Category: Music

The last time I saw The Prodigy live was at Reading Festival 2002. It was a dream come true for me, in the sense that The Prodigy always give their best shows in the UK. Although I went crazy dancing and shouting during the concert (for a few seconds there I actually lost my breath and thought I was about to faint), it was still not Prodigy’s best. One reason is that in that festival performers get only one hour for their show, and a full live Prodigy show is longer than that.

The second reason is that it was a bad time for The Prodigy as a band – they were trying to do a comeback with material that was written in a very similar pattern to their previous album, so it wasn’t that ground-breaking as you’d expect from new Prodigy material. Luckily, later on Liam Howlett (Prodigy’s prodigy) realized what was happening, went back to the drawing board and brought back with him two years later the fourth album, AONO (Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned).

But don’t get me wrong – the show still rocked and the crowd went crazy, which only goes to show why The Prodigy are such a great band.

The Prodigy made a very cool video clip of the new remix of Voodoo People, a track from their second album, Music For The Jilted Generation. The remix sounds fresh and the video clip looks great. Anyway, I love it. To download, look for the word “Pendulum” at The Prodigy.nl.

Around 1992 there was a radio station in Israel called “Zahal 2”. It broadcasted, among other things, alternative music and at that time some electronic music. Trance music was not even defined as Trance music back then. Anyway, all electronic music was either categorized as “Techno” or “Rave”. Under both categories, The Prodigy’s Out Of Space and Charly were broadcasted. I used to really like those tracks, but in Israel you couldn’t (and in fact still can’t) buy any singles, so your options were either buying the album of the band, or a compilation of songs with the song you’re looking for in it.

Lacking any direction in music, I was a serial buyer of compilations. It doesn’t mean that I bought a lot of them – CDs were pretty expensive, and as a teenager I couldn’t afford as many as I wanted. One day my older brother, who really liked pop music and generally introduced me to the idea of listening to the radio, told me that I should buy an album of a band instead of a compilation and get some direction.

I pondered it a lot, went to the CD store a couple of times returning empty-handed. But one day I did it – I bought my first ever album of a band. It was The Prodigy Experience. I’m a big fan since. I doubt it that that was my brother’s intension.