Credit: Dangerous Minds / YouTube Still

Fat Mike has a very specific reputation within punk rock.

The NOFX frontman is more or less the embodiment of “what if Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had a sleazy human uncle who was just as much of a party animal?” An outrageous, boundary-pushing freak that had as much to do with Henry Rollins and Ian Mackaye’s serious to the point of puritanical take on punk rock as he does with Mary Whitehouse’s.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t have a political and moral conscience, far from it, but he’s just as likely to rant about his line of lingerie for men than anything happening in American politics. He’s been walking the walk for over 40 years now, and it’s a reputation that he’s earned with aplomb. However, there’s a darkness to the world of Fat Mike. Not just the obvious kind of darkness that comes from copious amounts of booze, drugs and brushes with the law either.

The kind of genuine darkness that haunts not only the person who lived through it, but all who hear about it, too. While it may look on the service like the man born Michael Burkett developed this clown prince of punk exterior to cope with that darkness, the exact opposite is true. This was a man who put on the make-up, wig and oversized shoes as a way of showing the world the very real scars that lay under his battle jacket.

It began, like so many shocking things do, with a b-side. One of the singles from NOFX’s eleventh album, 2008’s Coaster, contained a song called ‘Cokie The Clown’ on the reverse, a song introducing a sad, drunken, drug-addled clown played by Burkett. This was followed up with a whole EP of songs from Cokie’s perspective and then one of the most infamous moments in the history of NOFX. A history that even someone unfamiliar with the band could probably tell you is littered with infamous moments.

Part of what was so confusing about the Cokie The Clown show was that it was announced as a part of the 2010 edition of SXSW, an industry shindig more known as a meeting point for music tastemakers than experimental punk rock pranks. Perhaps that was part of the gag, though. Fat Mike is the kind of provocateur to save something as genuinely shocking as this concert exactly for the audience it deserves. A bunch of industry goons mingling while waiting for the MGMT secret set is exactly the audience that deserves something like this.

Mike took to the stage with a tray, a bottle of whiskey and a set of shots. As a way of getting the crowd onside, it worked. He poured a shot for each member of the front row and a few behind them, toasted the crowd, and then everyone downed their shot. Remember this. Then, the show began. Mike played a 40-minute set of the most bleak, depressing songs you’ve ever heard, twinned with Mike telling some of the most depressing stories you’ve ever heard as well.

Murder, sexual assault, drug addiction, suicide, depression, the gang was all here and each one dealt with frankly, barefacedly and without a hint of the black humour NOFX have been known for. The crowd stood, jaws on the floor. A few people were in tears for the whole show. This was very much the point, as Fat Mike explained to Alternative Press shortly after the show. “I didn’t go out there to entertain the crowd. I wanted to do something that these people hadn’t seen before.”

He continued by saying, “I wanted to do the exact opposite of what everyone expected. I wanted to touch people and super-bum them out. I wanted to be brutally honest and sincere. Listen to the stories and tell me I wasn’t telling the truth.” However, what sent the show into punk rock legend was its ending, where Mike gestured to a screen above him, which showed a video of him seconds before getting on stage for that very show, pissing into the whiskey bottle that he served everyone’s shots from.

It’s disgusting. It’s shocking. It’s disturbing. It’s punk rock in a way that vanishingly few people have ever pulled off, and I’m sure that’s a point of pride for Fat Mike.