I woke up this morning to find that Keith Flint, vocalist and hype man for The Prodigy passed away. I’m in shock, since they were currently doing a U.S. tour. Flint was only 49. At the time of this writing, no word is released on how he died.
The 1990’s were an amazing time for electronic music. You had bands like Orbital, The Crystal Method, The Chemical Brothers, Fluke, Leftfield, Psykosonik, Juno Reactor and Underworld. MTV would air this show called “Amp”, sometimes right after their animated series, Liquid Television. Amp focused on electronic and techno music, but it was also a really random show. Most of the time, it was hard to find when it would air and if it did, it was somewhere around 2am. Unlike Mtv’s other musical related programming at the time, Amp didn’t always play the same videos in rotation. You had the potential of finding a really good song, but then not hearing that song ever again until maybe 2 or 3 shows later.
I’ll never forget the first time The Prodigy’s Firestarter aired, it was the strangest thing. Black and White, one long subway tunnel and Flint with this weird Wolverine like hairdo just head banging. Once the beat dropped, that was it. You had an instant hook that forced you to dance along with it. Flint’s energy fed the song and it just bounced back. He was a scary dude, hell, they all were.
Firestarter would go on to be part of the album Fat of the Land, which was immensely popular at the time. With songs like Breathe, Narayan, Funky Shit (used in the end credits of Event Horizon), Omen (used in the movie Kick Ass during Dave’s first in costume fight), One Love and Voodoo People (both used in 1995’s Hackers), it was hard not to find The Prodigy somewhere. They’re an amazing group.
With Keith’s passing, the day’s marked as an Incident. He’ll be missed.
