Faith
No More - You Fat B**tards
(Live At The
Brixton Academy, London)
& Who Cares A Lot:
Greatest Videos
Performance
Production
|
Faith
No More - You Fat B**tards
Performance
|
|
My first introduction to Faith No More was via some old school MTV and their non-stop playing of that "Epic" video. I really didn't know what the hell to make of this band, song, and video at first. The spastic, half-rapped vocals, the screaming metal guitar, the funk, the fucked up lyrics - what was this shit? And coming at a time when I had yet to fully cultivated my hatred of all things rap, "Epic" proved that rap and metal could indeed coexist, and as we all now know, it only went down hill from there. The song's parent album, The Real Thing was just the kind of mind fuck I needed back in 1989 to slap me out of my hair metal rut. So how would they follow up this smash that put them on the map. Would they go more mainstream? More accessible to the MTV masses? Oh hell no! The follow up, Angel Dust was an even more bizarro blend of funk-metal, Vegas lounge act, and Frank Zappa. Mike Patton was actually crooning now for Christ's sake. I didn't quite get the first, oh, 20 spins, but this was the kind of stuff that really had to grow on me. The four Angel Dust videos on this disk remind me of why I dig it so much now. I'll kick this review off with the Greatest Videos half of the package. The sequence does not follow any type of chronological order and curiously starts with the video for the first Angle Dust hit "Midlife Crisis". The videos eventually assume a chronological order once they get to the rest of the Angel Dust videos about half way in, and things begin to flow a little more smoothly. But first, the two Chuck Mosley era videos "Anne’s Song" and "We Care A Lot" get surrounded by the four videos from The Real Thing, "Epic", "Falling To Pieces", "Surprise! You’re Dead!", and "From Out Of Nowhere". Every one of these videos is pretty terrible actually, with the exception of "Epic", and a couple of the post-Angle Dust videos. "Evidence" and "Stripsearch" had me thinking I was watching Roxy Music, and "Last Cup Of Sorrow" is a takeoff off Hitchcock's Vertigo that stars a never more gorgeous looking Jennifer Jason Leigh. It is easily the best video of the bunch, unless that lightning-shooting, eyeball-spouting hand in the "Epic" video is as much of a sentimental favorite to you as it still is for me. I was previously unfamiliar with the Mosley-era material, and after seeing his two videos, it will probably stay that way. You Fat B**stards was filmed at the Brixton Academy, in London, on April 28, 1990 during the middle of the band's The Real Thing tour. New frontman Mike Patton had recently taken over, and considering the drastic new sound Patton brought to The Real Thing, the majority of the setlist would come from that album - thankfully. The one time I saw Faith No More in concert was during their opening slot on the massive Guns and Roses and Metallica tour of 1992. Myself and about 90,000 other metalheads at the New Orleans Superdome, witnessed one of the most explosive concerts in history. Faith No More, on the heals of their new Angle Dust album, did their best to hold back a football stadium full of impatient GNR and Metallica fanatics, and I thought they did an awesome job. Metallica simply slayed this night though, working the crowd into a metal fueled frenzy, and poor GNR should have never attempted to follow. By this point in the tour, Axl Rose had already committed several asinine stunts that nearly caused some shows to get cancelled, and which eventually led to the band's demise. He was in typical form this night, cursing out the crowd for not cheering or singing along loud enough. Well, if your opening band didn't blow you off the stage every night, that might have helped matters. The Brixton Academy show kicks off with "From Out Of Nowhere" and is followed with five more tracks from The Real Thing. The show was filmed very up close and personal, providing an excellent feel for what it must have been like to be there. After an explosive performance of "Epic", they wound things down with the thrash meltdown "Woodpecker From Mars", a smoking "Zombie Eaters", and ended with their killer cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs". Jim Martin must have played in a Sabbath cover band or two in his day, because he could be a dead ringer for Tony Iommi. Towards the end of this awesome performance, Patton feigns his own death in a pool of puked up blood, but miraculously carries out the last verse while laid out on the stage. The production quality was mixed and definitely shows the age of the source material. Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and PCM stereo options were provided. The surround mix sounded rather anemic, particularly with the live set, and the guitar and bass fared the worst. I was expecting to hear Jim Martin's Flying V tear my head off, but his guitar was disappointingly low in the mix. The PCM stereo mix sounded a little stronger overall, and I usually stuck with that. The video was about what you would expect from a low budget 1990 recording, but it captured the essence of the show well. There were no additional special features included with this DVD package. If you are a fan of Faith No More, then this is a must have. Live At The Brixton Academy captures a young and evolving band just entering the peak of their prowess, thundering through an almost entire performance of their breakthrough classic The Real Thing, with Mike Patton running around and singing like a demented psychopath. The videos disk fills in the rest of the blanks and provides an excellent career retrospective of one of the eras most compelling bands. Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - July 2006 |
|
Technical Details |
|
|
Audio Transfer |
Video Transfer |
|
Set List |
Performers |
|
Running Times: |
DVD Release Date - May 2006 |