Tulsa World

“Rave New World” concert, featuring Prodigy, Moby, Cybersonik and F.U.S.E

• 25th January 1993
• Mark Brown

Event: “Rave New World” concert, featuring Prodigy, Moby, Cybersonik and F.U.S.E.
When: 8 p.m. Sunday
Where: Oculus, 1st Street and Detroit Avenue
Tickets: $15 in advance at Thing 1 and Mohawk Music; $18 at the door

It isn’t at all ironic or accidental that England’s biggest club band owes a lot of its success to a public service announcement.

“Charly,” the smash dance hit by Prodigy, is also the name of a fictitious character, a British Smokey the Bear, who took to the airwaves at random, educating children of the perils of talking to strangers and not doing homework.

One of Charly’s warnings was particularly catchy. “Charly says: “Always tell your mommy before you go outside.’ ” It was meant to halt a rash of child disappearances. Liam Howlett, songwriter of Prodigy, repeatedly sampled it onto a rhythm of bass lines and drum beats to create a rave anthem.

Dance club patrons who don’t know who Prodigy is know “Charly.” Howlett was heavily into hip-hop music until the racist attitude drove him from it. He was producing what he thought to be good dance music, and he didn’t like black people telling him that because he was white he couldn’t possibly be a hip-hop artist. “I’ve always been into music,” said Howlett from his hotel room in rain-soaked Los Angeles, “and spent most of the last three years going to raves. To me, the club scene has always been about music more than anything else. It’s the only part of it that remains so energetic. “I was working as a graphic designer when I bought my first keyboard and started writing hard techno and dance songs. To me, it’s about writing good songs and being respected for it, not whether I’m black or white or whatever.”

In 1991, Howlett released “What Evil Lurks?” at the height of the rave movement. Rave developed out of England’s acid-house scene of the late ’80s, when Ecstasy and techno music was the prevailing recreation of British youth.

Many bands have used the term to describe their music – Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, EMF – but rave has always had its own identity, and it was based more on fashion and good vibes than on any one style of music.

“I don’t like the word rave because it’s been watered down so much,” said Howlett. “More like … dance party. The important thing is loud sound. We use this incredibly large sound system – 50,000 watts in clubs really too small to handle it.

“The rave just feeds off this loud energy. When you can feel the building start to shake and see the lights bouncing off the crowd, dancing and sweating to these big bass lines, then that’s what gets us going. We’ve seen some moody, rowdy crowds in America and that’s not what rave is about.”

Prodigy blends music with a powerful stage show – complete with dancers, a disc jockey, and Intellabeam lights. Additional DJs and three more bands make up the “Rave New World”tour, including New York’s rave sensation, Moby, of “Go” and “Next Is the E” fame.

“Our shows are incredibly energetic,” said Howlett. “We’ve got two great dancers that give this sort of mad and theatrical style to the performance. More than anything, it’s all very spontaneous and dramatic. None of the dancing is choreographed.

Leeroy and Keith just go off with the buzz of the crowd, and that’s really what Prodigy is all about, being up there doing our own thing.”

Before British rave became MTV-speak, it had its devoted following of DJs, club owners and fans who hoarded the scene’s novelty. When Prodigy produced “Charly,” clubs and radio stations quickly made it a staple on their play lists.

Then a music magazine wrote a nasty piece on how the hit was destroying rave music by bridging it with other dance and pop music. The English media are noted for not trusting native bands that become successful, and Howlett discounted the story as just another stab.

“Prodigy is one of the few rave bands to survive the media hype in spite of our success. I couldn’t believe they wrote that interview to tell people that we killed rave with that song.

“Since that story, though, they’ve gotten hundreds of letters chastising them for giving us such a bad time. Everyone involved in the rave scene knows we’re not successful for commercial sake. What’s happened is that our following – which started in a very underground atmosphere – has just grown huge while remaining relatively underground.”

Underground status may be short-lived for Prodigy. Locally, Howlett’s songs are catching on like wildfire, getting heavy play in dance clubs and selling well in record stores.

“Dance music will survive as long as it captures the emotion of the dance floor,” said Howlett. “Technology keeps giving it new definition.

“The sampler has actually made techno music. Without it there wouldn’t be the music. It isn’t just about producing other sounds, it’s about going forward. You can take a song and do anything you want with it, and I’m not talking about borrowing other people’s stuff.

“Prodigy uses bits and pieces that are out there to do a song, but there’s much more to the final product than some strange background noise or voice. I like to think of our music as a combination of techno sounds, hip-hop beats and other happy elements.”

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