Waking up to find your love's not real

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

30/05/99 : You've Come A Long Way, Baby - Fatboy Slim

I liked this a lot back in the day (and owned it - 13/31) but I can't say I've revisited it as an album in a very long time - I'm looking forward to it.

There are a lot worse tracks that you can start an album with than "Right Here Right Now" - it builds up nicely to a strong beat and the US radio segue into "Rockafeller Skank" is just great ("Fatboy Slim - that guys kicks ass!").  The other singles from the album "Gangster Trippin" and "Praise You" are also fine tracks - the rest of it isn't quite at the same level for me (although "Soul Surfing" and "You're Not From Brighton" did stand out), but that's probably due to familiarity as much as anything.  If you're into this kind of thing, then I think this is a very decent album with the only quibble I'd raise being that I'm not sure we needed "Fucking In Heaven" - I've no problem with a bit of swearing, but I think this probably overdoes it somewhat (unsurprisingly, it was changed for the US version).

We're at #8 in the chart this week on his 32nd week of a 58 week run, having peaked at #1 for its 13th-16th weeks, but it spent another 42 weeks on the chart across six further runs, with it last being seen in '01.  The top five on the chart this week were ABBA, Texas, Shania, Stereophonics and Travis (a new entry) and the next highest new entry was a Happy Mondays best-of (#11).

Wikipedia tells me something I never knew - this is his second album.  How did I not know that?  It also amusingly tells me the album cover photo was taken at the 1983 Fat Peoples Festival in Danville, Virginia - despite various efforts, the guy hasn't been identified.  It was also interesting being pointed at "Take Yo' Praise", the Camille Yarbrough track from '75 which provides the sample for "Praise You" - it's kinda funky!  And that's pretty much all the info it has on it, which seems a shame for such an influential and critically well received album.  It did pretty well commercially to make up for it though - globally it's sold over five million copies.

"Customers also listened to" The Prodigy, The Verve, Dee-lite and Blur - go on, you weren't expecting that list, were you?  As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the finest dance (or "big beat" as Wikipedia refers to it) albums out there - I appreciate it's not for everyone, but you've got to like one or two of the tracks, surely?  Well actually, I suspect my mum would probably be pretty happy giving it all a miss - and she definitely wouldn't approve of "Fucking In Heaven".

23/05/99 - All a bit odd
06/06/99 - Bearable dross

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