Sampladelic novelty hits and big-beat productions tossed aside,
Norman Cook has been an inveterate DJ, crate-digger, and music lover since the early '80s -- long before he picked up a bass to join
the Housemartins or first began joyfully plundering the music of the past for chart action in the present. His volume in the
LateNightTales series may not fully reflect the music sampled by his various projects --
Beats International,
Freak Power,
Pizzaman, and finally
Fatboy Slim -- but it definitely displays a rich knowledge of British music culture from the '60s and '70s. While '70s new wave and pub rock chestnuts begin the set (led by
Mink DeVille and
Nick Lowe),
Cook detours into roots reggae for four tracks and hits American soul/funk for a time before wrapping up with
Bootsy Collins' "Everything Is Everything" -- not a cover of the
Donny Hathaway classic but a poem written by
Paul Heaton (friend to
Cook from their days in
the Housemartins). Overall,
Cook digs pretty deep for this set. Even
Jonathan Richman's famous "Roadrunner" is heard here in an earlier version, and
Cook mastered all of these directly from his original vinyl (which somehow gives
Nick Lowe's familiar "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass" a surprising similarity to
Steve Miller Band). The only new track is naturally by
Fatboy Slim himself, a relatively faithful cover of
Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity" with vocals supplied by the woman from
Cook's favorite record shop.
–
John Bush, Rovi