The Faith No More Listening Thread

Dear Esther,

The Crab Song
Introduce Yourself 1987


"And after all the feelings go,
I see I still love you so,
I just thought I'd let you know
Now that everything's okay,
And you are on your way back,
back to where you came,"
She said with pain in her heart,
It was there from the start.

Now I know why everything turns grey,
But it's our own world we paint.
And I want the brightest,
I want fluorescence,
Every day and night,
For the rest of my life,
Open your eyes,
won't you?

Can't you see you're so beautiful to me?

*

Don't look back
as a matter of fact
there's a Ten Foot Jack
wants to break your back
You stole his girl,
you wrecked his world
Now it's your head
that he's gonna twirl
He won't think once,
he won't think twice
Cause he knows just what
he's gonna do tonight
He will commit a crime,
a crime of love
And he won't be happy till he sees your blood

Looking back on when you left me
Sta†nding in the rain

Don't look back
as a matter of fact
there's A son of a bitch
and he's digging a ditch
For you my friend,
my lucky one
So grab your things
it's time to run
to the other side
Where love takes pride,
and your souls the only thing that stays alive
Ma maooba goo goo ga ga
Hey!
Quit talkin that terminal jive!

Looking back on when you left me
Cry‡ing in pain

said
Don't look back
as a matter of fact
there's a Ten Foot Jack
wants to break your back
You stole his girl,
you wrecked his world
Now it's your your head
that he's gonna twirl
He won't think once,
he won't think twice
Cause he knows just what
he's gonna do to-night
He will commit a crime,
a crime of love
And he won't be happy till he sees your blood

Looking back on when you left me
Standing in the rain,
in-credible pain
I understand.
You have to be your own person.
Well that's ok with me.

Hey!
Hey!
Hey!
Hey!
Hey!
Hey!
Hey!
What?
Hurts,
Hurts,
Hurts,
Like a like a motherfucher
Love.
it kills.
Oh man.
Like a sonofabitch.
That feeling.
It gets me.
Way down there.
Inside Me.
Where nothing.
Deep down there
Where only. §
Bad things grow.


*Mystery lyric? Missing on the lyric sheet and anywhere I could find online, and I can only guess...
†y-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-yay-ya
‡y-eye-eye-eye-eye-eye-eye-yiee-yiee-yiee-yiee-yiee-yiee
§Possible "We're", going by ear on that word.

I guess Chuck's the Crab?



Faith No More - The Crab Song
Faith No More - The Crab Song - Listen on Deezer
‎The Crab Song by Faith No More
The Crab Song - Faith No More
The Crab Song

 

Chucks opening rambling gives no indication of the awesomeness that is to follow. Chuck delivers a strangely moving vocal before things start rocking and Chuck delivering lines like a one man Run DMC or something. Monster riffing from Jim, Puffy pounding the **** out of those drums... I dont know what the hell any of it means but it all comes together for one hell of a ride.

 

It really doesn't matter...
Right now just give me more

Blood
Introduce Yourself 1987


Give it to me
deep red.


Faith No More - Blood Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

Faith No More - Blood
Open Qobuz
‎Blood by Faith No More
Faith No More - Blood - Listen on Deezer
Introduce Yourself

 

I've been toying with the idea of adding the songwriting credits that are on Wikipedia (as I type), but I'd have to research their validity since Chuck is credited as lyrics and music on this one, but...

 

It appears as though my "We Care A Lot", the Introduce Yourself version, post has disappeared.
Won't be able to sort out what happened there for a little bit...

 

Spirit & Excellence.
These are the tools you'll need,
further down the road...

Spirit
Introduce Yourself 1987


So do me a favor,
Don't talk to me about freedom
From a quintessential, existential nightmare
To a sanctuary waiting in The Sun.


Faith No More - Spirit Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

Faith No More - Spirit
‎Spirit by Faith No More
Faith No More - Introduce Yourself - Listen on Deezer
Spirit
Google Play Music

 

Youtube user Unax Ercoreca uploaded these clips a year ago, sans "PT 1", for some reason...



Faith No More 1987-11-24 St. Louis PT 3
Faith No More 1987-11-24 St. Louis PT 4
Faith No More 1987-11-24 St. Louis PT 5

 

full show from FNM4EVER



Watch, at 18 mins in, as Chuck weirds Jim out by grabbing his package (part of their witty repartee).

 

This is awesome footage. Makes me wish they could have included it in some sort of fancy edition. Same with We Care a lot. It got a fancy edition, but only one disc. Meanwhile we got 2 disc one-stop-shop versions of the later albums (which I only recently realized I should probably buy and did, just to have them b-sides all tidy like). I like uniformity.

Chuck is fun to watch and puts on a good show. Jim adds the thrash metal cred, sorely missed after he left. Not that Jon Hudson isn't doing a fine job in the role. It's just... not Jim. I suppose the group would have imploded even sooner if he stuck around to poke people with the pointy stick.

 

top 5 of the Chuck era for me
1. Why Do You Bother
2. R N' R
3. Pills for Breakfast
4. As The Worm Turns
5. Chinese Arithmetic

I seem to be simpatico with the band when they take themselves too seriously.
When Introduce Yourself leans more toward "fun", possibly emphasizing what they share with Red Hot Chili Peppers, that's where I lose it.
When they completely mean it I'm completely with them - fully aware of the pompousness of the whole endevour.
I spent this morning listening to the album, the 192/24's, one more time - guitar in standard tuning, stood up, leaning it against my knee, doing my absolute best Jim (sans beer and fumes), chugging away, I know the lyrics better now, and I've discovered that Deezer has the words, so I had the tablet running to shout along with Chuck.
The band on this album are a beast. Again we gotta hand it to the fine tuning and focusing of Matt Wallace.

 

The Faith No More Listening Thread Catch-up Index

Quiet in Heaven
Song of Liberty
Life is Tough For Me
-
New Love, Same Neuroses; New Hairstyles, Same Minds
Intro
-
We Care A Lot (1985)
01. We Care A Lot
02. The Jungle
03. Mark Bowen
04. Jim
05. Why Do You Bother
06. Greed
07. Pills For Breakfast
08. As The Worm Turns
09. Arabian Disco
10. New Beginnings
-
Live at the I-Beam, San Francisco
Da Da Da (Take I)
-
Introduce Yourself (1987)
01. Faster Disco
02. Anne's Song
03. Introduce Yourself
04. Chinese Arithmetic
05. Death March
06. We Care a Lot
07. R N' R
08. The Crab Song
09. Blood
10. Spirit
-
Live November 24, 1987
-

 

And one more go-round on We Care A Lot (for the missing post)...



Faith No More - We Care a Lot
Faith No More - We Care a Lot - Listen on Deezer
We Care a Lot
‎We Care a Lot by Faith No More


Before...

 

Building on the success and methodology of Introduce Yourself, in late 1988, Matt Wallace and the band reconvened at Studio D in Sausilito with high school graduate Mike Patton to record -

The Real Thing
June 20, 1989




"We were very committed to our sound and treated it most like a crazy hypnotic trance sort of vibe."
"We loved pop music and traditional rock stuff and hated it at the same time so we usually tried to cover bases. We’d do a song with a traditional verse/chorus vibe and then do a freak out in which things could be added however the singer determined." Roddy Bottum | THE REAL THING 30 | Q and A with MIKE BORDIN, RODDY BOTTUM and BILL GOULD

"We had about a year between singers so we had had a fair amount of time to rehearse them together. I believe most of the tracking went fairly quickly." Billy Gould | THE REAL THING 30 | Q and A with MIKE BORDIN, RODDY BOTTUM and BILL GOULD

"We were touring absolutely as hard as we were able to, doing so internationally, and mostly in a bubble." "We wrote, as we have always said, directly reflecting where we had been prior to that point, and also reflecting our growing experience in just physically performing what we had previously written live.
Just sorta feeling instinctively what works/doesn't, and evolving from there." Mike Bordin | THE REAL THING 30 | Q and A with MIKE BORDIN, RODDY BOTTUM and BILL GOULD

"The band was down in Los Angeles for a while when they were a 4 piece (no Chuck Mosley) so we were rehearsing some of the music they’d recently written. It’s interesting because all the music was written before Patton came on board so any and all ‘progression’ from 'IY' to 'TRT' is strictly the band trying to grow and continue to push boundaries. The music was exciting and, being a FNM fan, I really liked it but you never know what you have in terms of actual songs until the singer steps up to the microphone." Matt Wallace | THE REAL THING 30 | Matt Wallace remembers the recording of 'The Real Thing'

"Working with Patton was like trying to ride a bull or a racing motorcycle in that he was absolutely prepared to write and sing and deliver the songs and he was (and still is) an exceptional singer. He and I had disagreements about ‘tone’ and the fact that we weren’t able to capture the full range of his voice. But, I don’t believe that I’ve ever worked with anyone who was built to sing like Patton because he made everything sound and appear to be effortless but, if you really listen, he’s doing some amazing singing, phrasing, and lyric and melody writing." Matt Wallace | THE REAL THING 30 | Matt Wallace remembers the recording of 'The Real Thing'

Roddy "Mike sang so well, I remember that. It was kind of shocking. Remember, we’d been playing with Chuck for a long time and yeah…. night and day. He was younger than us. Way more into like… sports and we had different references. But we laughed at the same things. He had a cynicism that I related to, we all related to. The first rehearsal was a ‘get to know each other’ sort of thing. He sang 'Falling to Pieces' and was abashedly kind of ‘poppy’ about it and I liked that right away. Like he wasn’t scared to go for that sound." "...it was really clear that he was so good at so many different styles of singing. There wasn’t a lot he couldn’t do."
"We were such brats, yknow? We were young and really into just getting reactions from people. Part of that came from playing on tours with bands like Billy Idol or Metallica or Guns and Roses…. bands who liked us but their audiences didn’t really. So to get a reaction we all kind of pushed buttons. Mike saw this attitude in us immediately and kind of jumped on board. Looking back at it I don’t find it real brilliant but I do see it as provocative and I can still appreciate that." THE REAL THING 30 | Q and A with MIKE BORDIN, RODDY BOTTUM and BILL GOULD

Billy "I remember hearing this album mixed for the first time and what shocked me is that we actually sounded like a 'real' rock band…as strange as this sounds, I had never imagined myself being in one before. And once I heard it, it already was a success to me. The truth was, that we were still quite under the radar and it would take almost two years of touring to get it over the net. But I had much greater sense of satisfaction on the final mixing day than I did when it eventually went platinum. And I would not have expected that." THE REAL THING 30 | Q and A with MIKE BORDIN, RODDY BOTTUM and BILL GOULD

 

Album The Real Thing (Deluxe Edition), Faith No More | Qobuz: download and streaming in high quality
Faith No More - The Real Thing (Deluxe Edition)
‎The Real Thing by Faith No More
Faith No More: The Real Thing (Deluxe Edition) - Music Streaming - Listen on Deezer
The Real Thing (Deluxe Edition)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4tsGWdarHc&list=OLAK5uy_mzrlxmIPYIDTswxKMyfgAAqAr_H_jR8O8

 

From Out Of Nowhere
The Real Thing 1989


The Story Behind The Song: From Out Of Nowhere by Faith No More | Louder

“We were in a weird place at the time,” Bottum recalls, “having just lost a singer. I think I felt it more than the others. I was pretty close to Chuck. We were taking stock and starting over, but the mood among the four of us was pretty optimistic.”
“Billy, Mike Bordin and I wrote that song together at our rehearsal space in Hunter’s Point. It was among the first batch of songs that we wrote after Chuck left the band. Typically, the three of us would get the skeleton of a song going on, and then get Jim Martin to put his guitar part on. Sometimes, Billy would write [Martin’s] guitar part for him, but I think in the case of From Out Of Nowhere, he wrote his own part.”
“[Patton] came in and did the melody and the lyrics. All of the music of the songs on The Real Thing was written prior to Mike joining the band. He sat with the songs for a couple of weeks and wrote all his vocal parts. Really fast.”

Why Faith No More Wanted Mike Patton for ‘The Real Thing’

“It was Patton's first foray into a big studio record," keyboardist Bottum remembered. "Given where he was coming from as a young man from a small town, he had a lot to prove. And you can hear that on the tracks. You can hear him really working hard in that regard. So all of a sudden he came down and sang these songs we created and we were all just kind of like, ‘Whoa.’” He continued: “Mike really went places after The Real Thing. After that record, the whole notion of pleasing people went out the window and we just enjoyed ****ing off and doing whatever we wanted.”



Faith No More - From out of Nowhere
Faith No More - From out of Nowhere - Listen on Deezer
‎From Out of Nowhere by Faith No More
From out of Nowhere
Google Play Music

 

About to begin my Sunday evening listen (disc courtesy of my brother)...

 

If this song wasn't the opening to one of my favourite band's best albums I doubt I'd have noticed it.
It carries on from R N' R, in my eyes, and with further exploration would've made for a solid of-the-era rock album - including the whining singer - but that ain't our guys.

Perfectly serviceable pop/rock opener.

 

The Real Thing is where I got on board. I was in 8th grade and saw Epic on MTV and like many others I dug what I heard and bought the album. Heavy music was the only current music I listened to at the time and FNM fit right into my listening regiment.

Not long after buying the album the Asian guy at the mall who sold heavy metal tshirts got the very first Faith No More tshirts sold in our area. And in a rare move of greed he had a sign that said the FNM shirts were $16.99 instead of the usual $12.99 due to the limited supply and high demand. They were really the hot thing at the time.

Well, I paid the extra money, put the shirt right in and wore it with pride.



Wish I could still fit into my old L sized metal shirts from my teens.

What was it that I liked so much about them? The singer with the nice clean looking hair? The dreadlocked drummer? The fish? The crazy looking metal guy shredding on guitar and wearing uncoordinated red glasses? Yes... I think that was it. Cliff Burton tee another plus (I was already a huge Metallica fan). I likes my music heavy and Jim's riffing provided the heft I required.

Anyway... From Out Of Nowhere is a great opener. Great hook. Big chords from Roddy which always make magical things happen.

Getting on board with Real Thing, I wasnt initially familiar with their previous stuff. Eventually I'd track down tapes of the first two records. I like the Chuck stuff. But I really don't see how much farther they could go with him. Patton was so much more versatile. But sometimes I try to imagine in my head what post-Chuck songs would sound like with Chuck. I think some of them would have still succeeded. From Out of Nowhere is one of them. The track is pretty infallible.

 

I'm definitely listening through the prism of "What would Chuck do?", and I think young Patton did as well, moreso on the songs with rapping and shouting.

I do mourn, and attempt to extrapolate, a Real Thing with Chuck. The Real Thing could've been the graduation of that sound to it's interstellar hyperstate, and over the album it does get to be, but it's a more radio friendly late 80s slick with Patton's proper singing, where Chuck would've been forced I think to get angrier and emotionally sever.

This is coming from a Patton-ite. I came in as a 5 year old that watched too much TV and had all the time in the world for the wacky guy in the lightning, and was massively into that song, it was "my favourite song". I didn't hear the album, including this song, until I had the means - June 1997 - to buy the album. I then first saw the video when the band hosted Rage, as a 13 year old. The cover image I posted is from the copy I bought with I think birthday money. CD remains unscratched. I didn't take care of my school uniform, or my general health, or school work, but my CDs were handled with care.

Back to the song, it's fun!
Can't discern any meaning from the words, but they sound good. The band sound assured and focused, and they attribute that to heavy rehearsal, but when we get to Brixton Academy.. I credit some of the professionalism to editing. Although there are some demos about I've yet to explore that might sway my view on that, if I can find them again..

 

That is a glorious T-Shirt.

 

"Of course I knew straight away it would be a f--king hit! I already had a down payment on the Bentley and the bachelor pad in Paso Robles! I realised it wasn't an international smash when my speed dealer wouldn't even let me score on credit. Did 'Epic' spawn rap metal? Even it if it did, I wouldn't tell you. Then again, the rest of the world seems to feel that way, so I suppose apologies are in order. OK, I'M SORRY!" - Mike Patton 2010 | FAITH NO MORE | The groundbreaking single EPIC was released 28 years ago!

“We toured for about 18 months before ‘Epic’ was even released as a single. It becoming a hit made a big impression on us, because it was something that we chose to release on our own instincts. It worked and it gave us a lot of confidence to do the next record." - Billy 1997 | FAITH NO MORE | The groundbreaking single EPIC was released 28 years ago!

Epic
The Real Thing 1989



"The floundering goldfish was my idea. It was that kinda John Waters thing where you try to get maximum attention for minimum money! The piano exploding was pretty cool, too." - Billy 1997 | FAITH NO MORE | The groundbreaking single EPIC was released 28 years ago!

Video Director Ralph Ziman "I remember, the band had one day off from touring and they were in London. The record company had phoned us on very short notice and asked us to do a music video. They made it sound like a really low priority. I think it was being done for Warner Bros. at the time. I just made a list of things I thought we could do. Exploding piano. A fish flopping around. We literally had one day to pre-produce it. So we handed the fish off to the art department. I can't remember what it was. If it was a carp? It was a fresh water fish. We shot that in London in some studios next to the tour venue. And we wound up letting that fish go into the river when we were finished. We had a couple of them. We would let them flop around, and then we'd swap it over, and we'd shoot another one. I don't remember what kind of fish they were, but the animal handler had brought them in because they were feisty."


single November 29, 1990


Billy "we’d just fired our singer and it was a song that was pretty spontaneous. Actually, it was like the release that came with losing Chuck! I think with a lot our albums, most of the inspiration comes with the relief of losing a member that’s too painful to keep! It’s like a sore that finally breaks, a storm that finally comes in.
“A lot of our songs start music first, lyrics later, and it was called ‘Epic’ as a kind of code word, because before the words came along, it was kind of like the parting of the Red Sea! It was a preposterous grandiose thing! Y’know, we’ve always had a sort of campy, semi-serious approach to writing, with these big cinematic sounds. Patton wrote the words to it about a week after he joined the band. I remember him explaining it to me and I didn’t know him very well, so I wasn’t sure what to make of it.” - 1997

“Epic is sort of a warped sexual state of mind. It deals with more material and physical things like sex. The song kind of teases you. but it's frustrated at the same time because the song want's it too. But at the same time it knows that it can't have it.” - Mike Patton 1989

“Believe it or not, 'Epic' was my best attempt at impersonating Blondie's 'Rapture'. Lyrically, I was more concerned with the rhyme scheme than any other constant train of thought. The lyrics mean whatever you want them to mean. They don't belong to me anymore, they are your responsibility now.” - Mike Patton 2005

Great read over at Faith No More Followers FAITH NO MORE | The groundbreaking single EPIC was released 28 years ago!



Matt Wallace “I mastered that record with John Golden at K Disc Mastering. It just sounded so bad on my home stereo and my car stereo. It was so high-endy and there was so much compression. I just thought I sucked and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Then lo and behold, on radio and MTV it killed. It was a perfect confluence of sounds and sketchy recording where it really jumped out of the speakers. It was just one of those happy accidents.”

“Epic” specifically took two or three days in the studio to finish, including initial tracking, edits and overdubs. They already had a great demo to work off of that Gould made beforehand, which even included the piano outro. In the final recording, the piano outro is Bottom playing the miked-up studio piano for the melodic top end, and Gould playing plinky chords on the direct-recorded 8-bit sampling Emax keyboard.

https://www.mixonline.com/recording/classic-track-epic-faith-no-more-424971



Faith No More - Epic
‎Epic by Faith No More
Epic
Faith No More - Epic - Listen on Deezer
Google Play Music
Album The Real Thing (Deluxe Edition), Faith No More | Qobuz: download and streaming in high quality