My interest in this compilation is twofold: One, it collects some of the original source recordings of Norman Cook (better known as big-beat deejay Fatboy Slim), sampled for his own dance mixes, and two, one of those songs is an old Yvonne Elliman track I fondly remember. Fatboy Slim assembles
"A Break from the Norm"
a set of obscure,
golden sounds
Various artists (Restless)
Review by Gary C.W. Chun
gchun@starbulletin.comIt's from one of her lesser-known albums from 1973, "Food of Love," released a year after she starred as Mary Magdalene in "Jesus Christ Superstar" and turned a song from the musical, "I Don't Know How to Love Him," into a hit.
And she was a Roosevelt High grad. Elliman would go on to have another hit, "If I Can't Have You," from the mega-selling "Saturday Night Fever" disco soundtrack album, as well as do background vocal work in the studio and on tour with Eric Clapton.
I remember buying Elliman's album at Harry's Music Store when it first came out and thinking, "Geez, what an ugly cover!" It's been reissued since then on CD with a more fashionable photo of Elliman, but the original looked like a food product commercial shot, what with her decked out in an unflattering red blouse and red-and-black plaid jacket, sitting at a small table, holding up a large spoon of what looks like lime Jell-O!
In spite of the packaging, the music itself was at least decent, and there were two memorable tracks from "Food of Love." One was simply titled "Hawaii," her loving paean to her home state, memories colored by "acid sunsets" (well, it was the late '60s!). The other was her version of the Who classic "I Can't Explain," which included guest guitar work by the group's Pete Townshend.
That song's bracing introductory riff was sampled by Cook for his "Goin' out of My Head," putting a fresh spin on a tune I was more than happy to rehear in an unadulterated, CD-clear and remastered mix, my very own "oldie but goodie."
Songs on the compilation disc have dated very little. Those with a definite swingin'-'60s period feel, like Lulu's "Love Loves to Love Love," Leo Muller's Euro-rock of "The Acid Test," the heavy-duty U.K. jazz-rock of Colosseum's "The Kettle" and the big band, mod brashness of Keith Mansfield's "Young Scene" show how lively and experimental the music scene was back then and just ripe for Cook to pluck from for his sampling schemes.
Cook is representative of a deejay who knows how to find that right golden sound from hours of searching through obscure LPs in cluttered used-record stores. The foundation for his crossover hit, "The Rockerfella Skank," is from a thing called "Sliced Tomatoes" from the Just Brothers. Both it and the other song the "Skank" samples, the John Barry Seven's "Beat Girl," are on this compilation.
The one surprise standout song was originally from Bill Withers' 1973 "Live at Carnegie Hall" album. The soulful singer/songwriter, responsible for such deep classics as "Ain't No Sunshine," "Lean on Me," "Use Me" and "Grandma's Hands," checks in with his honeyed baritone on an anti-war number entitled "I Can't Write Left Handed." It's a melancholy, almost chantlike song that Cook used for the appropriately titled "Demons."
"A Break from the Norm" is one smartly sequenced compilation, much like one of Fatboy Slim's deejay club sets.
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