Every year when this time of year rolls around I get a soft spot deep in the cockles of my heart to listen to Faith No More's "King For A Day/Fool For A Lifetime" cd nonstop. This year marks the 10th anniversary of my being fortunate enough to see them on that tour with Lance, Tim, Scott, and the rest of my buddies at an outdoor music festival where I also was lucky enough to see The Ramones on one of their last tours - a show which forever changed my life as I know it. If I would have stayed home from that, I would have to travel back in time to kick my own ass.
I consider "King For A Day" to be one of the best heavy CDs made in the last 20 years, hands down. I actually go through withdrawal if I go too long without listening to it or loan it to somebody. If you have the means and want to hear a CD crammed full of amazingly diverse yet accessible heavy music, I highly suggest you drop everything you're doing and go buy this CD now. Sell your Korn and Incubus CDs if you need to in order to buy it, as you won't need them anymore. I'll even give you a direct link to purchase it - here you go.
The first time I "King For A Day" it sucked me in from the first to the very last note and I became a changed musician because of it. I remember where I was the first time I heard it - screwing off with Lance in the stockroom of Target on 3rd shift. I tore the cellophane off of the CD and popped it in the stereo and we both stood there in awe. Even the stereo itself was a bit shocked, methinks. The planets aligned when it was recorded and a masterpiece was made. This CD does no wrong in my book other than not being double in length. The band sounded phenomenal and as anyone who has listened to it knows, Mike Patton's vocals and lyrics are something to make any vocalist out there go running to hide under their beds and suck their thumbs. It never lets up on treading the thin line of being really wrecklessly f*&ked up yet digestible, tight and groovy all at once and I don't know how they did it.
What makes me sad is that no one (with the exception of a lot of my musician friends, and you know who you are) seems to even know about this record. They always did well overseas and got a lot of the acclaim and respect they deserved, but it never seemed to happen here in the dumbass American heavy music market. This record has nearly everything you could ask for on it and then some, and it doesn't ever seem like it will sound dated - it just kind of stands in a world of its own. Why people didn't gobble it up when it came out is beyond me... it's hard to know that and hear so many blatant ripoffs that have come out since that have done much better on the charts.
Chances are we'll never see FNM together again, but they done real good on this release and no other band will ever be able to come close to making anything this good in the near or distant future. This isn't my opinion, it's just the way it is whether you like it or not. So yeah - you should go out, buy it, pop it in and turn your volume up as high as your eardrums can muster, and listen to it a lot please.
And then once you have a firm grip on the magic that album provides and "get" what Faith No More was doing way ahead of their time, you need to go out and buy their next release "Album of the Year". And then anything else they've done... "Angel Dust" is the next one that comes to mind. That's an order, dammit!
Don't look at me - I'm ugly in the morning.
