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Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

18/10/94 : Music For The Jilted Generation - The Prodigy


Only our second visit with The Prodigy - I think I nearly bought this one a couple of times but decided it was probably just a bit too rowdy for the likes of me (I'm not the rowdy type). I enjoyed Fat Of The Land though (and it's hard to believe we've not visited that yet) so I'm quite looking forward to this.

Yeah, you have to be in the mood for repetitive beats but it seemed to fit nicely with a rainy Halloween morning so I enjoyed this, particularly "Their Law", "Full Throttle" and "No Good (Stop The Dance)". I'm not sure I needed 78 minutes of it, but considering how repetitive a lot of it is, it didn't drag nearly as much as it might have. If you don't like this sort of thing, then nothing I say will convince you of its worth (neither my wife or my mum would be a fan) but I liked it and feel it's another album that's of its time without having dated.

We're at #10 in the charts this week on their eleventh week of a 49 week run, with it debuting at #1. But it was only just getting going because it had another fourteen visits (including runs of 19, 11 and 42 weeks) with it last being seen in '19 after the death of Keith Flint. The top five this week were an Eric Clapton blues cover album (a new entry and his only #1 album), The Three Tenors live, Oasis (it's mad that this is at #31 in the charts this week), Blur and a Wet Wet Wet best-of  - another interesting (if overly male) mix! And the next highest new entry is a Pet Shop Boys remix album (#6) which I didn't know existed - but when I looked at the track listing, I don't know half the original tracks, so I think I'm fine without listening to it.

Wikipedia tells us it's their second album and, as with their first album, only half the group (Liam Howlett and Maxim Reality) contributed to it with the other half (Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill) not being credited at all, but still appearing in the artwork - amusingly, Leeroy Thornhill has never contributed to any of their albums. Apparently the original mix of the album was considerably longer until someone pointed out that it wouldn't fit on a CD, so some last minute butchery was required. Critically, the album was very well received with everyone praising it and even our old mate Robert Christgau said it was "one of the rare records that's damn near everything you want cheap music to be" (which I think is a compliment) and retrospective reviews are even nicer about it - David Bowie also said very nice things about it. Commercially, it did very well in quite a few places, making the top five in The Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden and also achieving the distinction of being angry enough to get to #1 in Finland!

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent CD copy for a couple of quid but if you want the original vinyl pressing with the gatefold sleeve then it's £250! I'm not entirely sure that such rampant capitalism was what the boys had in mind when they recorded the album, but for me it's stood the test of time well and deserves to be celebrated as such.

 25/09/94 - Could have been far worse

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