Fun Loving Criminals: like Bush in reverse?!?!

E.g., some University of Chicago activities group just managed to book Stereolab for a show here. The music writers for the campus paper get all excited; the front page writers say they've booked an "obscure avant-garde rock band" called Stereolab.

Stereolab are indeed an obscure avant-garde rock band (Merritt calls them a rock band, come to think of it, in the as-yet non-existent PAPERCUTS 5) - which I intend as no kind of criticism.

I don't like its application by non-music people to music, though. For example, I am not a philosopher of science, so Imre Lakatos is somewhat "obscure" to me. But I don't think I'd ever call him "obscure," because he's not "obscure" in his field. Similarly, President Obasanjo of Nigeria is an "obscure" world leader to most U.S. residents, but we'd never call him "obscure," because he's obviously not "obscure" in the limited Nigerian-statesman sense.

Thus, while Stereolab are "obscure" in terms of the total population of Americans or University of Chicago students who know anything about them, I don't think it's fair to call them an "obscure" band, in that people who actually follow music are more than aware of them.

I say this all to tie into my big complaint lately, which is that so many people refuse to acknowledge that music can be a sort of specialist hobby. For instance, people are usually willing to admit that if they don't, say, collect stamps, then a stamp collector is going to be much more of an authority on stamp collecting than they are. But people who buy 2 records a year a don't even listen to them frequently like to think that their opinion on musical issues is just as informed and authoritative as that of someone who actually listens to music. (I'll agree that it's equally valid, in that it's a subjective aethetic judgement and all, but please. Who would get into a big stamp argument with a stamp collector?)

I'm just noting that you'll rarely hear anyone say, "I don't really know much about music," which I find interesting. For example, people will actually go pay money to take classes to learn how to "appreciate" wine -- which is a perfectly reasonable way to go about learning what's what in the wine world. But you never see people doing this with music (apart from classical) -- the fact that it's considered "pop culture" sometimes leads to the erroneous assumption that there's no scale of knowledge or "acquired taste" or whatever other complexities we assign to "high art."

Does that maybe make more sense? I dunno, I feel like I might be expressing this poorly.

I.e., calling Stereolab an "obscure" band is like calling Sophocles an "obscure" tragedian. Like, yes -- he's obscure in the very general sense of not everyone knowing his work, but so far as tragedians go, he's pretty damn huge.

(a) I suppose this is in part a defense of snobbery, but I do think some folks are more "qualified" to talk about music (not pop specifically, but music in general) than others. We all experience politics, for instance, and yet a discussion on Nightline is going to consist of "qualified" experts/insiders and not people off of the street. (Similarly, Tom gets to talk about Bowie on the radio, not me.) That's not to say that the opinions of "experts" are necessarily more right than the opinions of laymen, only that there is a different and usually broader perspective to them. My comments are only meant to point out that that difference isn't as recognized with music as it is with more specialized hobbies and interests. (Same for politics, actually.)

(b) Stereolab can only be considered "obscure" if you consider like 98% of the bands in existence "obscure" -- which seems to defeat the purpose of the word "obscure." This is what I mean about specialization -- Stereolab may be obscure as a phenomenon, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who actually followed music as a specific interest who hadn't heard quite a bit about them. I mean, if Stereolab is "obscure," what the fuck is Muslimgauze or something? I think my complaint is that they're completely unobscure within their field -- and judging them on some other basis seems suspect, like saying Smirnoff was an "obscure" vodka just because a bunch of teetotalers hadn't heard of it.

I saw them recently at Wolverhampton Civic Hall and were pretty damn cool. As far as I'm concerned, if they are not so popular in the States then they are less likely to play at large venues. When bands get too famous you have to go to some huge stadium to see them play - and you might as well just stay at home and watch them on the telly for all that you can see of them.

Nope - obscure rock band is ok by me!

As far as I know, they don't play here at *all*. They might as well just emigrate.

I think they have more "best-ofs" on the market here than actual albums, though, already.

what about now?

"WAAHAHAHAHARGL I'M GOING TO F$£% MY SISTER!!!!!!!!! WARARGGAGGLLLGL!!!!!!! I'M GONNA BREAK YOU IN THE FACE!!!!!!! WHAARARARALRLLGLL!!! etc"!!!!!!!

It took me a couple posts to realize that this wasn't about the band that did "She Drives Me Crazy". I've never knowingly heard FLC.

(Was Bush really similarly obscure in the UK?? I kind of imagined that at the least coverage in Spin and Rolling Stone would ensure a certain level of name recognition even in the UK?)

Got free tickets to see these last night in a tiny venue in Cardiff. Well, I say 'these' but there's only one original member left (the keyboard player) and two-thirds of the band are now British. It was not good.

Tomás Doncker had some serious guitar chops in the support band though.

i think the other version of this band is now the option where you get to hear how huey is from new york over and over again.
i.e. this band have done a ub40.

Huey lives in Bath (and before that Frome) so he's big news around here. I'm the only person in my immediate family who hasn't ended up seeing him (or his version of FLC when still active) at some point.

blimey i had no idea we were neighbours ..

(not a joke .. )

Oh wow!

Huey only left four years ago, and is currently touring An Intimate Evening With Huey Morgan (The Fun Lovin’ Criminal), or In Conversation book-tie-in dates, which seems more than fair trades-practices wise

true.
however, pretty sure he does festival appearances as "huey from flc" etc ..

https://www.nme.com/news/huey-morgan-announces-the-fun-lovin-criminal-2025-uk-tour-3828880

and no, i am not a fan boy at all.
tis just an interesting story a la the chaos re ub40.

never been into the music and huey seems like a monumental prick, see fir example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vYsAgWyEwA

and also there are often terrible stories about him being a sleazebag in popbitch.

however I have to admit that he plays some good music on his 6music show, it's on as I drop my son off at drama and I always plan to turn it off and don't because he's playing something brilliant

He's all smiles on his earlier appearances on Buzzcocks, the first in particular it feels like he's taken aback by how much fun he's having iirc (presumably having not seen it before). Ah well.

The Glastonbury 99 video of "Scooby Snacks" fills me with joy. Never heard an album tho, and don't really feel the need rn.

i can think of better things to do with my time than critically reappraise the works of Fun Lovin’ Criminals.

funny, I hadn't thought about FLCs in a while, but then Whiney mentioned them in the Soul Coughing thread as an example of '90s "funky white boy music," which then reminded me of how they were (are??) weirdly big in the UK.

Two first albums are generally good fun and sound great, if you can tolerate the juvenile schtick

Big Night Out is a real jam

I remember him on the Robert Elms show droning on about Johnny Cash and how music used to be REBELLIOUS and now it's all Justin Bieber. Elms failed to point out that, if Bieber was pissing off two wealthy middle aged men like themselves, surely that was as much of a rebellion as anything.

He was on the Sky revival of the Jo Whiley show in about 2011, when one item was on the recent success of UK rap via grime pop. Using his Bronx background as self-validation he slagged it all off (apart from Plan B) for missing the point of hip hop - he got lots of pushback but ig there was something in watching the unctuous BBC Music front under attack from one of its own.

watched the mug smashing vid several times, man, amazed glass shards didn't wind up in anybody's eye.

not quite Billy Joel in Moscow tantrum but

Til this band that I will never listen to (at the very least, yes, because of the name) was American. I just assumed they were British.

This reported altercation with Underworld's Karl Hyde always makes me smile:

 ...to the American band Fun Lovin’ Criminals taking a cheap shot at Hyde, over Republica singer Saffron, of Nigerian-British-Chinese-Portuguese descent — and who was also once the front-woman of early rave sensation, N-Joi — the eras, styles and worlds of musical superstardom flashed and collided with the authentic and the super adept…

“As the band left the stage, Huey swung a punch at Karl — but missed,” reported the New Musical Express. In a comic scene, the rag described how FLC’s frontman Huey Morgan, Brian “Fast” Leiser, Deejay Punk-Roc and their bodyguard got the short end of the stick. The band best known for the hit ‘Scooby Snacks’ were no match for the techno legends; an eyewitness claimed the “bouncer was really embarrassed, he’s a British bloke who weighs about 17 stone, and was there to help out if it all got a bit much for Fast. Thing is, Karl Hyde is only about 5ft. 5ins.

Did I know they were Americans before just now? I think I assumed they were Dutch or Belgian or something.

what the hell who has beef with Underworld for god’s sake

Maybe the Fun Lovin' Criminal had had too much lager lager, lager, lager.

Seems like it was a boyfriend's bandmate vs ex-boyfriend thing.

https://www.nme.com/news/music/underworld-47-1397755

Karl Hyde used to go out with Saffron !?!? Idk how I ever missed that

They call me mellow yellow

This prompted me to think about the band for the first time in about twenty-five years. I remember that everybody circa 1996 seemed to have a copy of Come Find Yourself, or at the very least I remember seeing the album cover all over the place. And I can remember "Scooby Snacks", which is a reminder of a time when anything even tangentially related to Quentin Tarantino was commercial gold. Q-Tips were hugely popular back then because there was a rumour that they had been written by - but not directed by - Quentin Tarantino.

Surprisingly "Snacks" only got to #12 in the UK, but it was released twice and played a lot on the radio. I am also surprised to learn that (a) their second album actually charted higher than the debut in the UK (b) their third album, released in 2001, also charted higher (c) and as the thread points out they were commercial bum slops in the United States.

Who cared about Fun Loving Criminals in 2001? Seemingly quite a lot of British people. At the time they struck me as The Beastie Boys without the quirks or the artistry or the tunes. Or Cypress Hill but with all the edges taken off. Urge Overkill but less smug. A kind of watered-down facsimile of the Quentin Tarantino vibe. Back then I would have probably written "they're a watered-down facsimile of the Quentin Tarantino vibe" and felt really pleased with myself. Shit, cat, them's-a good words.

That's presumably why they didn't sell records in the United States. They were exotic in the UK because they were from New York, but in the United States New York isn't exotic because it's already in the United States which is where it is.

A couple of their later hits were ad-propelled, including "Loco" which is fake Santana and one I quite like (at least in Now 48 context (where it follows "Piano Loco")).