fatboy Slim back in 2001.

mp3: Fatboy Slim – Weapon of Choice

I was sure it had reached #1, but that’s only on account of how often the video was aired at the time. And quite rightly so, as Spike Jonze‘s direction of Christopher Walken shaking his thang in the Marriot Hotel in Los Angeles is a magnificent few minutes of footage that picked up all sorts of awards in due course.

I’ll pick up now from wiki:-

“Weapon of Choice” features Parliament-Funkadelic and Bootsy’s Rubber Band bassist Bootsy Collins, who provides the lead vocals. On the album version, Collins’s normal vocals are heard through the right audio channel; the same vocals, distorted to a much deeper pitch, are heard through the left. The song features a prominent sample of Sly & the Family Stone’s 1968 song “Into My Own Thing”, as well as samples from “All Strung Out Over You” by The Chambers Brothers and “Word Play” by The X-Ecutioners.

The chorus of the song, “You could blow with this, or you could blow with that…”, is a homage to the Black Sheep song “The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)”, which features a similar chorus.

And here comes the breakdown.

Into My Own Thing was the fifth track on Side A of the album Life. The opening notes will be instantly recognisable to those only familiar with Fatboy Slim.

mp3: Sly and The Family Stone – Into My Own Thing

All Strung Out Over You was a modest hit single for The Chambers Brothers in 1967. It was also the opening track on Side A of the album The Time Has Come. It’s this tune that provides the initial tempo and rhythm for Weapon of Choice.

mp3: The Chambers Brothers – All Strung Out Over You

The X-Ecutioners are New York-based hip hop DJs/turntablists and Word Play appears on their debut album, X-Pressions that was released in 1997. There’s a number of samples to be found on the Fatboy Slim single, including the lyric about funk getting your teeth smoked.

mp3: The X-Ecutioners – Word Play

As mentioned earlier, the chorus is based on The Choice Is Yours (Revisited) a song released in 1991 by NYC-based hip-hop act, Black Sheep, that was a single and a track on their debut album A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing.  The Choice Is Yours itself relied on a number of samples, – “Keep on Doin’ It” by The New Birth, “Her Favorite Style” by Iron Butterfly, “Big Sur Suite” by Johnny Hammond Smith, “Impressions” by McCoy Tyner, and “I’d Say It Again” by Sweet Linda Divine. But I ain’t going there.

mp3: Black Sheep – The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)

Anyone got suggestions on what track to break down next time around? Or, even better, does anyone want to have a go at it??

JC

A GUEST SERIES

44. Everybody Needs A 303 – Fatboy Slim (1996 Skint Records)

Released in February 1996 (Reached Number 191)
Re-released and remixed in October 1997 (Reached Number 34)

Back in 1996 I was a student and I was editing the music pages of the student rag. I used to get sent a bunch of stuff every week and I would trudge back to my digs and spend three hours listening to it all. One week I walked into the room set aside for the paper to find a bloke in there waiting for me. He was called Ben and he worked for one of the promotion companies that supplied the records for me to review.

He handed me a 12” record and said that this was “The next big sound, dirty acid house-y dance music”.

He then vanished as quickly as he had appeared. Like a goatee bearded spectre.

Back then of course, Britpop was still just about king and I used to strut around the mean streets of Guildford in my skinny fit Salad Tshirt, so my colours were firmly tied to that mast, but something was happening to music. Indie music had started a passionate and potentially damaging affair with dance music, and the result was music that had beats that were massive and this noise that sort of twitched and bleeped like a demented warthog in a bath. But I knew relatively little about it. Pretty much the only dance record I owned in 1996 was ‘Leftism’ by Leftfield and I had no idea what a 303 was, I thought it was the road to Devon.

So I stuck this record on, poured myself a cup of tea and waited.

It turns out Ben was right because ‘Everbody Needs A 303’ blew my tiny mind. A staggering twitchy, bleeping acid house ode to the TB-303 synthesizer (I looked it up in my Penguin Big Book of Music) that also samples Edwin Starr. The beats kind of thump against the side of your speakers, the 303 squelched and chirps along getting faster and faster and more distorted as it goes.

I rarely dance, even back then, when I sort of could, I considered myself way too cool to throw shapes on a dancefloor (I mean I was a twat, let’s make that clear). But this record made me want to dance. I wanted to bop along to these filthy beats.

The next week I was due to DJ at University’s ‘indie club’ a Thursday shindig in a basement and when the floor was busy I chucked it on. It was bedlam and indeed the Next Big Sound.

The 12” I mentioned earlier had this on the B Side –

Going Out Of My Head

Not sure if this was actually on the official release or not, but it’s still a tune.

Oh and one for all the fact fans out there. The first ever record to reach the UK Top Ten that featured the use of a 303 was this

Rip It Up – Orange Juice.

SWC

 

There are some pieces of music which I can’t ever listen to without recalling an image or images from a live TV performance going through my head. Some examples include:-

– The Police performing Can’t Stand Losing You on The Old Grey Whistle Test when Sting twitched his way through the song as the sweat from his forehead went into his eyes which had already been inflamed from an exploding can of hairspray (which is why he was wearing large and hideous sunglasses)

– The Associates not taking Top of The Pops seriously as Alan Rankine broke off bits of a full-size chocolate guitar and gave it away to members of the audience as Billy Mackenzie tried not to corpse as he mimed to 18 Carat Love Affair

– The Redskins introducing a striking miner live on The Tube as they played the intro to Keep On Keepin’ On, not realising that, by some strange quirk of fate the mic that the miner was speaking into wasn’t working and the millions of viewers didn’t hear a word

– The Smiths on Top of The Pops for William It Was Really Nothing – Johnny had Elvis Costello‘s guitar and the frontman stripped off mid-song.

– The Smiths (again) on Whistle Test, making a return to our screens after a long absence and unveiling Bigmouth Strikes Again

– Radiohead on Later offering up the first ever rendition of Paranoid Android

There are also some songs which I can’t listen to without picturing the promo video, with this being a prime example:-

mp3 : Fatboy Slim – Praise You

It’s frightening to realise we are fast approaching the 20th anniversary of this wonderful piece of film making.

And to think that it sort of came about by accident.

Norman Cook had wanted Spike Jonze to come up with a concept and direct a video for The Rockafeller Skank but the filmmaker hadn’t been able to find the time. As a way of saying sorry, Jonze sent Cook a video of him goofing around to Skank which led to them hatching the idea for the follow-up single.

The fictional Torrance Community Dance Group, led by Jonze, turned up without any permission at all with the intention of performing an outlandish dance to Praise You outside a cinema in Los Angeles as patrons queued up to get in, with the whole thing captured on film. It was an era when flash-mobbing events of this type were incredibly rare and part of the fun comes from watching the bemused and befuddled reaction of the cinema goers. It’s also worth recalling that nobody in the queue would have known anything about the song as it hadn’t yet been released when the promo was shot.

By the time the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards came around the song had reached #1 in the UK and provided a breakthrough for Fatboy Slim in the USA. The video took home three prizes – Breakthrough Video, Best Direction and Best Choreography, every one of them fully deserved.

Here’s the two other tracks which came with the single:-

mp3 : Fatboy Slim – Sho Nuff
mp3 : Fatboy Slim – The Rockafeller Skank (Mulder’s Urban Takeover Mix)

And here’s the song which was sampled for the single:-

mp3 : Camile Yarbrough – Take Yo’Praise

JC