England’s Prodigy Gets a Prodigious U.S. Deal

In pop music, the action these days is on the dance floor, where a new wave of electronic beats has opened what many see as a new era. But it’s getting hard to move to the groove with all the money being strewn out there.

Maverick Records is finalizing a deal with Prodigy, the colorful English group whose “Firestarter” video has been a big MTV attention-getter of late. The label reportedly could pay the band more than $5 million in guaranteed advances over the course of three albums. Guy Oseary, the A&R; executive who signed Alanis Morissette to Maverick, won the intense Prodigy competition, in which Interscope had been considered the other top bidder.

And now there’s nearly as hot a battle underway for Underworld, the English act whose much-touted “Second Toughest in the Infants” album was released last year by independent TVT Records, and which gained wider attention with “Born Slippy” from the hit “Trainspotting” soundtrack. Major U.S. companies are also opening their coffers to try to work distribution deals with such established independent, techno-oriented labels as L.A.-based Moonshine and Cleopatra and England’s Wall of Sound.

The Prodigy deal is a lot of money for an act that, while earning a lot of MTV and radio action for “Firestarter,” is otherwise unproven here. It’s had a string of big hits in the U.K., but its previous two albums made little impact Stateside--it was even dropped by Elektra two years ago.

Still, just about any other company would have been happy to spend that cash. Prodigy is viewed as nearly certain to be one of pop’s major breakthrough artists this year.

What concerns many, though, is that the signing signals a major-label frenzy that could rival the alternative-rock signing madness of the early ‘90s. For every Pearl Jam, skeptics point out, there are dozens of grungers who scored healthy contracts and were never heard from again.

After Prodigy, Underworld and the Chemical Brothers (who are signed to EMI-owned Caroline Records via the Astralwerks label), few emerging techno acts get “sure thing” votes from the record community.

“There will be too many acts signed, and too many who aren’t necessarily as good as Prodigy or the Chemical Brothers,” says Meredith Chinn, a veteran Los Angeles club deejay now working in A&R; at Warner Bros. Records, where she has signed the hot English duo Moloko and the dub-oriented Rockers Hi-Fi. “I’d like to say that this time around people will want to do things differently than before, but I’m not so sure.”

Hans Haedelt, an A&R; representative for MCA Records who recently made a deal for techno-world music act Trans Global Underground, says, “Maybe it’s better to pass on these bidding wars. Once you’ve signed someone or are even trying to sign someone, you raise their expectations so much and that’s unfair.”

Leyla Turkkan, vice president of A&R; for the Enclave, the EMI-distributed label started last year by former Geffen executive Tom Zutaut, concurs. “It makes acts for which you would normally have spent $80,000 per record get bumped up to $125,000 and more,” she says. “It’s counter-productive for a band to have to recoup that investment. To spend that much on a lot of these bands is pointless.”