Yes, Mike Patton has a couple of albums that could be labeled hip-hop.
It apparently took Patton two years to create this collaboration album with the X-ecutioners, a group of hip-hop DJs out of New York who have worked with the likes of Cypress Hill and Linkin Park. As All Music explains, “Patton sends hip-hopping turntable masters the X-Ecutioners a bunch of oddball records, then the X-Ecutioners create ‘sound blocks’ out of the albums and send them back to Patton for final tweaking and song-building.”
The result reeks of turn tables, jazz, old movie clips and not a ton of easy listening. But with Patton, sometimes we must persist regardless.
While I wouldn’t take in the entire album in one long 45-minute listen, it’s fun for these short, tight songs to pop up on my iTunes playlist every now again. Especially in the case of “Roc Raida: Riot Controls Agent/Combat Stress Control,” just so I can hear Eddie Murphy tell me, “I will kick your ass,” over and over again.
After my three-part series on Faith No More’s “Epic,” I wasn’t planning on writing more than a single post of anything else from Mike Patton’s discography. But after posting my take on “Ricochet” earlier this week, my Twitter buddy @d2k2d2k2 reminded me of something I very vaguely remembered from FNM’s performance on Conan’s old late-night show in 1995.
The next night, FNM was in a sketch featuring O’Brien and former band leader/drummer Max Weinberg. Conan started it off by saying Weinberg had been jealous at FNM’s reception for its performance the night before. Weinberg denied it. And then Conan showed Weinberg not-so-subtly trying to disrupt FNM during the course of “Ricochet.”
Naturally, a brawl between FNM and Conan’s band then broke out.
Good stuff from 24 years ago. The funniest parts for me were Weinberg going after FNM’s Mike Bordin in a battle of the drummers and that, unlike the real performance, Patton didn’t forget his opening cue. This time, he sang the song right on time.
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Mike Patton likes creating themes for his various albums with his various bands. Fantomas recorded an album covering famous movie soundtrack songs. His Mondo Cane record is a collection of various Italian pop songs from the 1950s and 1960s. His third album with Tomahawk—after Faith No More, this is probably his most mainstream band—followed that pattern.
Like Fantomas, Tomahawk was a super group featuring Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard) on guitar, Kevin Rutmanis (Melvins) on bass and John Stanier (Helmet) on drums.
Anonymous was a collection of Native American compositions—which, as noted by Pitchfork, was (and this might be the most random sentence you read today) “researched by Denison while touring reservations with Hank Williams III.” “Sun Dance” was the only single to be released from the album, and yes, it sounds like a song that was originally a Native American composition that was researched on a reservation with a country music legacy star. Except this features Patton mostly chanting “Hey ya” over a grooving bass line and a mystical guitar sound.
Pitchfork isn’t exactly known to be nice to musicians in its reviews, and as the author wrote regarding Anonymous, “And here I thought Patton had run out of ways to alienate people and limit his own appeal.” But this song (and most of this album) is a pleasant listen, even if Denison’s influence is felt more than Patton’s.
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In 1995, Faith No More and Mike Patton released my favorite FNM album, King For a Day, Fool For a Lifetime (featuring the banger “Ricochet”). In 1996 and 1997, Patton released two solo albums.
In 1998, apparently fearing he wasn’t quite busy enough, Patton formed a heavy metal supergroup called Fantomas that brought him, Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne, Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn, and Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo together. At the time, FNM was basically dead. But Fantomas and its avant-garde metal sound was very much alive.
With the exception of its second album, The Directors’ Cut, Fantomas isn’t always an easy listen. But its live album that was recorded on New Years Eve 2000 and was released in 2002, Millennium Monsterwork 2000, has some interesting moments. It’s iffy if “Me and the Flamer” is one of those moments, particularly since much of the song features Lombardo simply tapping his cymbals before Patton screams something indecipherable.
But the screaming and mouth noises he makes is certainly a Patton special.
Ultimately, it’s OK to listen to this tune once and then skip over it the next time you hear it. A good portion of the Fantomas material makes me want to do that anyway.
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I didn’t really get into Faith No More and Mike Patton until my buddy Jeremy, who worked with me at a restaurant in the Atlanta suburbs, invited me to see an FNM show in 1995. I, of course, knew the band from “Epic,” but I hadn’t kept up with it. So, to prepare for the show at the Masquerade in Atlanta, I listened to plenty of King For a Day, Fool For a Lifetime, FNM’s new album at the time, to get myself familiar with the material. “Ricochet” is the second song of the 1-2 absolute firepunch combination that opens the record after album opener “Get Out.”
It’s an absolute blaster of a song—which apparently was written on the day of Kurt Cobain’s suicide (it’s rumored that the code word for “Ricochet” on the FNM setlist was “Nirvana,” though it’s unclear why FNM needed code words for its setlists).
It’s funny. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the music video above, but apparently, it was shot before and during a concert in Paris. I love the KFAD album, and “Ricochet” is one of my favorites from the record (and the song is probably one of the reasons I grew to love the band so much). Rolling Stone agrees, saying it was “a portentous anthem reminiscent of ‘Epic.’”
But what I’ll remember most about this tune is watching FNM perform it on Conan’s old late night show. I recorded it on a VHS tape and watched it on my VCR over and over again. It’s awesome in every way, from Patton’s shirt to him forgetting to sing at the beginning (watch as drummer Mike Bordin quizzically looks at him when Patton forgets his cue and then watch Patton smile and nod after he realizes his mistake).
This is Patton at his absolute coolest.
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In 2010, Mike Patton released his Mondo Cane album, which was filled with covers of Italian pop songs from the 1950s and 1960s. Patton was once married to an Italian woman, and he lived in Bologna for a spell. He’s fluent in Italian, and he was moved by the way those songs were made.
“While there, I immersed myself in the complete culture: the music, art, literature, film, food, and history,” Patton toldSpin. “It’s easy to fall in love with. As a country, Italy does a good job of holding onto its rich traditions and culture.”
On this song, he’s backed by an acoustic guitar, and he sings about a “little staircase leading to the water near Posillipo, where a man waits for his lover.” It’s quite beautiful.
“Most tribute records bore the hell out of me,” Patton said. “It’s far more interesting to hear someone who has been inspired by an artist channel that artist using their own talents. There are lots of different ways to make lasagna, and more than one way can be great.”
Here’s an original 1950s version from Roberto Murolo.
One word of advice, though. If you’re listening to Patton sing it live, keep quiet. Otherwise, he’ll tell you to … well, just watch.
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This is one of the last songs on the Disco Volante album, so it’s certainly one of the tunes I’ve listened to least off this record (and one of the songs I know the least from the entire Mr. Bungle catalog). But it does give Patton plenty of room to work—he croons, he does a strange spoken word, he does a little scatting, he screams. The song is also rather schizophrenic, moving from jazz to death metal in no time at all.
My favorite part of this song, though, is not Patton. Rather it’s Trevor Dunn’s bass.
There’s actually a lot to like in this song, but there’s also plenty of less accessible moments, the kind of stuff that insured Mr. Bungle would not see anything close to the kind of success experienced by Patton in Faith No More or Tomahawk (and god spare me, the brief appearances of that Howie Mandel Gizmo voice).
The more I listen to this song, the more I think it’s a pretty good epitome of the entire Disco Volante album. Of the three Mr. Bungle records, this one is certainly the most experimental—some of it is incredible and some it, well, not so great. The same goes for this song.
But the more I listen to this tune—which apparently is actually about a platypus—the more I like it. Ten minutes ago, I couldn’t have told you what “Platypus” sounded like. But nearly 25 years after this record arrived in my life, I’ve finally realized I should probably listen to it a little more often.
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The Hard Times is an Onion-type satirical news site that focuses on music, mostly metal and punk. I don’t love it as much as the Onion, but sometimes, something it publishes really hits. This week, perhaps to commemorate the start of the 365 Days of Mike Patton, the Hard Times wrote a satirical story about Patton, titled “Mike Patton Runs Out of Bands To Be In.”
It’s an amusing piece of work, as the site quotes Patton saying, “At this point, I feel like I’ve done it all—literally, I’ve provided some sort of vocal arrangement for every musical act in the world. After my album of harmonized, guttural sing-shouting with an uncontacted indigenous tribe deep in the jungles of New Guinea, I realized it was probably time to call it a career.”
And … “It’s tough to say what is next—I’ve already been in bands with everyone I know. Wait… was I in Sepultura yet? Crap. I think I was.”
Yes. Yes he was. Sepultura is a thrash metal band from Brazil, and though I haven’t spent much time studying the band’s discography, it did collaborate with Patton for a song called “Lookaway” on the Roots album. The tune also features Korn singer Jonathan Davis and Limp Bizkit’s DJ Lethal (I CANNOT wait to one day tell the tale of seeing Limp Bizkit open for Faith No More in Atlanta in 1997).
Anyway, “Lookaway” features Patton’s deep growl, a chant and plenty of screaming that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Patton’s most recent projects, Dead Cross. Here’s a live version.
It’s not my favorite Patton song, but hey, props to him for mixing it up with Brazil’s most famous metal export (according to this list, at least).
A couple of years ago, Davis drew some controversy when he claimed that Sepultura’s Roots album was a blatant ripoff of Korn. Guitarist and founding Sepultura member Max Cavalera responded to that by saying, via Blabbermouth, “Mike Patton was on the song, and Jonathan’s a huge Faith No More fan. He was actually freaking out that Patton was there. He was really nervous, which was actually kind of funny. He kept chewing on his hair the whole time he was in the studio.”
According to Cavalera, Patton started singing an Indian chant in the studio, giving Cavalera goosebumps.
“It was so intense,” Cavalera said. “He showed up in the studio with a Samsonite briefcase. I was like, ‘Mike, what’s up with the briefcase?’ He said, ‘It’s what I need to record.’ It had an echo pedal inside for his voice and a bottle of wine. He opened the wine and we drank it. At one point, the three of us were on the floor of the studio going crazy and making weird noises and sounds.”
It’s no “guttural sing-shouting with an uncontacted indigenous tribe deep in the jungles of New Guinea,” but it sounds exactly like a Patton jam nonetheless.
Today is my favorite singer’s birthday. His name is Mike Patton, and he has a bit of a cult following. He’s best known as the lead singer of Faith No More—which is best known for the 1989 hit “Epic“ where Patton continuously asks the question “What is it?”—but he’s sung for countless other bands and musicians, including his most famous side projects Mr. Bungle and Tomahawk. The people who frantically follow him from project to project are die-hard, and when they recognize one another in public, the image is lasting.
An example: The other day I went into a Mediterranean place near work for lunch. The guy behind the counter who was about to cut some lamb for me looked in my eyes and said, “Hey, weren’t you the guy who likes Mr. Bungle?“ He knew that because about a year ago (or more), I wore a Mr. Bungle T-shirt while ordering lunch from him and we spent a good 10 minutes talking about Mike Patton. I hadn’t seen him since. But we remembered.
On New Year’s Day, I was looking at Twitter, and a baseball writer I follow named Al Mechior announced a new project. I guess he’s a big fan of the Grammy-winning rock band Toto, so he opened a new Twitter account called @ThoughtsToto, where he’s in the process of drowning himself in each of the band’s albums and writing about each song in the band’s catalog. I thought that was a good idea. So, I kind of borrowed it. But I’m not opening a new Twitter account. Instead, I’m writing it here at joshkatzowitz.com.
For the next year or so, I’m going to write (most) every weekday about Patton’s songs and why we love when he sings them. Maybe there will be some anecdotes. Maybe there will be some history. Maybe there will be explanations on the ridiculousness of Patton’s vocal range.
Who knows.
Anyway, today is Patton’s 51st birthday, so today is the day I’m unveiling my 365 Days of Mike Patton. I’ll write about his songs. I’ll probably post some videos. I’ll talk about why I love them both. These won’t be long posts. I’ll get in and get out, so you and I can move on with our days. We love Patton, but goddamn, we don’t have to obsess about him for more than a few minutes at a time. I’ll plan to go for 365 days, but honestly, I don’t even know if he has 365 recorded songs. I guess we’ll figure it out as we go.
If you’re a die-hard Patton fan (and really, why else would you be here?), maybe you don’t love the idea of brevity. Maybe, like Patton sings in “Epic,” you want it all. But true to form, you can’t have it.
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Josh Katzowitz - Sports Writer/Author/Editor 