On Listening to Vinyl: Fatboy Slim - You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby (20th Anniversary Edition)

Fatboy Slim YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY (20th Anniversary Edition)

There’s really something to be said for appreciating an entire album. Case in point, Fatboy Slim You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby, which I owned on CD and as of today, own on vinyl for its 20th anniversary.

After vinyl (but not including 8-tracks), it became steadily easier to skip those tracks that you didn’t want to hear. Yes, you could do that with vinyl as well, but what if you dropped the needle in the wrong spot? Or dragged it across your record by accident? Skipping tracks could be done, but there was an element of risk, even danger, to it.

Cassette tapes were a bit easier because you could just fast forward, listen, and then move forward some more or go backward a bit. Once they developed tape decks that could “listen” for the gaps between songs the entire thing became automated and no longer something to think about.

With CDs it became even easier. In fact, producers and artists even changed how they arranged the tracks on an album. With vinyl you’d place your strongest tracks, the recordings that really grabbed one’s attention, at the beginning of each side. With CDs you frontloaded them.

But again, if you didn’t like a track you just hit next and almost instantly the next song played. No risk, all reward.

Of course with the advent of mp3s (and later streaming) you didn’t even have to skip. You could just download (or stream) the select tracks that you wanted to hear, all the hits, all the time.

What’s an album? Who knows?! But have you heard this new Olivia Rodriguez banger?

I was around for vinyl but I was too young to handle it properly; I first started buying cassettes while in sixth grade, then moved to CDs when I got a Sony Discman for Christmas in 1987. I’ve always known the option to skip.

And sure, I had a cassette player in my car, and later a CD player, and yes, there were albums that I would listen to from beginning to end because they were just that good (basically any Depeche Mode album, or Portishead Dummy), but I always had the easy option to skip.

Vinyl has made quite the resurgence in the last decade, I know I’m late to the party on that, but since last fall I have been sinking deeply into that vinyl life.

And because I am a clumsy oaf, or a “Big Ox” as my mother used to call me, I am keenly aware of my ability to ruin something and delicate as a vinyl record. CDs (or mp3s) are more my forte because it’s harder for me to destroy those, but whether it’s hipster or not I do agree that vinyl sounds better, warmer.

I own over 900+ CDs, but the vast majority of them are stashed away. 99% of them have not been played in my current car. 98% were never played in my last car. For the last decade or more it’s been all about mp3s and streaming.

It’s been a long time since I took out a CD and played it, let alone play the entire thing from start to finish.

But I’m a little bit afraid of vinyl because it’s not cheap ($20+ a record?!) and if I scratch it I’ll be very pissed at myself.

So I leave it alone, I listen to the whole album, front to back, side A to side B (and even side C and D if they are there).

It’s probably been 15-20 years since I listened to You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby in its entirety, no skips. Sure, I remember the hits, “Rockafella Skank” and “Praise You,” but I had forgotten how good the entire album was. I don’t know the last time that I listened to “Fucking In Heaven,” “Love Island,” or “Acid 8000,” which is a shame, because those tracks still slap.

Since the advent of the internet things have been forced to move faster and faster and faster. Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s my newfound interest in slow productivity, or maybe it’s just an reinvigorated desire to experience things as a whole, but part of this journey back into the world of vinyl has taught me to slow down and appreciate it all.

Listen to the whole album.

Take it all in.

Yeah, that last track was great, but if I want to hear it again I have to at least let this side end and then start again from the beginning.

And that’s OK.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller

I appreciate the way vinyl makes me slow down and appreciate these recorded works of art as a whole, even when it’s a big beat techno act like Fatboy Slim.