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The Prodigy's Keith Flint Dies Aged 49


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Quite shocking when you think of his age but probably not so much given the lifestyle he led...

Firestarter was one of the tracks of the 90s. Then the other tracks that stand out like Smack My Bitch Up, Breathe, Omen. 

One of a kind of that genre to make it big.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47442312

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The Prodigy star Keith Flint has died aged 49.

Instantly recognisable for his fluorescent spiked hair and incendiary performances, the musician sang lead vocals on both the band's number one singles, Breathe and Firestarter.

He was found dead at his home in Dunmow, Essex, on Monday morning.

The band, who were due to tour the US in May, confirmed his death in a statement, remembering Flint as a "true pioneer, innovator and legend".

The Prodigy were the most successful band to emerge from the acid house scene of the late 1980s.

They met at an open-air rave in 1989; where Flint approached DJ Liam Howlett and asked him to make a mixtape for him.

Labelled Prodigy after Howlett's favourite synthesizer, the tape went down so well that Flint encouraged Howlett to pursue music professionally, offering up his services as a dancer.

Along with Leeroy Thornhill, they scored early hits with Everybody In The Place, Out Of Space and Charly - which sampled an old children's safety film: "Always tell your mummy before you go off somewhere."

Their music matured on their second album, Music For The Jilted Generation, which saw Howlett incorporate breakbeats, guitar loops and hip-hop samples on tracks like No Good (Start The Dance) and Voodoo People.

The album was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize - but the band truly went global when Flint grabbed the mic and unleashed the full fury of his voice on the abrasive, in-your-face Firestarter.

It knocked Take That's How Deep Is Your Love off the top of the charts in 1996, selling more than 600,000 copies in the UK alone.

Flint stepped up as a frontman, giving The Prodigy a demonic focal point for their intense live shows - notably at their headline show at Glastonbury in 1997.

The cause of his death is unknown.

In a statement, Essex police said: "We were called to concerns for the welfare of a man at an address in Brook Hill, North End, just after 8.10am on Monday, March 4.

"We attended and, sadly, a 49-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene. His next of kin have been informed.

"The death is not being treated as suspicious and a file will be prepared for the coroner."

 

RIP Keith.

 

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Read it and like Stan my first thought was "gosh hes so young" then read that he took his own life and for a guy that exuded so much energy its tragic what happened. 

I remember watching a video of them from Glastonbury (don't remember the year) and the performance was totally mental and as you'd expect from them performing something like Firestarter.

RIP

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Saw this comment on The Guardian today and I think this sums up The Prodigy in the late 90s.

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It's August 1996. Oasis have sold out Knebworth, and have made a seemingly incongruous decision to have Prodigy as their main support act. 150,000 lads and ladettes, all essaying the Liam Gallagher swagger, are standing around, expecting to be annoyed by these cartoonish rave lunatics that have gatecrashed their Britpop zenith and that are the only thing between them and their moment in the sunset. The Fat Of The Land is still ten months away from being released.

Smirking, Liam Howlett walks out onto the stage and up onto his riser, behind a bank of synths and laptops. His hair is a spiked up mess, the colour of the insides of a Crunchie. He's wearing a pair of camouflage shorts. The gigantic screens beam his face across the far flung fields as he stands there, sneering, smirking. There is a discontented "how long til Oasis?" type chuntering in the massed crowds. What's he smirking at? What does he know that we don't? How long will this go on for?

He leans forward and down, crouching over a console. Presses a button. A strange Casio-style looped chopped bunch of notes stutters out of the speakers for about five seconds, followed by a flattened out non-bass bass note for another ten or so seconds. What's wrong? Are the speakers all underpowered? 
What's going on? Plenty of confused looks. Pretty much nobody in the crowd has ever heard this before, whatever "this" is. Still, Howlett smirks. because he knows what we don't know. He knows what's coming, and nothing will ever be the same again once it arrives.

Because these are the first few notes of "Smack My Bitch Up".

BLAM! The bass kicks in. Swirling, flailing, Flint, Thornhill and Maxim careen onto the stage.

150,000 lads and ladettes, in boot cut jeans and plaid shirts, all explode. They have no choice. They don't own their limbs or their bodies any more. They are the Prodigy's to do with as they will. Beer everywhere. Bodies everywhere. Mayhem.

For a generation - a generation half a step behind that Jilted Generation, life would never be the same again.

I was there. I'll never forget how it made me feel. That vicious hedonistic cocktail of fireballs and fury and pantomime lunacy was a perfect moment. Whatever possessed them to do it, to take that direction, it never would have happened if one of the four of them hadn't been there. Thornhill, all elastic limbs and Matrix style slow-mo dancing to full-tilt beats. Maxim, staring down the whole crowd, the intimidator, the hype man. Howlett, the wizard behind the curtain. And Flint, Satan's own glove puppet, sent to petrify every parent, every grandparent, every child, and half of the rest of us too.

We came, we played his game.

It felt life-changing to me that day. I think in some ways, it was.

Jump forward some 19 years on, to May 2015, I was able to take my younger step-son - an out and out rock and metal head - to see Prodigy at Birmingham's tiny O2 Academy as they warmed up for the arena tour that would follow later that year. Live, they remained every bit as vital, as visceral and as comic-book violent as they had been the first time. The torch had been passed to a new generation, and still it burned with all its original fury.

RIP Keith. And thanks for the memories.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/mar/04/keith-flint-the-prodigy-dance-culture#comment-126501336

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I always remember an old mate of mine who absolutely loved The Prodigy(he probably still does, I don't see much of him now due to him living in the midlands nowadays) and he'd stick it on at house parties after we came back from clubs at about 5/6am in the morning, still chewing our faces off on pils. This is fucking years ago now, but The Prodigy always bring back memories from then.

Tragic when someone takes their own life and especially when, as mentioned above, they had so much life in them and energy. R.I.P.

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18 hours ago, Cannabis said:

Made me feel old knowing that it's now over 10 years old. Used to bang that out of my iPod in school. 

I remember having the album "fat of the land" around the time I'd just started at secondary school, so think of me in terms of "feeling old" xD

 

 

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45 minutes ago, The Rebel CRS said:

I remember having the album "fat of the land" around the time I'd just started at secondary school, so think of me in terms of "feeling old" xD

One year left to go to college for me. Man that was so long ago. Over two decades now Jesus.

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15 minutes ago, Mel81x said:

One year left to go to college for me. Man that was so long ago. Over two decades now Jesus.

Classic album, but made even more of a classic years later when one of my old mates always used to stick it on at parties after nights out. It was great that album, so many top songs on it.

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9 hours ago, The Rebel CRS said:

Classic album, but made even more of a classic years later when one of my old mates always used to stick it on at parties after nights out. It was great that album, so many top songs on it.

My best memory of that album was a friend coming back after listening to it for a while and saying "you know what I think i'd like to try this on the drums" ... and then he went and did it and he said to me that if you just play it there's absolutely no enjoyment but if you let yourself go and hit it like its your last day on the planet you'll always enjoy it.

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