I wouldn’t say they’re metal at their core - they’re punk. And funny punk gets a lot of mileage from me.

Turbonegro is jokey in one way, and they become the joke. I have met people who actually thought the members of the band were gay. You really can’t tell igf they are serious or not. Faith No More to me does the whole ‘look how clever we are’ And they’ll be jokey one song, serious the next.

Magnetic Fields do a much better job of slipping from humorous to serious, and genre leaping in a crazy way than FNM.

I don’t know. Maybe its the fact at their core that they are metal and I have never enjoyed funny metal…. Except Manowar. Except they aren’t funny either.

We practice in Hammond, IN, which sucks for me and the guitarist, but it’s worth it. We’ll talk more as the New Year dawns and we get gigs…

Yes, that interview is f-ing hilarious… it was like the Daily Show in reverse.

Borch, you ever need a substitute drummer, gimme a ring. I’m just up I-94 in Milwaukee.

I will never forget that FNM appearance on “Hangin W/MTV.” Really, the performances were not even the highlight…it was watching Patton and Billy fuck with the two chick douchebags trying to interview them. “So, tell me about all the different characters in your songs, like, the person in ‘Midnight Crisis’ is really different than the person in ‘RV’…” “Oh, i’m sorry, i wasn’t even listening to the question…”

FNM is the ultimate unrecognized and forgotten 90’s band. People look at me with a confused and almost sympathetic look when I tell them what my band does, and only when I mention, “That video w/ the fish,” does a sliver of recognition emerge. Matter of fact, ‘Epic’ is our least favorite song to play, and I’ll tell you why:

FNM mixed the hilarious with the scary-as-fuck, and it worked. They came about at the right time (I was just getting pubes and Angel Dust made a man out of me quick) and were somehow endorsed by the mainstream, despite having nothing formulaic about them. They were MTV’s darlings for awhile, due in part to the New Kids on the Block and Sinead O’Connor covers they teased. Their own material defies mainstream acceptance - if someone’s older brother has a copy of ‘Video Croissant’, I recommend borrowing it and watching the performance of ‘Caffeine’ and consider if anything like that will ever be put in front of a studio audience again. No, they were too hard to categorize and couldn’t hold on to anyone’s attention except for the fans who were smitten.

I fear that I’m not explaining why FNM is a great band, and more why I think they are worth devoting an entire band to covering. Remember, we’re at: http://www.thefakething.com (someone help - how do I insert a link into the comment editor?). I am inspired to review all of Faith No More’s albums in chronological order, because the mere mention of the band (outside of The Fake Thing) sends me into a week-long FNM binge, and you all need to understand why hotshot and I are right.

and def. post something on the ‘humour in music’ topic - i will totally jump on that train. there’s always ween and tmbg to make the point with.

And what a brilliant cover/ album title concept.Partially just a darkly funny contrast of a swan (or is it a heron?- whatever, it’s pretty) and a dead cow but also a bit more- “Angel Dust”- the words sound so pretty, so you get the pretty bird on the cover but the reality of the drug is ugly, brutal and destructive, so on the back you get a slaughterhouse complete with severed cow head.

Excellent representation of the album and the group. A contrast of ideas, a bit funny, a bit brutal and yes, a little bit beautiful.

I’d love to hear the Commissar’s explanation as to how Turbonegro aren’t a jokey novelty despite songs like “Midnight NAMBLA” and “Hobbit Motherfuckers.”

The gods love you, but they spit on poor li’l me!

There was a Voivod/Soundgarden/Faith No More show I had to see in Champaign, back when I was an underager (How long ago was this? Well, let’s just say, Voivod was headlining. Faith No More were the openers.) I’d been scheming how to get in, and was walking home trying to come up with some sort of elaborate plan that involved fire exits or something. Lo and behold, I spied a card on the sidewalk. It was a driver’s license. The picture looked a lot like me. And the fellow was 24.

The gods wanted me to see this show.

And boy, were they right. Faith No More ripped my poor little mind into shreds. They did a death rock cover of the Nestle’s theme. (”N-E-S-T-L-E-S/Nestle’s makes the very best.”) During one song, Mike Patton threw his microphone over some pipes running across the ceiling, and then proceeded to pull himself up the microphone cord (a good 15 feet) to the pipes and swing from them like a crazed orangutan. Then he dropped to the stage, and couldn’t get the cable untangled from the pipes. He sang the next two songs while standing on the kick drum, so he could reach the mic.

Kee-rist!

So, Faith No More is too “jokey,” but Turbonegro is “fun.” Let me file that away under “Herr Commissar Inconsistencies.”