Fatboy Slim on Tour
Norman Cook may be approaching his 60s, but onstage, the DJ better known as Fatboy Slim is forever young. Like his signature smiley-face iconography, the Fatboy Slim live experience is an expression of pure, senseless joy. Flanked by video screens that display a rapid-fire succession of mashed-up pop-cultural imagery like a TV channel clicker with a stuck button, Cook is the consummate master of ceremonies, decked out in loud Hawaiian shirts and working up as much of a sweat behind the decks as the thousands of revelers dancing before him. No matter the time of year or location, a Fatboy Slim show is the ultimate beach party.
Fatboy Slim in Concert
Norman Cook wasn't the most obvious candidate to become the preeminent UK rave breakout star of the '90s — in the previous decade, the London native had served as bassist for indie-pop melody makers The Housemartins. However, like many Brits of his generation, Cook was drawn to the dance floor in the late '80s, making his initial forays into club music with the dubby hip-hop soul crew Beats International. After cycling through a number of other dance-oriented projects (Freak Power, Pizzaman, Mighty Dub Katz), Cook rebranded himself as Fatboy Slim in 1996, fusing his loves of '60s go-go music, hip-hop breaks, rock ‘n' roll crunch and acid-house freakiness into the adrenalized, earthquaking sound that became known as big beat. Alongside peers like The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim was among the wave of Brits that brought electronica crashing onto American shores in the late '90s, thanks to era-defining jams like the surf-tinged rave-up "The Rockafeller Skank" and the gospel-blessed "Praise You" (whose DIY Spike Jonze–directed video was inescapable on MTV in 1999). Following 2000's Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars — which earned a Best Music Video Grammy for the wild, Christopher Walken–starring clip for "Weapon of Choice" — Fatboy Slim's output has turned more sporadic. But Cook has stayed in the spotlight through collaborations with David Byrne (as The Brighton Port Authority) and various one-off singles, and he's remained a fixture on festival stages with his reliably bonkers live spectacle.
