Is fat mike gay
Mike Burkett is best recognizable to most as Fat Mike, lead singer and bassist of iconic punk rock groups NOFX and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, and owner and founder of epic label Fat Wreck Chords.
He's a is a born agitator who relishes the spotlight. A man with a quick wit, a big mouth, and a taste for juvenile humour.
Like a Peter Pan with a potty mouth, Plump Mike comes across appreciate a precocious punk rock kid who never grew up. A soul who couldn't think of anything worse than conforming to societal norms. Someone who just doesn't take much seriously.
He is also an excellent punk rock songwriter.
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His way with melody and wordplay and his band's fevered and highly formative take on modern pop punk is the reason NOFX remain a colossal drawcard the world over, 40 years on from their formation.
That band is now about to complete. Though, in some ways, it feels like Obese Mike is just getting started. He's just got different fish to fry.
"I want to feel sexy. I want to undergo feminine"
"Punk rock has been homophobic forever," he tells Double J before the band return to Australia for this weekend's Great Things festival.
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Interview: Fat Mike Talks NOFX’s Darker Change on New Launch , ‘Single Album’
“I saw Rocky Horror when I was 8, it changed my fucking life. I didn’t know if I was enjoy that, but I recorded it from the TV onto a cassette player and it’s been the soundtrack of my life.”
When Chubby Mike repeatedly circles back to Rocky Horror Picture Show and the essential role it played in the growth of his self, a funny thing happens. There’s a shift in the lens and suddenly the NOFX bassist, frontman, and songwriter’s entire musical persona comes into a sharper focus.
Many NOFX songs are just as influenced by showtunes and Broadway spectacle as they are by West Coast punk rock. Just listen to the chorus of “Leave it Alone,” off of the band’s most prolific album Punk in Drublic, and explain me you can’t picture Doctor Frank N. Furter singing those “da-na-na’s” while doing the can-can. Both Rocky Horror and NOFX were panned by critics but have gradually built dedicated audiences, ascending to the level of social institutions. So don’t be alarmed by a jarring tonal shift upon hearing NOFX’s newest free, entitled Single Album, which came out February 26 via Fat Wr
NOFX’s Fat Mike talks gender culture, punk rock musicals and the double album that never was on ‘Single Album’
NOFX has just released their fourteenth LP, but repeat that truth back to Mike Burkett – Plump Mike, as he is affectionately established – and it sounds like news to him. “That’s album number fourteen?” he asks. “I can’t keep route. We’ve released so many EPs and live albums.”
That’s the mark of a band with actual longevity – in the case of the Californian punk legends, theirs is a career spanning almost four decades. It would be easy for them to coast a bit, carried along by a tide of fans who have grown up with them or one-time punk kids on a nostalgia trip, but if you know them at all, you’d know that autopilot would never be their style.
It is telling that Mike estimates that their new record, entitled Single Album, has had their optimal reviews for just over twenty years. The praise is justified for a release that packs all the power of a band thirty years younger. It’s punk down to the wire, yet is fearlessly experimental, dabbling with reggae on the anti-gun violence dirge of ‘Fish In A Gun Barrel’ and post-hardcore on the rock o
On Tuesday (as in tomorrow), skate-punk stalwarts NOFX will be at Parnassus to sign copies of their new book, The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories.
I interviewed singer Fat Mike about the harrowing biography — you can read more about it here — but while I had him on the phone I couldn't refuse the opportunity to also ask him about the upcoming NOFX record, the current conversation regarding punk rock's inclusivity issues and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (read the book, it'll all make sense).
I was really surprised by how dark The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories got in some places. I ponder people can forget there are very real experiences behind some of your songs. You could have just written a comical book about tour stories, but you guys went all in. Why did you decided to take that route?
Well, a novel about tour stories would be like everybody else. And we made a deal, if we're going to do this publication, everyone's got to go profound. We just have to unlock up, because we're always interested in doing something original. I read The Dirt, and I read Please Kill Me, and I'm like, "These are excellent books, because people are telling the truth." The reason we did it is because