Her novio might roll over yo

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

04/03/01 : Loco - Fun Lovin' Criminals


Fun Lovin' Criminals were quite big for a bit, which made it all the more bizarre that I saw them live in the mighty St Albans Arena around this time - I seem to recall everyone was a bit perplexed as to why they were there, but a good time was had by all. I vaguely remember listening to this album, but it's the one after the one after the good one, so returns were definitely diminishing by this time.

Yeah, they're diminishing but this really isn't bad if you're in for some woozy hip-hop - it's only real problem is that it doesn't contain a "Scooby Snacks" or "King Of New York", although "Bump" and "There Was A Time" are pretty decent tracks. There's also an argument that 58 minutes is a bit long, but it doesn't overly drag - it's just that there's probably only so much FLC you need in your life and the first two albums pretty much provided that. 

We're at #5 in the charts this week with a new entry on the start of a six week run. Interestingly this charted higher than Come Find Yourself, their debut but it didn't quite manage the 97 weeks that managed - sadly, I think this means we probably won't get to meet their best album (no-one said life was fair). The rest of the top five were Dido, Coldplay, U2 and Anastacia and the next highest entry was James A Johnston (#11) - who I'd never heard of and so Googled him and was surprised to find he was the first warden of Alcatraz. Ah no, this is probably the other one who spent OVER 30 YEARS creating the entrance music for WWE wrestlers, composing OVER 10,000 pieces - like, wow!

Wikipedia has three whole sentences on the album telling us it's their third album and they recorded it in New York and Hawaii - obviously that twelve hour flight to the well known holiday destination was essential. I also learned that "Microphone Fiend" is an Eric B & Rakim cover with the original being very highly regarded, with it also having being covered by Rage Against The Machine and the riff often being used live by Muse and Radiohead, which is quite the mix of bands. Back to this album, the critical response was decent enough but it didn't do much away from here, with #13 in Belgium being the best of the rest. 

discogs.com tells us this is another fifty pence album but you can spend £24 on a copy if you want to, but it doesn't seem like you're going to get anything different for your extra money. This actually wasn't a bad album and I quite liked the general vibe, but it's just that absolutely nobody really needed it to exist.

11/03/01 - Much better than I remembered

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