Weekly Question 1! What made you a proper fan?

[WhiteNoise]

Starting a weekly series of candid questions. First time posters, visitors and lurkers are especially encouraged to post!

What moment made you think "The Chemical Brothers aren't just a cool band anymore, they're awesome, and I'm definitely a fan"? What turned you into a fan?

[Enjoyed]

Great idea WN! I actually want to write a book about how I got into loads of music. I have such vivid memories of particular moments when things clicked and made sense. Or when I heard particular musicians / albums for the first time.

For me and The Chemical Brothers...

It was Fatboy Slim Night on Channel 4 on a Friday back in 2001. I wasn't allowed to stay up to watch it, but my Dad taped the whole thing for me. So I watched it first thing the next day (probably after Live & Kicking) and just over half way through there was something called 'The Weekend Starts Here'. It was a programme documenting Norman and The Chems' live show at Red Rocks. It featured clips of Music: Response, Out of Control, TPPR, Under the Influence and, what blew my mind at the time, The Sunshine Underground. I didn't know what I was hearing. It was a bike bell. And drums. And percussion. And melodies? Swimming amongst something altogether un worldly. I played that particular clip over and over trying to get my head around what I was hearing and seeing (those late 90s/early 00s visuals were some of my favourite).

I came for the Fatboy, left with The Chemical Brothers.

I went to Sainsbury's after school the following week, because back then you could buy decent CDs in grocery stores, and I purchased Surrender (and Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub) following Fatboy Slim's play of Superstylin' earlier in the night). I was so ecstatic to hear that whatever it was I had heard the night before (I didn't know the track names) was featured on this beautiful CD.

I was going on a school trip to Normandy not long after I bought the album and I recorded Music: Response, Got Glint and TSU to a cassette tape that I played the whole time I was there.

From that point on I began gathering the older albums, mixes, collecting cd singles, and ultimately playing Chemical music to anyone who would listen.

[whirlygirl]

I was a casual fan at best back in the Chemical Brothers Exit Planet Dust and Dig Your Own Hole days. I enjoyed them, but was into other things. My husband and I were into the goth/industrial scene for a long time, and though it might seem striking or a bit odd, some of the clubs we frequented would play the Chemical Brothers. Like for example Song To The Siren, Setting Sun, Block Rockin Beats. In hindsight, it's easy to see how their music moved past certain musical circles and transgressed boundaries and I think that is why, so many years later, they have consistently held my interest when truth be told, some of my other favorite bands and I have parted ways in a sense.

Anyway, flash forward to early 1999. My son was not quite a year old and my life felt like a mess. I felt like a bad mom, a bad wife, was bad to myself, and I felt disconnected from the past and present. In other words, I was in a terrible state with depression. One day I was driving about and listening to the radio and my local station used to have this thing called Rock Blocks where they'd play three songs in a row by the same artist. On came the Chemical Brothers, and a warm wave of nostalgia took hold and for a wonderful, brief three moments, I felt some happiness that I hadn't felt in a long, long time. This was so long ago, I can't remember which three songs they played, but it triggered something.  It wasn't much longer after that and Surrender came out, and the rest is pretty much history.

[Goldmaster]

Interesting choice for me and that was the 2012 Olympics in London. there's a part where the athletes walk out round the stadium during the opening ceremony and there was this background music which sounded like dun dun dun dun dun dun chchch sound anyway. sometime latter I heard the exact song on radio 6 music which tuned out to be galvanise and then I brought the song on 7digtial and after listening to more of their music I thought this is all somewhat have been missing I've came too late to whiteness the birth of this.

[satur8]

Back in 96/97 I had a monthly DJ subscription for Alternative/Modern Rock CDs. Setting Sun appeared on one and caught my ear. Block Rockin' Beats appeared a few months later, prompting me to purchase Dig Your Own Hole and Exit Planet Dust almost immediately. Soon after I sought out the CD singles for both releases, as well as Loops of Fury.

The timing of this discovery was great for me. Although I had some DJ experience during the late 80s and early 90s, dance oriented music had become too stale and mainstream for me and I stopped seeking it out. However, the cross-over-yet-unique appeal of these tracks on these specific collections launched the next 20 years of my musical interests. (Of note, I don't believe either track appeared on my dancefloor editions of the same subscription service...ah, America.)

The Alternative/Modern Rock CDs also contained tracks from Fatboy Slim and Prodigy, and I soon sought out their work as well. After this, I also discovered several related artists such as Underworld and Orbital on MTV's Amp, a weekend/late night block dedicated to the 'electronica' genre (who remembers?). It blew up for me from there. But honestly, The Chemical Brothers have remained my main interest in electronic producers since day 1 of my journey.

[Fine Time]

I've  always  been  into  indie  &  alternative  music  since  my  teens  and  art  college  days  then  in  the  early  '90's  i  started  to  get  into  dance  &  electronic  music  as well.  I  think  i  must've  heard  and  become  aware  of  The  Chemical  Brothers  in  '94-'95  and  i  bought  Exit  Planet  Dust  on  cassette  tape  (yes ,  i'm  one  of  the older  forumites).  I  thought  it  was  such  a  cool  ,  brilliant  album.  It  was  just  the  kind  of  electronic  music  i  was  looking  for  , . .  dynamic  ,  alternative  beats  ,  with  enough  weirdness  going  on  for  it  not  to  become  too  familiar.  Dig  Your  Own  Hole  a  couple  of  years  later  totally  confirmed  for  me  i  was  a  Chems  fan  and  would  follow  them  for  as  long  as  they  were  around.  Dig  Your  Own  Hole  was  such  a  strange  ,  alternative  album  at  the  time  ,  a  friend  at  work  had  bought  it  too  and  we  both  agreed  it  took  a  few  listens  to  get  into  ,  but  then  you  realised  it  was  something  special  ,  something unique.  Sometimes  it's  the  smaller  memories  that  stick  with you  ,  i  remember  being  on  a  working  holiday  in  Sydney  in  1997  and  walking  into  a  clothes  shop  to  hear  Elektrobank  blasting  out  ,  it  was  kind  of  cool  to  hear  it  in  the  high  street  ,  also  ,  on  the  same  holiday  ,  me  and  my  mate  Daz  going  crazy  to  Chemical  Beats  in  a  small  club  in  New  Zealand.  Years  later  i'm  still  fascinated  by  The  Chemical  Brothers  ,  us  long-time  fans  have  watched  their  visuals  evolve  to  become  the  awesome  spectacle  we  now  see  before  us.  I've  got  a  busy  summer  this  year  . . going  through  a  bit  of  a  career  change  ,  so  i've  not  secured  a  concert  ticket  yet  but  i'll  be  following  them  for  sure  and  i  look  forward  to  seeing  what  they've  created  this  time.

[hstn]

I'm a rather recent fan of The Chems, I got into them as the Don't Think hype was slowing down. My first witness of them was the video of them at Glastonbury 2007 playing Do It Again and Get Yourself High, and was amazed and rather disturbed by the visuals, and loved the tweaks they made to their songs. I did some further listening and it wasn't until I found the live videos of The Reel in 2000 and Don't Fight Control that got me hooked. The rest is history pretty much and i discovered what I was missing out on. Before them I was a very big fan of Daft Punk and still am to this day, but i pretty much discovered them through DP and Fatboy Slim, of which someone compared his visuals to that of the clown. If anything their visual work as well as their music pretty much made me become a proper fan, their evolution over the years and different tweaks is what set them apart from everything else I listened to, heck they even got me into new music too!

[ThePumisher]

But honestly, The Chemical Brothers have remained my main interest in electronic producers since day 1 of my journey.

Where can i sign this?

[MIKL]

This is an old thread now but I loved reading all of these, we probably did this on the older forum but its good to read them again in a new light and with the new people here and how they discovered them more recently is still intriguing in this day and age.

My first exposure was Setting Sun and that alone is enough to question where peoples alliances lie in terms of what genre of music they were dedicated too especially in those days when grunge was still going and guitar/traditional band based music was only seen as real musicians playing. This song is like crossroads of genres in music as if all walks of life collided into one. The fact they took inspiration from the Beatles and made something else out of it is a statement too. That and the film clip to go with it you couldn't ignore it and just had to find out more about them. Then Block Rockin Beats came along with there film clip and that cemented the fact that these guys didn't fluke it and they are a talented worthwhile group to follow. There was nothing like that then and it appealed to me on so many levels just as me as a person and how I don't just like one thing like some people were or didn't feel I fit in with a certain group of people in high school even just little things like that. It was like escapism listening to that music knowing that some people didn't like it in those times and watching those film clips wishing I was in them.