ALBUM REVIEW: Fat Mike – Fat Mike Gets Strung Out
(Fat Wreck Chords)
NOFX frontman Michael Burkett – better known as Fat Mike – is a punk rock lifer who has been fronting the SoCal skate punks for 40 years, selling eight million records in the process.
That’s an impressive achievement, as is being founder and owner of Fat Wreck Chords, the San Francisco-based indie label which has been home to a who’s who of modern US punk rock.
He’s courted controversy more than most over the years, due to outrageous behaviour involving drink and drugs, being a political activist, a self-confessed cross-dresser who’s into BDSM, and assaulting a fan who climbed onstage.
All good things come to an end, however, and after releasing their 15th studio full-length, Double Album, last December, Fat Mike announced the band were calling it a day, and announced a bunch of farewell gigs.
As they prepare to disband, he’s looking in other directions, and has just released his first solo album. Not for him the guitar and acoustic route that so many other singers have taken though.
Instead, Fat Mike teamed up with his friend and regular musical collaborator Baz The Frenchman to reimagine 10 of his songs as classical compositions.
Nine of them are NOFX songs, and the 10th is I’m A Rat, which was recorded and released by Japanese punks Hi-Standard, but was written by Fat Mike.
The songs sound completely different from their original incarnations, and if you didn’t know they were originally punk songs you’d never guess.
Transposed and translated by Baz using digital interface midi, they’ve been recorded by professional classical musicians playing violas, violins, cello, bass, and piano.
Opening track One Million Coasters was, in its original form on 2009’s Coaster album, about the Fat Wreck warehouse, and all the unsold CDs inside it.
Medio-Core, from 2003’s The War On Errorism, is about crappy pop-punk bands, while Fuck Day Six, from the aforementioned Double Album, recalled Fat Mike’s week in rehab for his painkiller addiction.
Melancholy mood
There’s a melancholic feel to the whole album, almost like Fat Mike is marking the passing of NOFX. In a way he is. He says: “I wanted a sad song to sound sad even though there are no words.”
And while making a classical album of punk songs is a brave move, and a departure from the norm, I can’t imagine all but the band’s most devoted fans listening to it more than a couple of times. 6/10.
