Don’t just do something — stand there!
Ben Folds Five – Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head from Burt Bacharach: One Amazing Night
Big Star – When My Baby’s Beside Me from #1 Record (1972)
Blue Magic – Sideshow from The Best of Blue Magic: Soulful Spell
Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. and Faith No More – Another Body Murdered from Judgment Night
soundtrack (1993)
Cat Power – Wonderwall (Saboteur Version) — unreleased (2000)
Dido – Slide from No Angel
Lene Lovich – Lucky Number from Stateless
Radio Birdman – Do the Pop from Radios Appear
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – Constipation Blues from Greatest Hits
Sevendust – Waffle from Home
Soul Coughing – Circles from El Oso
The Moody Blues – 22,000 Days from Long Distance Voyager
Ween – Push th’ Little Daisies from Pure Guava
Wilco – Burned from I Shot Andy Warhol
Faith No More were not at all my thing in 1987. Heck, they weren’t my thing in 1990, when they climbed into the upper ranks of modern rock superstardom with the admittedly awesome “Epic.” I spent the spring of 1987 listening to the Smiths (Louder Than Bombs and Hatful of Hollow, which are pretty much the same album), the Style Council (The Cost of Loving), and Love and Rockets (I drove the guy in the dorm room next to me positively nuts with “Kundalini Express.” Didn’t I, Joe?). Then I went home for a weekend – I probably needed to do laundry, ran out of money, or both – and saw a video on “120 Minutes” for some no-name San Francisco band called Faith No More, and suddenly realized what my life was missing: a chain-gang chorus. I went back to school, perused the 12″ singles at the local record store (SchoolKids, holler), and would you look at that; this group of punkers – there was no hard rock scene within the modern rock movement yet, so for the moment, Faith No More were punkers – made a 12″ mix. Now you’re speaking my language.
The “My Album / Your Album” dynamic. Sounds like a really odd phrase, but you’ve experienced it: You are suddenly enthralled by this artist or band, you’ve listened to their debut a million times, memorized every word and note and have contributed to their sudden overnight success. Now their sophomore album is being released! You run breathlessly to the store or the computer and grab it up! You listen to it and wait for those waves of satisfaction to wash over you. You listen. You listen. You say…
That’s how it was for most people when they heard Angel Dust, the album arriving after Faith No More’s breakout smash The Real Thing. It was the band’s fourth but the second with Mike Patton at the microphone and was, in many respects, as much a sophomore effort as any. The dynamic was apparent immediately. Where there was restraint, being the cagey way “Epic” said and didn’t say it was about self-gratification, on Angel Dust things were much more blatant: “Be Aggressive” is an ode to fellatio, pure and simple. “Jizzlobber” is about the guilt that would come (pardon the pun) after the actions presumably taken in “Epic.” Where The Real Thing stayed true to the hard rock structure, even as Patton rapped, Angel Dust had twisted pop, rock, even trailer-park country in the humor vein (”RV”); The former had the Black Sabbath cover of “War Pigs” while the latter had a cover of John Barry’s “
