I’m currently writing a long blog post about how and why I ended up in America which got me thinking about the music that reminds me of living in Florida in the 90s.
During that decade electronic music was constantly hyped as the next big thing in the States, but I think it struggled to break through because the natives — at least outside the big cities in “real” America — didn’t think music was proper unless it involved a guy with a guitar. So every bloody bar I went to back then you heard Hootie & The Blowfish, Garth Brooks, and The Spin Doctors.
But one strand of electronica that did make some inroads commercially was so-called Big Beat. The thumping breakbeat sound of The Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, and Fatboy Slim did well probably because it sounded like the electronic version of rocking Jock Jams. The genre even produced American stars in duo The Crystal Method whose 1996 debut album Vegas went platinum.
A lot of EDM purists sneered at Big Beat for being too predictable and commercial, but it did break down some of the prejudices against electronic music in the States and you’d have to be a sad case to deny the euphoric rush of a record like this.
Download: Comin’ Back (The Light’s Southern Grit Mix) – The Crystal Method (mp3)