How Does It Feel Like?

The Chemical Brothers were, for a lot of indie music fans of my generation, a gateway drug into the world of dance music (such as it was in the mid-90s music scene); along with the Prodigy, they came up with the most commercial version of dance music that was nonetheless familiar enough not to scare those of us who were more used to bands who wanted to be the Beatles than come up with “bangin’ choons” to pump your fist to in sweaty clubs every weekend. Of course, the Chemical Brothers managed this by wanting to be the Beatles as well, it’s just that they wanted to be “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “It’s All Too Much” and the more psychedelic Beatles than anything else (By comparison, the Prodigy just wanted to be the Sex Pistols. Like, really, really badly). Luckily, Noel Gallagher was there to help them with that:

Yes, it’s really just “Tomorrow Never Knows” with a bit more of a song to it, but I remember at the time thinking it was the best thing they’d done, and the most exciting thing I’d heard in a long time, some strange avatar of where both the Chems and Oasis would go next. Suddenly, there seemed like the potential for something new, something familiar, yes, but not the same as everything else we’d been listening to, something that actually summed up what our lives were about at that time in the way that you always want music to when you’re 21 years old and think that’s the way everything should work in some strange pop utopia. That wasn’t what happened, although that didn’t stop both the Chemical Brothers and Noel Gallagher trying to do what was essentially the same song, only a bit poppier, a couple of years later:

(That video, by the way, is one of my favorite music videos of all time, so wonderfully over the top.)

The strange, momentary crossover where it seemed like indie guitar bands and dance music were going to, if not merge together to come up with something that mixed the two, then at least open up their audiences to share and discover new and different things, is something that fascinates me even today. Not just for the missed opportunity, and the unfulfilled potential for What Could’ve Been, but for the wonderful lost innocence that genuinely believed it was possible, once.