Slim rocks the crowd at the Joint

Geoff Carter

Friday, June 18, 1999 | 9:41 a.m.

Twenty minutes into Fatboy Slim's intense set Thursday night at the Hard Rock Joint, I put my notebook into my back pocket and only retrieved it twice.

I did this partly out of necessity -- my arms were flailing uncontrollably, and I only carry so much insurance -- and partly of true necessity: Like the good Dr. Gonzo, I realized early on that there was no way I could cover the show in any conventional sense. Like Fatboy Slim -- given name Norman Cook, late of 1980s Britpop group The Housemartins -- I had to rely on my skills of improvisation and adaptation. Ducking came in handy, too.

Cook is hot right now -- for a man who tours with nothing more than a pair of turntables and a stack of records, very hot indeed. His album "You've Come a Long Way, Baby" is selling briskly, powered by two honest-to-God, knock-you-down hits: "The Rockefeller Skank" and "Gangster Trippin,' " fat-bottomed dance tracks that crossed over into the pop charts and -- this rarely happens -- somehow managed to hang on to the fans they'd earned in the clubs. Perhaps it's an awareness of this neat coup that had Cook smiling like a fiend as he took to his turntables (decks) and made some of the most wonderfully unholy racket this side of the Chemical Brothers. Or maybe, just maybe, he was really enjoying himself. Whatever the case, Cook made his goofy grin into airborne bacteria, and within the aforementioned 20 minutes everyone had it, including me.

Cook worked the decks as a man possessed, sending his hits into broader, far more compelling settings. "Skank" was retooled to fit the overly familiar riff of "Satisfaction"; even the Glimmer Twins would have been amazed by the results. "Right Here Right Now" retained its urgency and resonance, even as Cook changed the order of the track, moving instrumental sections as he would Lego blocks, shifting and clicking as he went along. And for an encore, he bent Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" into a big-beat disco stomp that could spin Generation X clean around in its shallow grave.

Best of all was the personality Cook gave to what might just as easily been a standard DJ's set (albeit an impassioned DJ's set). With his shaved head, Acapulco shirt, cigarette and cavalier air, he could easily slip into the cast of an Irvine Welsh novel without being noticed. His disposition is too sunny, however, and his sense of humor too wicked even for Welsh's imagined crew: at one point, Cook slipped on a Kinks record, and without tweaking it at all -- at this point I think he even took a drink -- got one of the biggest crowd reactions of the night.

I didn't cover the show in the traditional sense because the show wasn't traditional in the slightest. As in any good club, the show happens all around you: the girl in bikini and silk butterfly wings, the boys with baggy pants and glowsticks. Cook knows enough to let the audience speed him along, not the other way around -- and more than being the mark of a good DJ, that kind of smarts constitutes the makings of a great performer.

Right about now, the funk soul brother becomes king.