Day 0865 - You've Come a Long Way Baby

Fatboy Slim "You've Come a Long Way Baby" (1998) - got it

Following on from his debut "Better Living Through chemistry" (day 810) and drawing on his association with big-beat maestros the Chemical Brothers, Norman Cook pole vaulted the "difficult second album" hurdle.   He created a record that hit no.1 in his homeland of the UK, and became omnipresent worldwide via singles like "Rockafeller Skank", "Right Here, Right Now" and "Praise You".

"Rockafeller..."with its repeated vocal hook of 'the funk soul brother' kind of lays out what Cook is about here: Mixing sampled of funk and soul tracks with epic, booming beats and a whole lot of audio tweaking... dance music for the masses.

Day 0810 - Better Living Through Chemistry

Fatboy Slim "Better Living Through Chemistry" (1996)

Norman Cook was the bass player for an indie rock band called the Housemartins.  Following the breakup of that band he formed the electronic group Beats International, Cook already had a few years of clubbing and DJing under his belt by then.

Cook then adopted the moniker Fatboy Slim to begin his solo career proper.    

This first Fatboy Slim album features tracks already recorded and released by Cook at different times throughout his career, but, despite this and the mix and match of sounds, it's a fairly cohesive collection of fun and funky big-beat tracks.   It already has that Fatboy Slim feeling of mixing a little bit of old with a bit of new to create something fun enough to dance to, but universal enough it its appeal that non-dance fans can get in on it too.   

Pretty sure I recognised "Going out of my head" from different tv shows and/or commercials.   I'm guessing that that commercialism may have earned Cook some criticism.   Accusations of 'selling out' and all that.  Who cares though, when the music is good.

Day 0706 - Bandwagonesque

Teenage Fanclub "Bandwagonesque"

The third album by the Scottish band, and an album that managed to beat out Nirvana's "Nevermind" as Spin Magazine's "album of the year". 

The album starts off promisingly enough, "The Concept" runs through noisy pop into some divine Beach Boys-esque harmonies and then a pleasant instrumental outro.   That song is followed by the noisy dervish of "Satan" which opens with a frenzy of noise that segues into a bit of rock.

From there on though, it falls into a pretty samey sound across the rest of the album.  It's not a bad sound (think the Byrds, or early-era Beatles pop songs and vocal harmonies but with washy distorted guitar), but after the variety of the first couple of tracks the rest of the album felt like a bit of a cool off.

Day 0470 - Hypnotised

The Undertones "Hypnotised" (1980)

I wasn't really too fussed on the previous Undertones album on this list; it was kind of fairly nondescript punk with a little extra melody thrown in.

This one is more of the same but with the punk dialled down a little and the pop/melody turned up slightly, and yet it seems so much better (to my ears). Maybe they reached the punk/melody 'bliss point' or were on a bit of a roll songwriting-wise... who knows?

Again it's not one that I'm really planning on revisiting, but it's more enjoyable and a lot of the songs just seem 'familiar'. I kind of feel like they could potentially have been an early influence on Blur (of whom I am a fan), going by the similarities in sound.

Day 0393 - New Boots and Panties!!

Ian Dury "New Boots and Panties!!" (1977)

This is mentioned in the book as being part of the punk movement, and there are one or two tracks of brazen rock, one song even opens with the line "arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks" but most of this smells more of the British musichall tradition with touches of the up and coming ska/reggae movement, definitely a hint of Madness (the band).  There's a bit of cockney rhyming slang and Brit street-talk delivered with not a lot of melody, so I guess it fits in with the 'taking music back to the people' and 'anyone can do it' ideal of punk.

Totally enjoyable.