R.I.P. KEITH FLINT..AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE PRODIGY (VIDEO)
At the dawn of a new global subculture, many found their path. Keith Flint volunteered to be one of UK Rave culture’s shamen, cheerleaders — first encouraging a shy producer to take his tracks beyond the bedroom, then fearlessly taking the stage, bridging audience and producer — and eventually, the underground and the global mainstream. According to his bandmate Liam Howlett, he’s gone and killed himself, ending his adventure on Earth, at age 49. He will be remembered in earnest, and by several generations, for whom he was what he was, which is precisely what we all are: a force of nature.
Herewith the last time I shot this gentleman doing what he does best, and also a a rare and candid oral history from The Prodigy…
Accompanying the concert video that opens this post, here’s what I wrote at the time, at my Youtube page:
The middle finger freeze-frame harkens back to the art for The Prodigy’s amazing LP “Music For The Jilted Generation”. This is unedited and shot in a single winding take, which was difficult, as bodies jostled about in the photo pit. This is probably the shortest clip I’ll ever upload. Roseland is truly a legendary venue, it was once one of the great dancehalls of New York and even during the heady days of disco it saw many an amazing party and some of the world’s greatest dancers loved it because just under the layer of the floor is a sub layer or cork, which makes it a very special surface to get acrobatic on.
Speaking of dancing, it’s good to see these cats still spar-slash dancing goofily with each other, like they did in the “Outer Space” video. “Outer Space” is one of those tracks that every DJ seems to drop, believing it’s a kind of secret weapon, and as long as it makes hands go up in the air it is.
Anyway, going to a post-”Fat of The Land” Prodigy show remains an interesting affair — you run into some people who would’ve probably made fun of you for listening to them in the early 90’s, but went ga-ga for them when they put on clown make-up and got heavy rotation on MTV and shit FM power stations — call it the Nirvana syndrome, where you find suburban creep co-opts the culture and the music you loved first. I remember when FedEx arrived with the CDingle of Firestarter; I definitely didn’t love the tune, but I knew they were now going to conquer America, and they deserved to, so I’m not trying to hate — Prodigy are a unit that have held together from dirty warehouse days through playing massives in Russia, and I’m pretty sure they knew what it as like to be broke before they broke; they also know firsthand the backlash one’s own culture can create, like when they were accused of killing a the scene in the UK.
But when “… Jilted” dropped, boy was that a magic summer. The legendary Daniel Miller and his Mute records had picked up Prodigy for US distro from XL in the UK and had also released Plastikman’s album during a time that just felt like a culture and a way of seeing things — and yes, of even appreciating certain drugs — could really change the world, one head at a time. And I’ll say herein that while the music isn’t just about the drugs, there is no doubt that Ecstasy has to an immeasurable degree changed the world incrementally. Funny to remember the arrest in Texas, a young man whose CD copy of Plastikman’s “Sheet One” was confiscated on the suspicion that it was blotter acid.sigh.
As I write this, the Rockefeller Laws, which have ruined so many lives, are being eradicated. I haven’t seen the details yet, but I hope its retro-active. And I hope we just legalize weed completely, very soon. I remember finally getting the CD of “…Jilted which replaced the advance cassette given to me by Mute Records , and I remember seeing the image of the massive giving the finger to the authorities who’d passed the most ridiculous law, “The Criminal Justice Bill”, which actually called out “repetitious music” as a basis for prosecuting an “unpermitted” event as a possible den of drugs. It really felt like a genuine culture — and for a few proverbial shining moments, it was.
I’m still, all these years on, kinda bummed by how much club culture has co-opted rave and warehouse culture — I recall Interviewing URB’s first managing editor Jason Bentley who said that persons like himself (now PD at KCRW) Phillip Blaine (now art curator for Coachella) and Raymond Roker (founder of URB magazine, where I am an editor) did the things they did because the felt like “A round peg in the square hole of club culture”. I also don’t love where a lot of electronic music has gone, and at SXSW I asked DEVO about what they thought of the innovation (or the lack thereof) in electronic music circa ‘09, and they gave a pretty honest answer — that video and a gang more from SXSW09, will be up soon.
‘Respect to The Prodigy for keeping it together all these years, and if it might feel at times that they’ve lapsed into more commercial stuff, I’m still glad they’re getting paid and I’m grateful to them for having GUTS all those years ago. Look for the next edition of URB magazine featuring my cover story on SNL’s Fred Armissen wherein we discuss the meaning of punk for a few pages.
