Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned

The Prodigy have a new album out. Living in the rockin’ and ragin’ hip city that is Xiamen, I didn’t know about it until I looked at last week’s copy of 8 Days (the Shanghai one).

Neil’s response via SMS was: I want.

That’s that CD on my wishlist. I might as well add The Crystal Method and Apollo 440 to the list while I’m at it.

This, coming from the person who professes to be indifferent to dance music.

Neil is the one who loves electronica (or house, or whatever they’re calling the genre as a whole these days). His CD file includes many acts I’ve never heard of, who are supposedly very good (he also thinks Megadeath and David Lee Roth are very good, so there’s no accounting for taste, is there). I do not spend time in HMV’s Dance section unless I’m looking for Neil, who usually ends up with a stack of CDs to buy (’speculative purchases’ he calls them). Our tastes seldom coincide, but we both like The Prodigy.

As you can imagine, this makes a quiet evening at home sound something like, “Your taste in music sucks.” “This is just duk-duk music, it makes no sense.” “What is this crap you’re listening to?” “Bloody hell, you pick, you never like my CDs anyway.”

But anyway. Dance music. I know which acts I like. I buy their CDs. I bounce around the dance floor when they’re on, and if I’m very, very drunk, I fall on my arse and my coccyx hurts for several weeks afterward. And yes, this does happen in public. I exist only to entertain.

• 15 Dec 2004