Tag Archives: i think we’re gonna need a bigger boat

#1389: The BPA ft. David Byrne & Dizzee Rascal – Toe Jam

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So, Norman Cook, AKA Fatboy Slim. He hasn’t released an official studio album for some time. Doesn’t look like he’ll be releasing another one any time soon. I feel like he’s always touring or doing a show somewhere, though. And the royalty checks from commercial use of his songs must be endless. He’s probably doing just fine. Officially, it’s in the books that Fatboy Slim’s final album is Palookaville in 2004. If anything, it’s really I Think We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat from 2009, but because it wasn’t released under the Fatboy Slim name it doesn’t get counted. Co-producing the album with his mate Simon Thornton, who I feel is the distinguishing factor that separates it from a sole ‘Fatboy Slim’ record, Cook predominantly collaborates with a selection of mid-2000s independent artists that I’m thinking he must have simply admired and wanted to work with, releasing the results under the alias of ‘The Brighton Port Authority’, or ‘The BPA’ for short.

But there are a couple of collaborations with absolute legends of the game. The first track is a cover of ‘He’s Frank’ by the Monochrome Set, with Iggy Pop on vocals, and near the album’s end comes ‘Toe Jam’. You see who it features in the blog’s title. The track is how I came to know of the whole BPA project. The music video for it played on MTV2, I think on a show of Gonzo – Zane Lowe hosted this long before he got all big and started working for Apple – and it was one that certainly got me interested in more ways than one, back when I was 13 years old. There is no uncensored version of it. At least, not publicly released. But the placement of the censor bars is the whole point of its concept. It’s censorship that makes sense, and it leads to comical results. Seems to me like it was probably a David Byrne / Fatboy Slim collaboration initially, with Dizzee Rascal being asked to write a verse for it some way down the line. However it came to be, it’s a bop and then some.

First of all, gotta appreciate the double-meaning in the title. The shit that collects in between your toes if you don’t clean there, that’s usually referred to as ‘toe jam’. “In between my toes” is a phrase sung at various points. But then, the whole song is a jam about toes. It’s clever. Byrne mixes the real with the nonsensical throughout the track, singing about walking down a road and talking into a tape recorder and a girl galloping in his toe spaces. He inserts his standard vocal hiccups along the way. Dizzee Rascal comes in with a verse about a successful pull on a night out. The theme that both guests however share in their sections is the power of dancing and the enjoyment that comes out of it. That’s what the entire track comes to when getting to the point. I’ve also got to shout-out the line, “Every day is fuckin’ perfect, it’s a paradise”. I think whoever’s point of view it’s meant to be taken from really believes the sentiment, but it’s a great one to use in a sarcastic manner too. I’m all about that kind of stuff.

#1232: The BPA ft. Olly Hite – So It Goes

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It’s been a while since Norman Cook, mostly known to you and me as Fatboy Slim, released an album. The producer’s fourth LP Palookaville was released back in 2004, and that’s still his most recent one to this day. Under the Fatboy Slim name that is. What I don’t think a lot of people know is that in 2008, he and good friend Simon Thorton got together, recruited a number of artists and musicians and made an album with ’em entitled I Think We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat, under the moniker of ‘The Brighton Port Authority’. The BPA for short. But to make the whole affair a little more interesting, the story was invented that the album was actually a compilation of recordings made in the ’70s that had been long-lost until they were found in a box next to a warehouse that was in development. Quite funny when you realise most of the guests on there probably weren’t born until a decade after.

…Bigger Boat is bookended by two covers. As it begins with Iggy Pop singing The Monochrome Set’s ‘He’s Frank’, it goes on to end with ‘So It Goes’, a take on the Nick Lowe original, sung by Olly Hite. While that Lowe original contains more of a rollicking, swinging ’70s power pop feel, the ‘So It Goes’ by the BPA and Olly Hite goes for the warm and intimate approach, similar to that you’d find in an NPR Tiny Desk concert or something. Hite sings alongside a tastefully played Rhodes piano that mirrors the chord progression of Lowe’s guitar in the original. The idea that it’s being performed live is reinforced by the cheering, handclaps and adlibbing by various people in the background, who then go on to applaud Hite as he sings the final words and steps away from the microphone. Other Norman Cook/Simon Thornton production tricks occur throughout, but not so much that they get in the way of the bittersweet end-of-the-night, time-to-go-home mood the track gives out.

According to Lowe, the song isn’t about anything much and is just a bunch of interesting words strung together, though was influenced by Thin Lizzy’s ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’. Though if you want to try and get something out of it, the three verses respectively describe scenes at a music show, a political meeting in the Twin Towers, and I think the embrace between a couple of some kind. With the chorus stating “And so it goes, but where it’s going no one knows”, maybe the whole track’s a comment on how these things happen in life, life goes on until you die, and what happens after death is anyone’s guess. Whereas the original fades out on the lyric, here Hite turns the words from “no one knows” to “I don’t know”, switching the perspective around to leave the album on a sweet, personal note. It looks more and more unlikely that Norman Cook will make another album again. But if this were to “his” last song… for the time being, I wouldn’t be too mad at it.

My iPod #496: The BPA ft. Iggy Pop – He’s Frank (Slight Return)

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The BPA (aka The Brighton Port Authority) was a little short-lived side project carried out by DJ Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim). The only album to date released under it entitled I Think We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat came out in 2009, and features a wealth of appearances from guests vocalists ranging from Talking Heads man David Byrne and grime MC Dizzee Rascal, to relatively unknowns like Cagedbaby and Olly Hite.

Starting the album off is a cover of the song “He’s Frank” by British post-punk band The Monochrome Set and singing it is no other than the ever charismatic Iggy Pop. He performs quite the subdued vocal take here bar a scream and a few wordless improvisations during the instrumental break, but in context of the whole album and the listening experience it is a decent way to get things rolling. Very enjoyable, at least to me anyway.

The music video features a frightening life-size puppet of Mr. Pop, which then proceeds to physically assault the puppeteers controlling it. It’s strange. But it’s there if you want to see it.