NOFX’s first release for an actual label was So What If We’re on Mystic?, followed by The PMRC Can Suck on This (featuring the politically-and-every-other-kind-of-incorrect “Dueling Retards”). The band’s breakthrough album was White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean (a description of NOFX’s ethnic profile) and its biggest album was Punk in Drublic. The band’s first live release was cheekily bannered I Heard They Suck Live!, and they dubbed a best-of compilation The Greatest Songs Ever Written (By Us!). For NOFX, tact and humility were the first things to be jettisoned.
From the beginning, Fat Mike and his NOFX compatriots (original guitarist Eric Melvin and original drummer Erik Sandin; guitarist El Hefe signed on in 1991 and that’s been the lineup for nearly two decades) have charted a contentious course that exhibited their complete unwillingness to compromise. Evidence includes Fat Mike’s founding and spearheading the Rock Against Bush movement in 2003, but his most recent caprice might have been his most outlandish: During South By Southwest in Austin this year, Mike’s alter ego, Cokie the Clown, served tequila to his audience then showed them a video indicating that he’d pissed in the bottle, thus ending what would appear to be last appearance at of any NOFX-affiliated project at SXSW.
For great Punk/Hardcore with humor, intelligence and integrity, NOFX is the only choice. But if a clown hands you a drink at the show, it might be a good time to claim to be straight edge.
(Buy tickets, check out performance times and get venue details here.)
