Twenty years after 1976, punk rock lived on – in the critical imagination, at least. It was part benchmark, part decoder ring: the moment and movement later upheavals had to match (but never really could) and also the handbook for understanding any development. Trends in newer musics would be analysed for parallels to those misty, gobby days. Was the emergence of gangsta rap a kind of “black punk”? Was rave dance music’s “punk rock”? Was the New Wave Of New Wave – well, the clue was in the name. The answer to any of these questions tended to be “no”.
Punk cast a long, increasingly ludicrous and annoying shadow. But it was a shadow a canny group could use as cover. The Prodigy drew blatant inspiration from punk – they called a DVD of their early videos “Electronic Punks”, and Keith Flint looked and sounded the cartoon part. They also, cleverly, set themselves up as a hostile force relative to their genre – one-time inventors of toytown techno, now scouring the charts (superclub dance included) with a purging anger. And this, more even than the spikes and snarls, was real catnip to the punkspotters.
So “Firestarter” delighted an awful lot of people. It was pure aggro – in your face, adrenalized, ultra-modern. The chassis of rave taken out of the clubs, retouched, and set roaring amidst new audiences. But behind the shock to your system was a thrill of more comfortable recognition. Ferocious and sleek it may have been, but its playbook was enjoyably familiar. In a pop scene full of agreeable pageantry, The Prodigy both stood out and fitted in. “Firestarter”’s music couldn’t have come from any other time: its attitude and vocals read from an older script.
The parallels only ran so far. “Firestarter” is a magnificent single because of a very unpunky virtue – its craft. Liam Howlett had demonstrated a gift for building tracks across two albums – one full of glorious, rushy rave melodrama; the second more self-conscious and grumpy but still full of tracks whose surges, climbs and throbs were perfectly deployed. Some dance music built tracks like spaces you could get lost in. Prodigy records were more like action scenes – sequences of tension and release whose thrill-power hid their expert choreography.
None more so than “Firestarter”. The band released a mix of this without its royalty-draining Breeders and Art Of Noise samples, but even though each lasts seconds, taking them out scuppers the song. The squalling, sloppy Breeders riff is like an engine revving up – echoed all through the track by doppler effect guitar tones rising and falling over to the sides of your earspace. The Art Of Noise’s contribution is even briefer – a clipped “Hey Hey Hey!” – but it structures the ride, turning up like a time bonus, pushing you on to the next part.
That videogame analogy is how I hear “Firestarter” because my context for it was completely hijacked by Wipeout 2097, the PlayStation’s superb future racing game whose soundtrack was a document of “electronica”. The 4-man house I was living in had 2-and-a-half jobs between us, none paying much. Nightlife was out, consoles were in. The PlayStation was the most precious object in the house, and we played Wipeout endlessly. Almost always, I picked “Firestarter (Instrumental)” from the soundtrack – if I’d not heard it as a four-minute hymn to velocity before, it soon became one.
That’s still the way I hear it. Everything in the song bar the beats hurtles past me, those micro-riffs jockeying for position like rival ships. The bumps and bass drum crunches punctuating the song feel like the parts where your craft would rear up to jump a gap then thump down, and the break where the song drops underwater brings the darkened tunnel sections of a Wipeout track powerfully back.
Which also means I hear Keith Flint, the pivot of the song, as an intruder in it, a capering goblin. Which works – for all his bug-eyed bragging his most telling claim is his first: “I’m a troublemaker”. It’s the kind of thing you call a small boy with a mischievous streak, not a filth-infatuated mind detonator. On later and lesser tracks Flint would come off as more genuinely menacing, his aggression more heartfelt – but here he’s a kid who’s been let loose, giving the track an edge of destructive glee and swagger.
Memories of Wipeout may seem like a diversion, but I think they help put “Firestarter” in the cultural context it anticipates, not the punky one it inherited. “Firestarter” isn’t just a link in a chain from Johnny and Sid, it’s part of the chain to ‘bro-step’ and GTA. This song feels fresh now because its energy is more like the speed and flash and casual boy-on-boy aggression of PlayStation-era videogames than it’s like punk, and that energy has shaped our culture for better and worse.
Score: 9
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“Firestarter”, Wipeout 2097, punk hangovers and the birth of the bro. http://t.co/SaPmJR1SCa – new Popular entry.
Roared with delight at them finally getting a #1 (as pointed out at least once before ‘Everybody In The Place’ would’ve done it but for Freddie Mercury’s passing) despite conceding upon first listen that it was my least favourite single of theirs to date. But it was exciting seeing how far they could go (again particularly as a band who repeatedly refused to mime or even perform live on UK TV).
What I remember most about this record is my mum loved it. Not because she was some kind of unlikely middle aged rave fan, but because she found it completely hilarious. She loved Keith Flint in the video. He was a minor cultural phenomenon (the image is surely ingrained in the memories of anyone who grew up in this period) but he was too cartoonish to be truly threatening.
I can’t speak with any particular insight on the record. I was too young for it to resonate with me as anything more than a slightly strange novelty record. I understood why it was popular – it had a memorable hook and a funny dancing man in the video. But I’d have mentally filed it alongside Babylon Zoo and the Outhere Brothers rather than any of their contemporaries, most of whom totally passed me by.
Listening now and in the context of their other hits – which I paid scant attention to at the time, aside from Smack My Bitch Up which of course caused a bit of a furore and was a playground catchphrase that kids used without really knowing why or what it meant – I understand it better. But the air of the novelty song still hangs over it, probably unfairly but there we are. It’ll always be the song with the dancing goblin my mum liked first and foremost.
This went down VERY WELL INDEED at the last Popular night.
I LOVED it when it came out – my old faves The Prodge had discovered grunge, just like me! Even my metaller chums liked it! Plus it came with its own little urban myth of Keith dancing on LIVE TUBE TRACKS in the video (totally a myth, you can’t even see any rails)! This is possibly the last cassingle I bought – my dad won a CD player in a raffle soon afterwards so I could finally play my CDs in my room instead of going downstairs to the living room.
It’s still a total banger, although the outro goes on just that little bit longer than it needs to.
as my only previous exposure to the Prodigy was via occasional exposure to ‘Charly’ and ‘Everybody in the Place’ I was surprised to find that they could produce something as concise and compelling as this track. I get the punk connection but for me musically it suggested the post-punk sounds that Massive Attack were to explore on Mezzanine a few years later
#4 I never heard that myth but would’ve liked to have seen Keith nonchalantly step aside an oncoming train – perhaps in homage to Joe Perry in Aerosmith’s ‘Livin On The Edge’ clip.
It’s tribute to just how good The Prodigy were that you could make a good case for this ranking in the lower half of their singles to date and yet still a borderline 10.
…so shall I be the first (and maybe only) one to grumble that they were better in the old days?
For years and years, right up to 2004, this was the only Prodigy track I knew. The words ‘Prodigy’ and ‘Firestarter’ were linked together as with the image of Keith Flint in the tunnel. For some reason my main memory of this is associated with about a year or two later of Brian Conley performing this on TV while blacked up as Al Jolson, as part of a medley that also included the theme tune to the popular kids show…oops, bunny. So yeah, Prodigy were Firestarter, that rather noisy song with the shouty scary guy.
Then I heard ‘Out of Space’ on MTV Dance at the age of 16 and was absolutely blown away.
Soon after, ‘No Good (Start the Dance)’ played on Radio 1 as part of Dave Pearce’s Dance Anthems show and the same happened. And hearing the tracks on those first two albums, Firestarter and everything past that point immediately seemed so watered-down and, well, ‘poppy’ compared to all that had gone before. All these songs that, even in my first listen in the mid-noughties, stood out in comparison to anything else in the then-current charts. Not until 2009 would they finally release something that even remotely near compared to their rave roots, but until then I would have called this the point they lost their way and sold out to the crowd. On its own, Firestarter is enjoyable. Listening to it having heard all nine previous single releases before it, it’s a major let down.
Out of Space and No Good would have got the 10s from me had they risen that high, but this falls a lot shorter.
Listened to this the other day¸ complete with video. Gave me a headache but otherwise left me unimpressed. Clearly there’s something I just don’t get.
Good Vibrations it clearly ain’t…
Thought with the week that was in it it would be a 10.
Nearly all the single releases from MTFJG would get at least a 9.Played No Good recently and was still highly impressed.
The prodigy released such great records in 93/94 that they were worthy of the colossal hype Oasis were but the simple rock formula was always more of a friendly crowd pleaser element to oasis than the ‘from-god-knows-where’image the prodigy had.
Firestarter felt more like a makeover than a sell out.It was a shock for 2 reasons 1) There was now a face to this act and 2)it was unlike any release that had gone before it.MFTJG was not dissimilar from the previous album but singles wise Fat of the Land was nothing like what they did before. The image of the mad man wearing a stars and stripes shirt in the underground tunnel was disturbing certainly.
The image was much parodied.Can recall Lucozade of all things making an ad around it.
Been a while since I heard it.Its OK but I would prefer the next release of theirs even if it may feel ‘watered down’ to the rest of you.Still clearly better than what Babylon Zoo were aiming for earlier that year.8 would be about right.
You rarely hear it at all nowadays.
Narayan would still be my favourite tune from FOTL.That would be an 8 or a 9.
I for one, had felt jaded and out of love with the charts. There were more important things to consider, (I was engaged to be married) and “Wonderwall” had been my final single purchase. But “Firestarter” and The Prodigy’s next single changed my attitude, and I eagerly bought “The Fat Of The Land”.
This song was part-alarm, part-slap in the face for the bored and jaded, like me, in a JEEZ! WHAT THE FVCK IS THAT? kind of way. I had been exposed to “Out Of Space” with its Max Romeo in the Magic Roundabout nuttyness and “Voodoo People” which kinda pointed me in the direction they were going, but I was TOTALLY unprepared for “Firestarter”. I recognised the Art Of Noise sample straight off. The Breeders’ guitar-snarl was new to me. I suppose it was the video that really grabbed my attention. Keith flint running his power-saw along the rail, sparks flying, like his vocal technique, angular and abrasive…hell, he even looked a bit like Blixa Bargeld! Dancing as if his life depended on it. Exposing his pierced tongue, breathing in Hidden London’s forgotten dust. Welcome to the filthy Underground! We’re THE MORLOCKS and we’re dragging you tame ELOY down to our HELL! Our HOME! The punk aesthetic was secondary, really. The music was fascinating. Liam is perhaps, our first proper Trainspotter (in the sample-geekery sense) on Popular. A magpie who possesses a breadth of knowledge across multiple genres. We’ll come across more people like him as Popular progresses into its second decade.
Alone amongst my group of friends in not really getting The Prodigy (I was always told they were ‘really good live’ which is actually the kind of thing that puts me right off a band – I mean you hear people say that about Stan Boardman) my indifference was such that ‘Firestarter’ at number one came as a bit of a surprise, and not one I especially savoured although I suppose it is a rather impressive track.
A girl I knew at college met them once outside the MTV studios in Camden Town once and said they were to a man, perfect gentleman. Keith Flint in particular turned out to be a big, cuddly, firestarting teddy bear.
#4 yeah, I would have knocked one point off for having nothing on the last minute or so. The vid just has snippets of Keith Flint wandering around a bit.
A total banger, obviously, BUT actually dancing to this carries a high risk of either looking like a maniac or getting tired halfway through and giving up. Not recommended for every occasion.
Note of translation: Wipeout 2097 = Wipeout XL in the states – though it probably had a different soundtrack?
The advent of Playstation was definitely a moment of “You are in the focus of the world, this is the future and you are there” for me – if it shared that with punk it also shared the retroactive writing out of the female element – that didn’t really happen until the rise of the X-Box.
#14 bear in mind I have danced to No Good (Start the Dance) all the way through…
Music For The Jilted Generation set the Prodigy up as a band against the Criminal Justice Bill – ludicrous definitions of repetitive beats and gatherings introduced by a late-period Conservative government dancing, ironically enough, to a tabloid tune.
Amused me, as only two years before the band were wearing matching jumpsuits and goofing about on a farm in videos.
Firestarter took both elements and made hay. The accessibility of the first album, which was overlooked on the second; and the fury, the anger of the later release. And stirred in Something For Keith To Do.
It’s not their best record. Of 1996, even. It’s still a bloody good single, and a worthy number one. Eight.
What if I just link to everything @TomEwing writes from now on? Here he is on ‘Firestarter’. http://t.co/MtXJj7HBFc
It is excellent, but ‘No Good’ is better. It just makes me think of people saying “At last! A dance frontman!”, as if you have time to look at someone on stage when you’re dancing.
I agree. No Good might be their best single, and that would have been a strange viewpoint back in the late 90s; but it seems to be something of a consensus now.
Although to your point about looking at things whilst dancing, the rise of superstar DJs from this point in 1996 was quite weird.
Oakenfold headlined the second stage at Glastonbury in 1999, I think. I was there and it felt very odd. Twenty thousand people dancing in a field BUT FACING FRONT. And then there was that old bloke from Beats International.
By spring 1996 I was on the way to completing the research for the book I had to write in time for summer 1997 – the 75th anniversary history of Erith & Belvedere FC, founded 1922. Every Saturday morning I’d head down to Bexley local studies centre, then housed in the fine Tudor mansion of Hall Place, to trace the club’s history through newspaper microfilms. I’d have my Walkman with me to follow the footy commentaries in the afternoon, with a dash of Radio 1 in the morning. Which is how I come to associate the walk down Gravel Hill to the handsomest building in Bexley with “Firestarter”, as I first heard it walking down the hill and was blown away.
Pushing 34, I guess I wasn’t the target audience for it, and God knows I’d dismissed enough “rave” music in the past, including some Prodigy tracks, but I suppose I was with J Lucas’s mum on this – I just found the punch, the tension, the sheer drama of the track irresistible. Keith Flint doing the perfect cartoon Johnny Rotten impression, the samples cleverly deployed, the ideas flowing – and the video, once you saw it, a thrilling, parent-alienating thing stalking TOTP in the tradition of early Stones or Alice Cooper (filmed in the disused Aldwych tube station – so no, no live tube tracks!). I tried “Fat of the Land” shortly afterwards and, well I’ll agree with Ciaran above about “Narayan” – repetitive yet hypnotic, the same kind of effect as “Born Slippy”. I won’t be defending “Smack My Bitch Up” though.
A couple of nice memories from the Prodigy’s time as a Top Pop Group: Keith Flint seen chatting to Spike Milligan at an awards ceremony and declaring afterwards that the near-80-year-old comic genius was “still very much with it” (I had to chuckle at the shock-horror evil goblin using the phrase “very much with it”). Then there was Q magazine describing the band (in a pattern resembling a bunnied phenomenon we’re not far from now) as Boffin Prodge, Scary Prodge, Bez Prodge and Scary Bez Prodge.
Fascinating bit, Tom, about your association of this track with a video game – so maybe this review appearing in our 10th anniversary week isn’t as relevant as this review appearing on the day of the GTA5 launch.
Tom was really teasing us with this review – thought it was going to end with a 10, but instead, just short. Anyway…
The Prodigy were largely unknown in America before “Firestarter” made its belated appearance on MTV and modern rock radio in early 1997. I wasn’t usually into this sound at the time, but it had perfect timing for me, as I was going through a really rough time of 80 hour workweeks, and this song was great for working off my frustrations. “Firestarter” would peak at #30 on the Hot 100, but a few months later, the album unexpectedly (to me) debuted at number one, no doubt helped by the “Smack My Bitch Up” controversy. I’m going to go 8/10 here.
And apparently the video made just enough mark on US culture to inspire this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNbx6iF-vQI
Maybe, even at the age of 21, as I was when this was out, I was well on the road to being a young fogey. Not a clubber, and indeed living, when in the UK, a good 15 miles from the nearest nightclub, and further still from any I might have chosen to frequent. So… while I could, and can, appreciate some aspects of this – in places it really is breathtaking…I’ve never lived it, got lost in it, given myself up to it, even appreciated it as I did some of their previous singles- or indeed one coming up soon enough. Which is pretty much what a track of this nature demands: submission or death. I chickened out. Scariest record anywhere near the top of the charts since Silver Bullet’s ’20 Seconds To Comply’.
Breeders, Art Of Noise, RT @tomewing: “Firestarter”, Wipeout 2097, punk hangovers and the birth of the bro. http://t.co/DPaNhuDPMQ
While we’re reminiscing, my first ever comment on Popular – after years of lurking – was an attempted defence of The Doors against Tom’s scorn, in which I argued that “ridiculous but awesome” was one of the essential qualities of great pop. This record is Exhibit A for that argument: silly, scary, calculated and utterly thrilling.
It’s also the noisiest Number One since ‘Voodoo Chile’, which I guess makes it the second-noisiest Number One ever.
I agree with Izzy and Billy that it’s not their best, by a long chalk. The first time I heard ‘Out Of Space’ remains one of the most memorable musical experiences of my life. But as a Number One, and a cultural phenomenon, it’s still fantastic.
It’s a 10 from me, and I’m ever so slightly disappointed that Tom didn’t agree.
#9 I think not being Good Vibrations is kind of the point.
Howlett’s big innovation beyond general, advanced sonic architecture seems to me to have been figuring out new ways to hit the ‘one’ with unprecedented volume (a mastering achivement as much as a recording/mixing one). We’ve talked a bit about how the loudness of Oasis’s records helped put them over the top, but the loudness of particular beats on various tracks of The Fat Of The Land blew my mind at the time. This is for me the deepest connection with contemporary stuff: the JBs hitting the one becomes Parliament’s whole-band-lean-in becomes Howlett’s sub-sonic slams becomes dub-/bro-step drops.
Anyhow, Firestarter hits the one pretty hard (though not as hard as TFOTL’s best track, the John Barry-gobbling Mindfields) and plays a nice trick in its intro: we think the big downbeat is the four but when things spring to life, ha ha, it’s the one alright. As others have mentioned, Firestarter runs out of ideas half way through (whereas Mindfields doesn’t), but the first two minutes are a glorious racket, and a real meeting of (grunge and rave) tribes w/ the spirit of John Lydon presiding; the sort of pretty decent thing that never bothers the top of the charts. Except this time it did. Just an 8 from me (Mindfields would be a 10), but Firestarter’s success is incredibly cheering.
Oh and Smack Up The Orinoco Flow.
There’s a soon-coming number one I think of as noisier still!
And as everyone has said, “Out Of Space” is better, though I didn’t factor that into the marking.
Sample watch: as well as the breeders and art of noise samples, there is a sample of “devotion” by ten city
#26: the opening chords of Out Of Space are one of the most thrilling musical experiences of my life whenever I hear them *now*; but hearing Charly for the first time, when it debuted without any warning at iirc no.9 on Bruno Brookes’ rundown (when that was still a big thing), is alltime top five for me.
Two corrections: #22 the video was in the under-construction jubilee line, which feels an important distinction because every other tube filming does take place at Aldwych; #23 Smack My Bitch Up was a couple of years later, and felt like a late swing from a band whose time had gone.
Question: what’s the Breeders sample on this? I had no idea it boasted samples at all.
OMG I have just remembered that Firestarter was played in the Olympic Opening Ceremony! If that’s not a sign of a cultural milestone I’m not sure what is.
If you’re going to be remembered for something, make it indelible. Make it a step out of the comfort zone. I’m hard pressed to find any dance records that had got to #1 prior to this that are as nakedly aggressive – even when you take out the video and Keith Flint and Maxim’s “demon” look – indeed, few records as aggressive from any genre have made it to #1. Once you chuck in the video (I seem to remember a “ban this sick filth” momentum building up around the Firestarter video and people trying to get it taken off ToTP), the total package is incredible. About the only one I can think of didn’t officially get to #1, as it happens (though as has been pointed out – the sense of cartoonishness from both Johnny Rotten and Keith Flint can take a little of the edge off).
For me, Firestarter is not a total success. I find it a bit one note and it definitely meanders in the final minute; whereas something like Out of Space fizzed with ideas and tempo/stylistic shifts, this is much more direct. Still, by being utterly focused on the one mood, it is effective – it certainly makes my blood rise anyway. I can’t remember who it was (I have a nagging fear it was Jeremy Clarkson) that said Born Slippy on the car radio was as a guaranteed speeding ticket, as you can’t help but drive fast when you hear it. Firestarter sounds similar – I’ve got it on a playlist for when I go running and it definitely kicks me into a higher gear, which I will only regret later.
This might be why Firestarter was placed in Wipeout 2097. The usage of music in video games has always been of obvious importance. The bright and breezy Mario theme welcoming you into the game is removed for a slightly more sinister (though still cute and a bit jaunty) tune for the levels that take you underground. Zelda, equally, has a memorable theme that has been rehashed, remixed, re-recorded and so on throughout all its iterations.
Wipeout (and some of the other EA sports titles) started to move away from this and licensed “proper” music around this time and, chosen well, the titles that games companies bring in can really help the mood of the game. The daddy of all of this licensing of music at the moment is probably GTA and, as alluded to earlier in the thread, it’s a happy coincidence that this appeared on release day for GTA 5. I spent a good three hours with the game last night, and, as ever, the music choices are excellent (some of them must be rigged for certain points in the game – getting into a car that the game forces your to choose and it’s playing something perfect for that moment is always something I look forward to) and there are few more pleasurable moments in gaming than speeding down a virtual highway, with the virtual dusk settling over a spectacularly rendered virtual landscape and Rhythm of the Night by Corona kicking in on the car radio. I know I can’t sell everyone on gaming (maybe not even anyone) but those moments are just as great as DLBIA kicking in at the end of Our Friends…
I’d remembered the cartoonish aspects of Flint in the video but not the more er sensuous aspects – lingering tongue shots etc. I wonder if this was A Moment in the mainstreaming of body modification in the UK?
#33 On GTA San Andreas I always loved tootling along the highway listening to ‘A Horse with no Name’
#31 The Breeders sample is from S.O.S.; a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 1:52 of howling geetarz!
#31 I remember reading that chart with ‘Charly’ a new entry at number 9 later that week, and wondering who and what on earth it could be. It was still quite unusual for a new act to have a new entry straight into the top 10 at that point.
I decided it was most likely some sort of lighters in the air anthemic power ballad by a group of ageing rockers I had never heard of (I was 11 years old in ’91) but somehow still had a big fanbase. Something perhaps not unlike ‘Wind of Change’ by the Scorpions, which had been a big hit earlier that year. That was what the name and title ‘Charly’ by the Prodigy suggested to me, for some reason.
When I actually heard the record, I was of course ever so slightly wide of the mark.
Firestarter & its punk origins. Still a great song
http://t.co/qcw3VCpzfv
Anybody else been foxed by an unfamiliar name in the chart, tried to guess what kind of act they might be and been totally off-beam? I mentioned on the “School’s Out” thread how I saw the name Alice Cooper listed for that night’s TOTP and assumed she was a willowy Pantangle-type folkie…
Pentangle I mean, but it won’t let me edit…
I remember thinking Public Enemy with their new entry “Rebel Without a Pause” must have been a metal band. Which they sort of were, I suppose.
In a music lesson age 10 we had to put together an A-Z of bands and the class metalhead said XTC for X. I spent the next 5 years assuming they were metal, rather than assuming that XTC was the only band beginning with X a 10 year old in 1983 might have heard of.
No one else has mentioned yet – so I will – that this kept The X Files Theme by Mark Snow at #2. This must have been close to the high water mark of the show’s popularity. Season 3 would have been on in the UK around this time, so it would have built an audience by this point – and also not gone on so long that the collapse under the weight of it’s own mythology would not yet have become apparent. Still, we’re (what?) 18 months/2 years away from Catatonia immediately dating International Velvet by name checking the lead characters, so there must still have been some life in the series – indeed, the feature film hadn’t yet happened.
Anyway, it’s a great piece of evocative TV theme music – a 9 in my view – and really not worth listening to over 3 or 4 minutes in my opinion – probably a 4 or 5. One can only assume that there were a lot of fans who pushed it that high in the charts because I don’t think it stands up as something you’d want to listen to repeatedly, except as the introduction to the show.
#35: I loved GTA San Andreas’ soundtrack. Early days yet but I think it might be the best of the series (both soundtrack and game – the only one I have played through multiple times because I enjoyed it so much)- though need to let V bed in a bit obviously. I enjoyed cruising through the fake Hollywood to My Lovin’ by En Vogue and tearing up the highway to Welcome To The Jungle. Just excellent.
The best (=worst) solution to the bands-that-begin-with-X conundrum is the recent(ish) trend for eg names like XNeverAgainX
#31 Aldwych was referred to in press at the time (and is mentioned on Wikip) but if this was an erroneous snowball tell me more!
It’s interesting that Tom discussed this in terms of punk, because there’s obviously a fair bit of Johnny Rotten in Keith Flint’s look and the sneering London accents (are they? Australians like me miss most of the subtleties – I can pick Scouse, Geordie, and posh, and that’s about it). But to me, in 1996, punk was Green Day and Offspring and Blink-182; I doubt I would have made any connection between ‘When I Come Around’ and ‘Firestarter’ – I’m not sure whether I would have known about ‘God Save The Queen’ then. I always felt sort of a sort of begrudgingness about electronica at the time; I could see that it was well-made and interesting, but I wanted more song-iness, dammit. I wanted melodies and song structures. Listening to my memory of ‘Firestarter’, it seemed repetitive to me? But watching it on YouTube just then, it had some fairly well-executed dynamic shifts and kept things interesting til the end.
But anyway! I recall being fascinated seeing Keith Flint on my TV on the countdown programs (Rage and Video Hits); ‘Firestarter’ didn’t really sound like anything else I’d heard (actually, I had probably heard Leftfield/Lydon’s ‘Open Up’, likely a big inspiration?). I wasn’t even sure if I liked it, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was only a #22 in Australia, but it was a #22 during a time when I was paying very close attention to the charts – if you asked me before I just looked it up then, I would have guessed it was a top 10 single.
Michael Tunn, the evenings presenter on the national radio station Triple J, was clearly a fan of ‘Out of Space’ and would play it regularly circa 1996-1997; I thought that song was great, because it was clearly (to me) a shameless novelty single. I remember being puzzled how the ‘Out Of Space’ people had turned into firestarters and twisted instigators.
#46 Yes, one of the other things about the fixity of punk as a reference point is that it had almost nothing to say about the kids who were actually listening to current punk and the music they were listening to.
As a “member” of the Art of Noise, isn’t Paul Morley one of the songwriting credits on this? In which case, given I’m guessing he probably had little input in the original and probably nothing to do with the “hey, hey, hey” is this the least deserved credit we’ve come across yet? Or have “svengalis” been getting their claws into that money-pot since the beginning of popular music?
Re 46: Lydon came from north London, Flint from the Essex/London borders and then Essex proper (obviously some time later). As most people from that side of Essex are from displaced working-class London anyway, the roots of their accents aren’t that far apart, although locals would be able to spot some differences. That said, I can’t remember having heard Flint speak and Lydon’s voice is so mannered that it might render all this null and void.
My instinct is that kids from roughly equivalent backgrounds today might sound more different, because of the far greater influence of immigrant/post-immigrant communities in London (like becomes closer to ‘lak’ than the music hall ‘loik’.
Brian @ 27
All right, I’ll go along with that. But Firestarter isn’t School’s Out either, nor is it My Generation or Let’s Spend The Night Together or European Son or Moonlight on Vermont or any of the other oeuvres of my teens carefully calculated to batter and upset my parents’ generation and which we lapped up. (Granted that at that time countercultural music was more likely to wrap up cultural taboos in something easier and mellower, like Je t’aime or Wet Dream).
It must be a generational thing. But help me out here because a few years on from Firestarter my daughter and her friends were heavily into Muse, and I quickly took to Muse myself. Muse are certainly loud and not always especially mellow (though they have their moments) and may well be a slap in teh face for less enlightened members of a parental generation. Yet I like them where Firestarter leaves me cold. Can it be that Muse have something to say whereas Keith Flint just seems to be a loser with an attitude problem?