NOFX’s inspirations: the five favourite albums of Fat Mike
Fat Mike, ringleader of NOFX, is a complicated man.
Ask 200 people at a crowded punk show what their opinions of the man born Michael John Burnett are, and you’ll probably get around 250 different answers.
There are those who think he’s a legend and those who think he’s a fraud. Then there are those who think he’s such a legend that he’s become a fraud, and vice versa. I’m sure there are a few people who few him as a cuddly elder statesman of punk, or a daring iconoclast, or a past-it old has-been. Then there are the people who view him as one of the few people that any true-blue punk should point at and call that most dreaded of terms, a sell-out.
The truth is that Fat Mike has led such a public life and been so seemingly honest about it both in song and in interviews that each of those 250 opinions on him is probably correct in some way. He’s a man who contains multitudes, and has a somewhat annoying habit of shoving those multitudes right in your face at any chance he can get while daring you to judge him for it. I’d count your blessings if I were you, as the attendees of his Cokie the Clown set at SXSW 2010 will tell you, it’s not the worst thing Fat Mike can shove in your face, not by a long shot.
However, these multitudes are probably best shown by a list of his favourite albums that he put together for Spin in 2023. With a surface knowledge of the man, one would probably imagine that his favourite albums are all from the same kind of punk he’s been playing for the past 40 years. The kind where the most accessible hardcore meets the heaviest pop-punk. The kind that made them one of the biggest cult bands in the world in the 1990s. Yet if you think anything about Fat Mike is predictable, think again.
After all, the list of his favourite albums contains two musical theatre records. Bet you didn’t see that coming!
What are the favourite albums of Fat Mike?
The first musical theatre record on his list is also the first record on the list in general and the one Fat Mike seems to hold closest to his heart. Fair play to the guy, it’s one of the best musical theatre records of the past few decades and arguably one of the two best rock musicals ever. We’ll get to the other one, but the Original Cast Recording of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s gender-bending, glitter-rock masterpiece Hedwig and the Angry Inch is as good a place to start as any.
This record is followed by one a lot closer to home, despite hailing from the icy banks of Hortlax, Sweden. Fellow punk rockers Randy and their fourth album, The Human Atom Bombs, are up next on the list, mainly due to their “total lack of professionalism” in the immortal words of Fat Mike. A statement almost as confusing as one he makes on the next record on the list, David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, where the first thing he says on the record is “For the most part, I don’t like the music.”
Yet, the glam rock classic is also a record he calls “a perfect album”. Again, complicated guy, what can I say? At number four, we’ve got the album that has probably had the biggest effect on Fat Mike, since it was the album on the list he got into the earliest. When he was eight years old, he watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time and had his life utterly changed, the way that many people were when they watched that film for the first time.
He rounds out his list with a record he released on his label, Fat Wreck Chords. This may sound like a savvy player hawking his wares, and in a small way, it probably is, but 12 Song Program by the late No Use For A Name frontman Tony Sly is also a record that clearly means a lot to Mike. Of it, he says, “Since [Sly] died, I don’t listen to it very much because it makes me too sad. But it is a record I cannot live without.”
Even if you’re one of the people whose opinion on Fat Mike was negative, you can’t deny that the man had taste.