Is prodigy rock? Its more electcronic punkish, but some smarty linked to this topic to answer which your favorite band is...here I go...
"The Prodigy - 11 reasons for which you should like them..."
1. I've always been looking for something new and surprising in music. A lot of bands have made brilliant tracks, few of them - brilliant single albums (i.e. Santon Warriors, Kasabian or Kula Shaker) and a very few - several albums (Led Zeppelin 4, Pink Floyd 5, Black Sabbath 2 etc.). However, it hasn't happened, since the times of The Beatles, to any band that all the singles/albums were so excellent and completely different (every next album of The Prodigy seems to be recorded by a different group) what reflects on unprecedented development. Having been listening to their next tracks for 10 years, I feel I keep trace of an amazing story which noone knows where does it lead to.
2. Even the most brilliant bands (Radiohead, Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine) end with time, run out and begin to copy themselves (like Rolling Stones). The Prodigy always surprises, offers new, unusual, innovative and revolutionary music. If there is someone who things that "everything has been done" he'd better listen to The Prodigy. Innovation, concerning not only sound, arrangement but their entire career, is the main feature of their acts (gigs, videos, websites, photo sessions, promotion etc.)
3. I have always claimed that the most important things in music don't happen in a range of definied music genders, but on genders' style, when they connect, merge and mutually expand. The Prodigy acts on the edge of these genders and uses heavily and creatively what is the best and the most valuable from both club music (drum'n'bass, breakbeat, trance, rave etc.) and hip hop, industrial and rock. Even from heavy metal.
4. They're the first and only group in the world that comes from club music and plays regular concerts based on the rock ones. They often play on festivals where they are all the rage for the most radical, rock audience. I saw their shows, for example after Biohazard, Smashing Pumpkins or Oasis.
5. Their shows are distinguished by incredible dynamic of sound, which is achieved by the newest kinds of electronic instruments and amplification equipment. It isn't any sort of "playback". As long as rock groups play live the same music that can be heard on the albums, sound by sound, The Prodigy's music (that, I have seen or heard so far) has an open structure, exactly like in jazz music. It may last for 3 or 15 minutes, and hyperactive showmen behave more like freestyle MCs using mics, when they consider it to be necessary, rather than vocalists who have "somethng to sing about".
6. Thanks to these features, genius, stubbornness and determination, they've managed to break out of club music ghetto and to enter (as one of a few - Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers czy Massive Attack) the world mass culture on the same rules, on which act Metallica or Madonna. Although their music is still being played in clubs, their vidoes are presented in TV and songs are played on radio stations.
7. This global popularity didn't influence the change of very ambitious and noncommercial course of the band. They don't want to flatter mass authority. Their next singles are even more and more radical, raw and heavy.
8. It can be seen in visional approach towards videos. As long as the other artists treat this as the chance to reach the mass receiver, The Prodigy uses it as a separate artistic act. Those thangs, that are all illegal and most forbidden in commercial TV stations, were shown in 'Smack My ***** Up' video. Social taboo concerning nakedness, sex, alcohol, drugs, violence, commiting murders, drink-driving etc. has been broken. The band inentionally made a video, that won't be presented in order to force people to get it in their on ways and have in at homes. And it was success! Today it is one of the most famous vidoes of all times. The same move was repeated in case of 'Baby's Got A Temper' video.
9. The Prodigy has a sort of two different careers - singles career and albums one. As a band coming from club music, they pay incredible attention to the singles, which are not only "spin-offs" and a tool for promoting albums, but separate artisctic value. So far, they have released about 15 singles (depending on the way of counting). A few years ago there was released triple box with 12 singles on CD format, almost on every one there were 3 remixes, unreleased and live tracks*. It is something like seperate discography. 'Firestarter' was released over 1,5 year before 'The Fat Of The Land' so it's hard to say it was done in order to promote the album. Brillinat 'Baby's' Got A Temper' hasn't appeared on any album until the release of 'Their Law' compilation. The release of (so far) 4 albums it's a completely different story. There can be found tracks often better than the ones on EPs, better known and very often playd live, like 'Weather Experience', 'Funky ****' or 'Their Law'.
10. Everything that the band offers in their music, as well as that what is surrounded by, has cohesive, visual, non-verbal and ideological character. Albums' covers, pictures, videos, clothes, hairstyle, scenery and visuals on concerts perfectly fit to sound, atmosphere and character of their music. They are often compared to post-industrial anti-utopias, where plot is set after nuclear disaster like in movies 'Mad Max', 'Blade Runner', the latest 'Alien' or 'Matrix' as well as to cyber-punk literature, although Liam told me in an inetrview that he has never read 'Necromancer' by William Gibson.
11. Finally, the most amazing thing. Despite of their whole uncompromisingness, radicalism and innovation, everybody likes them !! They reconcile the most feuding fans of club music, they are respected by fans of hip hop (from which Liam nad Maxim started) and even by fans of pop and hardcore !! But I was impressed the most by my ex-supervisor /now there were given names of people and newspeprs, bla bla bla/, a comprehensively educated person who suddenly became a fan of The Prodigy, although before he had listened to Bach and Händl and generally baroque music, claiming that 'Mozart and Beethoven were horribly nosiy and modern !! '
There is something in this group.
I listen mostly to bands who sing a little bit so you know what the song is, then go on 30-minute instrumental journeys.
Then where's Pink Floyd in your list?
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