October 10, 1998

Radio 1 Sound City / Newcastle Riverside

He grooves on pointedly anti-intellectual postmodernism, rummaging through bargain bins, cutting and pasting snippets of sound like a diabolical vinyl Doctor Frankenstein...

The funk soul brother has a grin a mile wide and a record collection the size of Amsterdam. He is many men - erstwhile Housemartin, remix whiz, DJ in demand, Freakpower conspirator - but tonight, Norman Cook is ruling the airwaves as Fatboy Slim, balding maestro of big beat, and the joint is jumping like the floor is studded with cattle prods. "Fatboy Slim is fucking in heaven", announce disembodied voices as his hands flicker over the decks. "...Fucking in" - scratch scratch - "Fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking..." The room is throbbing with interminable expletives. Fatboy Slim has made his point.

This is, aptly, the Slim-fest that Zok Ball will shortly - to the censure of her BBC bosses - describe on air as "fucking cool", and for the first 15 minutes her gushing praise isn't far from the truth. Cook takes to the decks like a man possessed - kicking straight in with 'The Rockafeller Skank' before pumping up the Beastie Boys' 'Body Movin'' with a goofy elastic boing-boing beat. Proof, if it were needed, that the man is a Midas, effortlessly injecting everything he touches with that Fatboy feel-good vibe.

He grooves on pointedly anti-intellectual postmodernism, rummaging through bargain bins, cutting and pasting snippets of sound like a diabolical vinyl Doctor Frankenstein. Often he seems to have no design, tethering Air's 'Kelly Watch The Stars' to '70s funk, or reanimating The Rolling Stones' 'Satisfaction' by grafting it on to a chunky big-beat beat. This is sonic collage as Pop Art - flippant, populist, superficial - and it is exhaustingly enjoyable. But it can only go so far, and once the hits - and the novelty - run out, everything melds into an empty-headed haze.

Cook's movements spell this out with graceful, if unintentional, clarity. When he's not hunkered down over the decks in attempts to appear as though he's really mixing like a madman, he surveys the pulsating crowd and points to the ceiling. Then he points to the floor. Then he points to the ceiling again. His is not a particularly expressive medium, and there's only so much that he, as master of ceremonies bound to stage and headphones, can do. So he just grins some more, letting the rhythm crowd thoughts out of his head.

Thinking isn't the point, feeling is. And if it's where inspired lunacy mingles with the thumpingly mundane, Fatboy Slim - and every sweat-soaked soul in the venue - is fucking in heaven. Heaven, after all, is a place on earth.