Review by: Fated
Okay, Quik excitedly told me of a great “techno” album so good he could easily listen to the whole thing over and over and love every song. Intriguing. I got the album, Fatboy Slim’s Greatest Hits. I can’t say I share his enthusiasm.
The album opens well, with the first track being catchy and recognizable from commercials and tv, however, my biggest gripe with the entire album becomes entirely clear after about a minute.
Perhaps some of you remember those funny little songs like “This Is the song that never ends….” And “99 bottles of beer”. They’re cute but the level of their repetitiveness and sameness gets you sick of them faster than the speed of light. You know which songs I mean, church has a ton of them, those songs that have 3 or 4 lines and are repeated for as long as the crowd is “into” it, perhaps hours. This first track has TWO, count em, two lines with one word different between them. This might work, if it was a minute and a half song, and the accompanying beat was really that good. Sadly, it’s not, not even close. It’s a mash up of beach boys surfing funk and those two lines. The artist felt he needed to keep the song going by employing that really lame song device of speeding up and slowing down the track to fool (“yeah right”) my mind into thinking that NOW, NOW I’m going to get to the creative original and new part that’s going to make me like this song. Final rating: Epic for the first 10 seconds, COMPLETE FAIL for the rest of the 4!!! Minutes I was unfortunately subjected to.
Praise You is the second track. It suffers from exactly the same problem. Overly simple, overly repeated, lame stutter effects to change up something that is 10% of a REAL song stretched out into 3 and a half minutes. It even sounds like church music, which makes me wonder if this whole album isn’t some kind of sick revenge for Fatboy Slim having to listen to some damn near endless and mostly mindless praising of Jesus as a child.
Basically, I’ll sum up this album: Listen to about the first 15 to 30 seconds of each song and sample the beat before its very soul and spirit are crushed out of you through a merciless lack of progress, change, or a timely end to the track.
In terms of style, the whole thing is very 70s funk, kind of like a Tarantino throwback except musically.
The thing is, I don’t know how anybody can listen to the whole album straight through because you’ll be bored to tears way before you hit the middle. Each interesting beat from each new track will be immediately followed by “This is the whole song right here, how many minutes am I going to listen to this one?”
The greatest songs are complicated, multilayered and not afraid to change up their beats, style, pace and lyrics. Think perhaps Queens “Bohemian Rhapsody” or Black Sabbath’s “Ironman”. The songs just change several times and get MORE interesting as you listen to them.
This is the complete opposite. Your first few seconds are as interesting as these songs will ever get. I, well, I kinda hate this album. Sorry Quik.
Review by: Quik
Sir, how can you hate this album? Hate? Why do I have a feeling you approached this cd with a negative attitude to begin with and hence you did not allow yourself to be swept away by the phat beats and positive rhytm (hehe).
I discovered this album at work, I was sitting in front of my Mac slaving away in Photoshop and my boss put the cd on. I didn’t have any podcasts or audiobooks to listen to that day so I just sat there and listened to the music in the background. I heard a couple of tracks by FBS before but I had a very neutral attitude about it. A couple of tracks in I caught myself dancing in my seat while working with a nice positive smile on my face. I was intrigued. I got the album and copied the cd to my iPod. I immediately liked it. Funky, very positive beats, sampling of different music styles, (Bird of Prey makes me think of The Doors, Don’t let the man get you down put an image of 60s hippies in my mind) and an overall positive attitude of the tracks made me listen to this album for a long time everywhere, commuting, working, relaxing you name it.
I think this music is incredibly visual. If this was a soundtrack to some fun funky movie I bet you it would be the most popular soundtrack of the decade.
How many times can you spot the neighborhood spy???
The music videos very much prove my point, honestly Fated I made a mistake, I should have made you watch a couple of music videos first and then tell you “Oh by the way, this is the cd with all those songs in one place.” and I think you would have a much greater appreciation for the album. Well just in case you are willing to trust me on this I have “sneaked” a couple of videos into my review, hope you watch them, give them a try and perhaps try the album again hmmm? ^_^
I absolutely fell in love with this track after watching the video =)
Last but not least, if all those videos before did not put a smile on your face and made you move your butt to the funky rhytms this is my last attempt (my Weapon of Choice if you will) but it is the strongest one. “Why is that Quik?” you ask. Well sir, three reasons:
1) Christopher Walken is dancing in it. (Yes, except for a couple of stunt moves that is really him dancing) and on a coolness scale of 1 to 10 (1 being Mr. Rogers and 10 being Chuck Norris) Mr. Walken is 12.
2) There is a line in the song “If you walk without rhytm then you won’t attract the worm”. I love stuff like this, it reminds me that the mighty army of geeks and nerds is that much closer to taking over the world.
3) Christopher Walken is in this… DANCING!!!
If you walk without rhytm, you won’t attract the worm!
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