Fats Mike doesn’t do birthdays.
So it was in all probability only a coincidence the NOFX retrospective on the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas final weekend happened on his birthday.
“My spouse goes to spank my a— actually exhausting 59 instances,” Michael Burkett, a.ok.a. Fats Mike, stated on the roof of the museum because the solar was setting and the lights of Las Vegas had been approaching. “Then she’ll do it once more with a cane, after which with a paddle. That’s my type of birthday.”
That’s a solution NOFX’s followers have come to count on from the entrance man identified for his scabrous humor and irreverent lyrics. Fats Mike has made a profession out of letting all of it hang around and never taking himself too critically, usually courting scandal alongside the best way.
From insulting nation music followers in 2018 after the Las Vegas bloodbath the earlier October, to convincing the gang at SXSW in 2010 that his alter ego Cokie the Clown had peed within the tequila he’d simply shared with the viewers, Fats Mike has all the time been a provocateur.
However that’s only one facet of the performer.
Fats Mike exterior the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas.
(Melanie Kaye)
Because the proprietor of Fats Wreck Chords, the label that put out most of NOFX’s materials, in addition to albums by scores of different bands, a scarcity of seriousness was a luxurious he couldn’t afford.
“It’s a number of accountability,” he admitted with a sigh of reduction now that the band has stopped touring and the label has been offered to Hopeless Information. “However being out of NOFX now’s great. I can achieve this many alternative issues that I’ve been desirous to do for a very long time.”
Regardless of his ambivalence to birthdays, the museum, which was co-founded by Fats Mike in 2023, pulled out all of the stops for a “that is your life”-style party.
Two rooms on the 12,000-square-foot museum’s second ground displayed ephemera documenting the accomplishments of a dirty little punk rock band that stayed within the shadows of friends like Offspring, Inexperienced Day and Blink-182, however remained utterly unbiased of main label affect — from its humble beginnings in 1983 to its ultimate present in 2024.
Photographs and fliers lined the partitions, street circumstances had been full of memorabilia, and the sound of early demos performed on precise tape recorders stuffed the area. “It’s essentially the most substantial exhibit we’ve ever had,” stated Vinnie Fiorello, one of many museum’s co-founders.
In the meantime, down on the principle ground, Mike’s former bandmates Aaron “El Hefe” Abeyta and Eric “Smelly” Sandin led guided excursions by means of the museum, telling tales about their unlikely success as punk rock lifers. Later that afternoon, they gathered within the museum’s occasion area for a sold-out roundtable dialogue.
The occasion kicked off with the trailer for the upcoming NOFX documentary titled “Forty Years of F— Up,” directed by James Buddy Day, and in typical NOFX trend, they uploaded the improper file. The displaying needed to be aborted after just a few surprising scenes of bandmates bickering and Fats Mike blasting strains of cocaine.
Speak about a teaser.
For the dialogue, Fats Mike, El Hefe and Smelly had been joined by their longtime crew who’re like a second household to the band. They shared irreverent tales and raucous laughter. At instances, you can virtually overlook in regards to the elephant within the room.
Nearly.
Smelly learn from a ready assertion addressing the rationale why one of many bandmembers, rhythm guitarist Eric Melvin, wasn’t current.
Only a few hours after the ultimate present of their ultimate tour, Melvin’s legal professionals served Fats Mike with papers accusing him of “authorized and monetary malfeasance.” He broke off contact with the band and directed all communication to undergo his counsel.
After the roundtable, Fats Mike went out on the museum’s rooftop, feeling unhappy and weak.
The acrimony that bedeviled so many bands that NOFX averted for 40 years had lastly caught up with them.
“We by no means had a f— argument, ever,” Fats Mike defined. “Issues obtained just a little sketchy throughout COVID, as a result of folks obtained determined and we couldn’t play. However earlier than that, we had been all greatest mates. It was so stunning. It wasn’t like different bands.”
Not being like different bands was the key to NOFX’s success. Whereas different bands chased document offers, NOFX stayed indie. When the type of skate punk that NOFX helped pioneer went mainstream, Fats Mike didn’t tone down his act to enchantment to a wider viewers. He was prepared to wager that, in the event that they stayed true to their followers, their followers would keep true to them.
“After we had been children … we made ourselves targets. By the cops, by the jocks, by everyone. Why did we try this? Why did we make ourselves targets? I don’t actually know why. It felt good, and it was like, ‘I don’t need to reside such as you.’”
That willpower to reside on one’s personal phrases, regardless of how gnarly or bizarre different folks thought you had been, is what fueled Fats Mike and NOFX, and judging from the trailer, that hasn’t modified. That’s what Fats Mike means when he says, “NOFX is a totally genuine band.”
NOFX drummer Erik “Smelly” Sandin, left, and Aaron “El Hefe” Abeyta within the Punk Rock Museum.
(Melanie Kaye)
When members of NOFX had been interviewed for the documentary, they had been upset. Regardless of a wildly profitable ultimate tour, not everybody needed the band to finish and so they spoke candidly about their emotions. Regardless that they had been exhausting to look at, Fats Mike determined to incorporate these scenes within the documentary.
He didn’t need to draw back from materials that made him uncomfortable, together with footage from a gory near-death expertise he had after contracting a bacterial an infection in his ulcer. “I’m on the ground and there’s blood and puke in every single place,” Fats Mike stated, setting the scene. At that second, he requested his spouse to movie him. “I believe I’m dying, and I would like my final phrases to be on digicam.”
Much more surprising than the documentary’s content material, is the best way it will likely be distributed. You received’t be capable to watch it on a streamer, obtain it off the web or buy a bodily copy. The one means you’ll be able to see it will likely be by getting off the sofa.
“It’s important to go see the film,” Fats Mike defined. “We’re taking part in it at over 100 theaters world wide as soon as a month.”
Impressed by midnight screenings of his favourite film, “Rocky Horror Image Present,” Fats Mike went to Cisco Adler, whose father Lou Adler co-produced the camp traditional that made Tim Curry a legend, to plot a daring plan for displaying the documentary. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Landmark Theater are on board to make the dream a actuality.
“I would like our followers to have a spot to go,” Fats Mike stated.
It’s an inexpensive DIY technique that feels utterly radical. NOFX in a nutshell.
The documentary contains new songs carried out by El Hefe, Fats Mike and Smelly, and so they’re creating merchandise for the screenings like popcorn buckets, chocolate bars and NOFX 2-D glasses.
“It’s gonna be a celebration,” Fats Mike guarantees. Would you count on something much less?
“Forty Years of F— Up” will premiere in Austin throughout South by Southwest on March 15 and 16 and on the Nuart Theater on March 19 earlier than opening worldwide on April 10.
Jim Ruland is the writer of “Company Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Information” and is a columnist for Razorcake Fanzine, America’s solely nonprofit unbiased music journal.
