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.