"How We Became Prodigy Fans"

nahhhh

Written by da brainkilla members, released by Ragged Flag

thanks





You both share my mentality on this. Back then I was buying every single I could get my hands on. Importing anything I needed to because I knew it was going to be worth it. That desire for the next beat was greater than ever, now I don't crave anymore either. Liam went from being one of the hottest producers on earth to being forgotten. We here remember him, the rest of the world only remembers key tracks and none of them of which has been release in the past 10 years. There was more than just a long break that resulted in lack of record sales that they used to have. People didn't like what they heard and it spoke for itself. You don't go from having the top record of the year, breaking sales records and being number 1 in over 22 countries across the world with no promotion on your album to a poorly sold album not even rippling the water on sales records, not achieving number 1 in even half of the amount of countries you did with your prior album. The only thing those two albums had in common was neither had been promoted.. the music just spoke for itself. Now the next generation of fans are here, some have a good mind on them... but it's funny to watch fans think that everything that leaks or gets released is the greatest thing Liam has ever done, truely revolutionary, going to change the world, and then you look at what the rest of the world is doing and into and Prodigy isn't even in the back of their minds anymore. It's painful to see my favorite band turn up that way.

Like you said ynot, dnb and many other subgenres have hooked me up in more ways than Prodigy has given me in over a decade. DNB is in full swing of the big beat style many loved Prodigy for, give Spor, Pendulum, Apex, Ewun, Evol Intent, and so on.. that big dirty beat sound is there. It's not Prodigy but it certainly makes you forget their dismal music of the past 3 years

Totally untrue. FOTL had massive promotion, radio, and video airplay. Firestarter and Breathe were both massive singles released within the year prior to FOTL's release. Their image, attitude, style was everywhere. MTV and other video networks gave their videos mass rotation. They caused controversy every 5 minutes (whether manufactured or not). They had great creative ads like this one which added to their anti-authority persona:

Quite simply, they were in the right place at the right time. Keith's look, Maxim's style, everything fell into place for them at exactly the right moment.

America took its head out of the sand for once and had a peak around and found they liked what they saw/heard. It didn't last of course, but hey the world changed. You cannot compare any album that came out in world of 1997 to one that came out in 2004. Just like my story of going to the store and buying FOTL and walking home listening to it on my portable CD player. Who does that anymore?

If you don't like AONO, fine. I realize a lot of people don't like it, and I'm not saying it's as good as FOTL, it's not. There were tons of problems with it promotionally, and not having Keith & Maxim as the face of the band really hurt it. Even though they're not on the album, had the first single been Spitfire with all 3 of them in the video, it certainly would have made a bigger splash. That's why they always had eclipsed similar bands like the Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, etc. in the past. It's all about having a front-man (or men in their case) to give the band a face.

We didn't have any promotion in America, video and radio play are based on population interests (what the people want). we had absolutely no promotion ahead of time or during the fotl era here to go buy the album or go check them out. if you heard them on the radio or saw them on mtv if you caught the video on at the right time you were lucky. thats not really promotion to me. when i think of promotion i think of advertisements, merchandise, playing on talk shows and other outlets, doing interviews extensively before and during the album period to attract sales, getting your name and image out there for all to know to maximise sales and profits.. we didnt have that here. when prodigy came along and broke through in america, they did just that. it was one of those you heard about them but didnt know who they were and word of mouth got around from friend to friend until everyone was listening to them. eventually people would catch their video late at night or once during the day and only then sometimes... only certain radio stations would play them none of which you would find around where i live.. major cities most likely had a radio station that played them now and again (Los Angeles for sure), and if you were lucky maybe a college radio station would play them. when the fotl was massive no college station or radio station within 30 miles of me knew about them.. it wasnt until '99 a college station a county away from me played firestarter and claimed they were the next big thing not knowing they already rolled through two years prior. the biggest thing that helped prodigy in the states was people talking to each other. there wasnt as much video or radio play as you would think for them, you could call a rock station and request them and they would decline because they werent rock and we didnt have any dance stations until after 2000. the only ones you would find were in akron and a few other places and they were all college radio stations playing club style music rather than prodigy. rap was on a hot streak when prodigy came through here in '97. you find it more evident when aono came out and people had to ask if this was the same band, nobody knew and thats much like fotl.. nobody knew, they were just there and people liked it. when people found out aono was infact by the same band it didnt matter word of mouth was spreading and not many liked it. they sold hundreds upon thousands of albums for fotl, they didnt even do half that with aono. experience expanded wasn't even played or viewed on tv here at all and still managed to outsell aono. it really wasnt promotion that helped them it was people liking what they heard and talking about it. i just find it a little laughable when people say america missed out they missed something revolutionary and 3 years later that sound still hasnt ruled the air waves or the scenes. people in america didnt like it, i wouldnt say anyone of us were stupid for it, otherwise we'd all be putting bluegrass and opera in the top of the charts.

I guess overall yea.. it's being in the right place at the right time.. and preference. You always have to compare your work from single to single and from album to album. Anyone who starts off great and then takes a turn for the worse in the public opinion is definitely going to be continually compared and more than likely forgotten (hence all the 1 hit wonder stuff in the states). america didnt know of prodigy until they were already here, and when they came back 7 years later america didnt like what they heard so that was a big strike against them. i think the singles collection sold the best along side bgat since the turn over to 2000. even today people compare pink floyd albums from release to release.. just like the beatles and so on. it's much like actors, you compare their career on their films and other acting jobs they took. it's just the way it all works. i'm not aiming for another fotl vs aono battle.. just simply saying. the promotion people think the states had is far far off. music stores were selling out and backlogging the album and no radio station was playing them, you turned on the tv and never saw them. if you happened to watch mtv you were far more likely to see the same rap video 5 or 6 times in an afternoon, and maybe only catch firestarter or breathe once that afternoon if at all. it was a phenomenon of word of mouth for most of the country as most of the country has no electronic outlets at all and yet sold this album like air

emm.............oracle could u just say what u said in a more "Simpler" way lol

thanks you

that was simply.

but in even shorter form.. america didnt have this promotion people think they did. your prime outlets are 3 cities for electronic music, NYC and Miami on the east coast, and LA on the west.. that's nearly 3000 miles of area not even 1/4 covered in that type of music that people fell into very rapidly without a single tv advertisement before during or after the album came out, luck finding a radio station to play them, and the moot chance of mtv playing them during their heavy rotation of nas, master p, the spice girls, jewel, and so on... prodigy were played maybe once or twice a day on mtv if you were lucky and still managed to break through everyone in sales. that's when you know you have a great record, when people dont even know about you and go buy it without ever even seeing your face or hearing you on a radio station. when your friends are raving about the album and you go buy it and love it, that's a miracle and it happened here

Totally agree with this. Liam made a decision with AONO that its going to be a solo album. Upon that decision, it was inevitable that the image is going to suffer for it. Liam's own lack of integrity has actually led him up to this. He kept delaying the album until he got pressured by XL to finally make the fucking album and then, of course, it seemed rushed. Somebody should tweak the shit out of AONO and finish the god damn album propperly. That fucking mutilation of the album version of You'll Be Under My Wheels is a disgrace. The other version is miles better, IMO and suits AONO much much better. Im not getting into the other tracks, its pointless.

But hey, would you fucking care after you've revolutionized an entire industry 3 fucking times in a row? Well, maybe I wouldnt. Maybe I would just chill like Liam does and just put tunes out there for the sake of it. However, he did prove on AONO he's still got it in him to write a couple of kick ass tracks so Im very very interested in this upcoming album.

Either way, they're a band again, they've been kicking serious live ass for years now, sort of back on track, they've certainly got peoples attention again and judging by the crowd response at their gigs, they are far from forgotten. People fucking love them. They have a huge story behind them and everyone will remember them for it.

They never really revolutionized anything though, despite how much I love them they really didn't. They entered the rave a few years after it started, their sound was different but what they were doing was being done by other people at the same time as well. The thing that made them stand out was their live show and personal sound.

Every step of the way their have been others there with them. By the Jilted era you had chems, moby taking a change in sound, and the list goes on. fotl you had omar santana, chems, fatboy slim, crystal method, etc, etc, etc.. there was too little time for prodigy to have actually revolutionized these eras and have the other artists have releases right along the same time as prodigy as well. let's not forget leftfield who's album was rated far over jilted, and they were around long before prodigy. i think revolutionize is a loose term anymore. when elvis started his thing that was revolutionary but you'll hear about other artists doing the same thing and that he overshadowed them and they werent recognized for doing the same thing at the same time.

The only thing I'd give prodigy is they were great at what they did, and they were able to stand out in terms of their own sound. but i'd never say they paved the way every album release and turn of the scene, but they definitely topped it off with alot of the other greats in each era though definitely!

What made me love them the most out of all the others wasnt their live show or their peronal sound, it was just their music in general. i had tended to like more of prodigy's stuff than the other acts.

I havent really noticed music-wise or production-wise anyone that would be up to par with them from the same genre, relatively speaking and I've been searching for an equivalent ever since Experience. Fatboys Better Living Through Chemistry was a laugh when compared with Experience and especially MFTJG, for instance. Chems debut Exit Planet Dust was an entirely different thing and not as nearly well thought out, produced or layered as any Prodigy album. The Chems even proclaimed Liam a genius in interview for NY Rock in 1999, I believe.

Then we come to FOTL, which even today pisses all over the music scene. Its been 10 years, and any of those tunes could still rock in a club. The only Chems album, and I quote, "that had balls the size of Jupiter" was Dig Your Own Hole. Now there's an album which comes close to Prodigy's production and can even be compared. The rumbling beats, wicked basslines, the innovation of sound...etc, the fucking Setting Sun, which is probably one of my most favourite tracks of all time.

Fatboy's "You've Come a Long Way, Baby" is the product of the entire big beat scene that was going on at the time and it worked but it had this kind of "hill-billy" ring to it, it wasnt serious enough to be considered a masterpiece like Prodigy's albums. Dont even get me started on Crystal Method who, after Vegas, havent done anything remotely noticeable. I dont really blame the Prodge for not being groundbreaking anymore, I just fucking hate the fact there's nobody to replace them.

They were replaced years ago, but of course like your posts and mine they are all opinion. From my end there have been bands right along with Prodigy in production and what not... Today Prodigy is the biggest little fish in the game. In my opinion more than a dozen acts have constantly replaced prodigy in their own way. Some alot more than others.

I'm not saying they ever got the kind of promotion Spice Girls and other mainstream pop artists got, but they did have a lot of promotion in comparison to AONO (which is what we were originally talking about). You just said yourself they were played on MTV maybe 1-2 times a day. Well compared to AONO with ZERO plays a day... probably ever in fact... that is massive promotion. You're also forgetting all the radio play, compilation albums, magazine articles, etc. that were out at the time.

Here is one example of a compilation album Big Shiny Tunes 2 which I bought back in '97 b/c it had Prodigy and Chemical Brothers plus a few other songs I liked at the time.


They were featured on the front of major mass distribution magazines such as Rolling Stone & Spin (both which I still have to this day)


"video and radio play are based on population interests (what the people want)"
Now I know you can't really mean that. Video and radio airplay based on what the people want? lol. That's like saying what goes on in Congress is the "will of the people". Video and radio airplay is heavily influenced by major corporations, A&R personel, content regulations, and tons of other factors including illegal payola agreements.

TV stations, magazines, reviewers, etc. are also very jealous people and like to slant things if they slighted. A year or two ago on MuchMusic's (Canada's version of MTV) "One Hit Wonders" show they listed Prodigy on their Top 50 all-time One Hit Wonders. Coincidentally they showed footage of the boys dissing their station in an old interview from '97. It's amazing that so many years later stations still remember things like this and try to jab back at them.

Another example, two days ago I went to the Daft Punk concert here in Toronto. There are two competing weekly entertainment magazines in Toronto; Eye Weekly and Now Magazine. Eye Weekly got an interview with them and gave them huge promotion by having them on the front page of this weeks paper, and writing a long article about them. http://www.eyeweekly.com/eye/issue/issu ... eature.php

Not surprisingly, rival magazine Now (who didn't get an interview) try to dismiss the show and only give it a two sentence blurb in their paper: "Does anyone still care about French house bon vivants Daft Punk? Guess we'll find out when they try to draw people to cavernous outpost Arrow Hall - right near the airport, for those of you flying in from Belgium."
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2007-0 ... ickets.php

FOTL was a freak album in terms of sales. Had it came out a year earlier or a year later, maybe it would have been just average. Nothing was ever going to recreate it. As I said, they had the right image, and were in the right place at the right time, but in comparison FOTL had absolutely massive promotion compared to AONO.

I'll give you it got more play than AONO but it isn't just that way for no reason. Considering the girls video was rubbish and spitfire's video was too far off by that time to save aono in the states there wasnt much chance for it. you gotta come in with a bang.

the much music is in canada. we didnt even get much music on tv until after 2000 and we no longer have it anymore. 2 mag issues are hardly enough to promote them i think both of those were out after the fact the album had already went number 1 here. i know the spin one was, i bought that one personally.

i do mean what i said about video and radio play being based on what people want. it operates partially on labels calling up stations for play time but alot comes from requests and votes from the people. a large percentage of whats on the radio comes from requests, when people request what stations are being asked by labels to play it works in unison.

congress however isn't the will of the people, whoever said that was way off... congress operates in place of us not by us. there's over 300 million people here, there's no way you can operate for the will of the people. congress is hardly the music industry. there's alot of back deal crap to radio play sure but it all comes down to the label itself not it's individual sectors. if maverick called a radio station and told them to play more prodigy and they'd give them certain benefits, you wouldn't have the a&r, president, and all other factions doing the same. it's one entity. but like i said, it's not as heavy as you'd think. requests and the dj's personal preference are equal parts in there as well. i'd split it into 1/3's between the 3 really.

i wouldn't say much music was wrong, and it's not really revenge if prodigy haven't had more than a hit or two in canada. i mean really how many hits have prodigy had in canada honestly? did they hit big in the jilted era? how about the aono era? or the experience era? maybe they could be called one album wonders. we as fans may not like that because we know they are so much more than that. but in truth you can't slight a company for what's truth in their country. prodigy are a 2 hit wonder in america, if you want to try and consider smack my bitch up you could maybe say 3 hits but i dont think it did as well due to the womens rights thing all over the media outlets alerting parents to stop their children from listening to the music and stores to pull the record and single in america. (also i should note when i say america i mean the states)

prodigy have dissed alot of media outlets and those outlets havent always had bad things to say about the band. it's not that corrupt of a world lol the whole corporate control, revenge schemes in the media to hurt them is a bit much lol

even michael jackson makes massive sales and he's slandered all the time

comparing who got an interview and who didn't doesnt make a difference. i've seen interviews where both people saw the band and interviewed the band and still went back and said opposite things. it's just opinion, it doesn't always have to be deeper than that really lol the whole do this or i bash you or whatever just seems to extreme. you would think they would still publish something good about the band if they truely liked the show

there are people in alot of forums that constantly rant about daft punk, i seriously doubt the band wronged them all. it just can't be that extreme all the time.

i think aono wasn't worth the effort of word of mouth or corporate back deals for promotion and that's why it didnt do so well. people can't just blame media outlets and labels if they're not feeling it. hell even the fans are 50/50 on the album that says enough. when half the fans aren't feeling it, it cant just be a promotional failure.

but anyways, i'm willing to agree to disagree with you and chemical cos i'm cool with you both and this is just a useless banter lol

Sh-t, it really goes to a book You wrote longer and longer chapters

By the way I also have to tell about this "fan" thing. When I became to know Prodigy well enough (I mean I had every main tracks from them) then I was really a fan. I was adoring them on a teenager's way, cos I was a teenager then. And I clearly told to every of my pals that I do not listen anything else. I don't know why was I so "closed" but I used to think that Prodigy is the only MUSIC, all the other artists are just SOUNDS. So I never really went to parties cos there I couldn't listen only prodigy. Once my friends talked with my head thru hours to invite me to a party which was in our skool. So then I said okay. The DJ was cool, he allowed people to ask music. So my first thing was to run to the DJ and asked No Good. I danced to it, and then I left the party and went home When I was 14 years old I realized that I should listen some other music too, shouldn't I? So I became to know psychedelic trance and I still love that. Realized that a lot of prodigy tracks have a kinda goa basic, y'know. That's why a lot of goa artists made remixes from kinda tracks like Voodoo People, SMBU, Firestarter, ALSO Out Of Space!!! Then I became to like DnB too, there are also very good dnb mixes of prodigy tracks.
But when I was 17 I still said that every Prodigy track is cool and better than any other track on earth.
Nowadays I say, Prodigy is one the best artists on earth, they were really successful back in 96-97. I was disappointed in AONO, also in Their Law collection. (I'd pleasury write down the reasons, but I guess it's not the correct topic for it) And nowadays I say that for example Charly (Trip into dnb version) is a sh-t, I don't like that, so I don't say anymore that every prodigy track is a best art. But I still love them and if you ask the top10 music from me, prodigy is still Nr1.

94,after a friend of mine gave me the VHS with Prodigy's videos