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Punk
and Stupid
NOFX’s lead singer Fat Mike, author of the greatest Jewish punk
anthem ever, shares his feelings on Bush, bar mitzvahs and “Cowschwitz.”
By Micah Sachs
I was introduced to NOFX my freshman year of college by the
chain-smoking son of a wealthy Catholic oil executive. We would smoke
hand-rolled cigarettes together and head bang to “The Brews,”
a song that is, to my biased mind, the greatest Jewish punk anthem ever
written (and perhaps the only Jewish punk anthem ever written). Its lyrics
are proud, offensive and surprisingly knowledgeable about Judaism: “Friday
night we’ll be drinkin’ Manischewitz/Goin’ out to terrorize
goyim/Stompin’ shagitz, screwin’ shicksas/As long as we’re
home by Saturday mornin’!” (see full lyrics, p. 42)
As a young Jewish college student there are plenty of worthy Jewish role
models, but few interesting ones. Fat Mike, the obnoxious, outspoken,
overweight lead singer of NOFX, one of the most popular punk bands of
the last 20 years, was certainly interesting. So ever since I’ve
started in Jewish journalism, I’ve salivated over the opportunity
to interview him (and perhaps his fellow Jewish bandmate, guitarist Eric
Melvin).
After two years of ignoring my entreaties, the opportunity
arose: NOFX was releasing a new virulently anti-Bush album (“The
War on Errorism”) and was set to play in July’s upcoming Vans
Warped Tour, a mostly punk music festival sponsored by Vans, a skating
gear company. Fat Mike, whose slightly surly demeanor makes him a less
than ideal interview subject, had mostly stopped giving interviews eight
years ago. But politics got the better of him.
Fat Mike is disgusted by what Bush has done in Iraq and at
home, likening his actions to Hitler’s. In “Re-gaining Unconsciousness,”
off their new album, Fat Mike references Rev. Martin Niemoller’s
famous post-Holocaust quote, “First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then
they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t
a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up….
Then they came for me and by that time there was no one left to speak
up for me.” In “Re-gaining Unconsciousness,” Fat Mike
sings “First they put away the dealers, keep our kids safe and off
the street/Then they put away the prostitutes, keep married men cloistered
at home/Then they shooed away the bums then they beat and bashed the queers/Turned
away asylum seekers, fed us suspicions and fears/We didn’t raise
our voice, we didn’t make a fuss/It’s funny there was no one
left to notice when they came for us.”
Niemoller’s quote is clearly something that has stuck
with Fat Mike over years, as he included it on the liner notes to 2002’s
“45 or 46 Songs That Weren’t Good Enough to Go on Our Other
Records” next to the lyrics for “Zyclone B Bathhouse.”
“Bathhouse” is a fast short slab of punk that likens the treatment
of concentration camp victims to the treatment of factory-farmed animals
(he calls Harris Ranch, the massive cow farm on the I-5 between L.A. and
San Francisco, “Cowschwitz.”).
“I think there are so many parallels between Hitler
and Bush. Bombing the Reichstag and blaming Jews and communists for all
of Germany’s problems – it’s pretty close to the 9/11
attacks. I’m not saying George Bush knew they were going to happen,
but there were definitely warnings,” says Mike. “And George
Bush needed an act of terrorism, just like Hitler needed one to unite
Germany against enemies. We’re the only country since World War
II Germany to invade other countries without any reason…. Bush starts
Homeland Security and secret police just like Hitler’s government
did. The Patriot Act is very similar to what Hitler did in Germany.
“Our freedoms are being stripped away from us because of fear, and
that’s what happened to the German people – who were decent
people – but you know when your government controls the media and
starts telling you all this bulls—t, you get this false sense of
protection. And that’s how Hitler got all his German followers,
and that’s why a lot of Americans still love George Bush, because
they think he’s keeping this country safe.”
The album includes a litany of anti-Bush songs and images,
including the song “Franco Un-American,” which mocks Americans
for denigrating France and the Left (“I never looked around, never
second guessed, then I read some Howard Zinn, now I’m always depressed/And
now I can’t sleep from years of apathy, all because I read a little
Noam Chomsky”), a cartoon of Bush in clownface saying “Somewhere
in Texas, there is a village without its idiot,” and even a CD-ROM
preview of “Unprecedented,” about Bush’s alleged theft
of the 2000 presidential election.
“People say get over it, but it’s huge,” says Mike.
“I mean, it’s the biggest scandal in election history. And
he totally got away with it.”
Fat Mike hasn’t always been as politically outspoken.
While NOFX’s previous 12 full-length albums and 17 EPs include a
number of politically charged songs, the band was more likely to cause
controversy with its offensive lyrics and juvenile cover art, like 1996’s
“Heavy Petting Zoo/Eating Lamb,” which features an image of
a man and a lamb, um, enjoying each other’s company. The liner notes
of 1992’s “White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean” includes
photos of a can of Schaefer malt liquor (for Eric Ghint, AKA “White
Trash”), a can of black beans (for El Hefe, AKA “A Bean”)
and a box of matzos and a jar of gefilte fish (for Fat Mike and Eric Melvin,
respectively, AKA “Two Heebs”). The album was originally to
be titled “White Trash, Two Kikes and a Spic.”
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“Eric Melvin was like, ‘You know, I don’t want
my grandparents to see this.’ So we decided that ‘White Trash,
Two Heebs and a Bean’ was almost as funny,” says Mike. “Looking
back, I felt we should have gone with the more hard-core title.”
Despite the apparent heavy Jewish influence in NOFX’s
work, Fat Mike “grew up about as un-Jewish as you can possibly grow
up.
“We celebrated Christmas, never went to Hebrew school,
had no bar mitzvah, didn’t light the candles, don’t know any
Hebrew,” he says. “I think what was most Jewish about my upbringing
was cultural, was my parents telling me that my choice was which college
you’re going to – not if you’re going to college.”
But he did grow up in Beverly Hills, where he went to a slew
of bar mitzvahs. He doesn’t believe in God “or in any higher
power” and has no plans to raise his expected child Jewish, or any
other religion. The one Jewish tradition his family maintains is Passover.
“I like the tradition of having a family dinner,” he says,
“and it’s nice to go through the history.”
Once he got into the punk scene in high school, he says his
Jewishness was a non-issue. “Once in a while, you’d see people
with swastikas. But that was pretty much [because of] Sid Vicious, to
be offensive. It wasn’t anti-Semitic.
“And there’s skinheads in the punk rock scene
and they’re anti-Semitic, but I never had any run-ins with them.”
After toiling since 1983 in relative obscurity, NOFX scored
its first legitimate hit in 1994 with “Punk in Drublic,” which
went gold. Perhaps uncoincidentally, that album contains the song “The
Brews” (as in the He-Brews).
“The Brews” came about after Fat Mike saw a group
of young Orthodox boys with shaven heads and payis hanging out in the
Fairfax district of L.A. “They looked like little skinheads. And
I thought that’s funny: a little skinhead gang. It would be so funny
to see actual tough Jewish skinheads with the payis. So I just wrote a
song about it.” It’s unclear how many Orthodox kids were turned
on – or turned off – to the band because of that song, but
Fat Mike has definitely noticed a number of yarmulkes in the audiences
at his shows.
Fat Mike can also claim a dubious first in the Jewish world: his
side band, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, will in all likelihood be the
first punk band ever to release a live album from a bar mitzvah. Called
“Live at Johnny’s Bar Mitzvah,” the album will showcase
the Gimme Gimmes rather poorly received performance at Fat Mike’s
music publisher’s son’s bar mitzvah last October. “What
you can see from the video that goes along with the CD is that people
don’t like us very much,” Fat Mike recalls.
A few years back, NOFX was going to play in Israel, but they decided
against it, for perceived safety reasons. However, Useless ID, a Haifa-based
band, played on the companion record to “War on Errorism,”
titled “Rock Against Bush, Vol. I,” which is a compilation
of anti-Bush songs from various (mostly) punk bands, including The Offspring
and Social Distortion.
“I went to Israel when I was 16 and I didn’t
like it all,” says Fat Mike. “I was taking buses and there
are so many Chasidic Jews there. They’re just like what’s
going on in the Middle East right now, they’re like the Taliban:
they treat their women like garbage… because that’s how God
wants it…. And any culture or society that leaves women behind I’m
100 percent against.”
In spite of his apparent rejection of almost all things Jewish
(except for potato pancakes, he likes those), there is one Jewish tradition
he says he’ll keep up if he has a son: circumcision.
“For traditional reasons or health reasons?”
I ask.
“For not-being-the-weird-kid-at-school reasons,” he
says.
Vans Warped Tour: NOFX
When: 12:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 6
Where: Coors Amphitheatre, 2050 Entertainment Circle, Chula Vista
Tickets $28.25. For more information, call (619) 220-8497.
For feedback, contact editor@sdjewishjournal.com.
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