NOFX

45 or 46 Songs that Weren’t Good Enough to Go on Our Other Records (Fat)
by Scott Hefflon

The title sez it all. If you don’t know what NOFX sounds like, uh, where the fuck you been? That’s one of them whatchacall’ems, hypothermia questions… The one’s you ask but you don’t want an answer to. Anyway, this double CD has a lot of punk on it, including plenty of awful shit (like “Punk Song” from 1987) that you can now say you own, and there’s plenty of covers (the expected Germs and “Last Caress” by the Misfits [no, Metallica didn’t write it, dipshit], but there’s one from URGH: A Music War [my copy got stolen too!], a Bracket tune, and one by Don McLean, whoda thunk?), as well as “classics” left off the “main” records cuz, uh, shit happens. They’re all detailed in the booklet, which is a lot of collage and ranting fun. And lyrics are included, if the band can remember what they were.

The second disc is 25 songs, which is all but one song each from the “Fuck the Kids” 7″ and “Surfer” 7″ (just to be dicks), the story behind them being that punk rock sounds too good and everyone plays too well and the music loses all its vitality. So Fat Mike booked time in the studio, wrote the songs the day before they went in with strict time/effort limits imposed so it was instinctive rather than, like, cerebral, and he didn’t teach anyone the songs until they were in the studio. These songs are the first take the band made it all the way through. Oh, and they were playing other people’s gear. The lengths one has to go to keep the punk energy flowing, ya know? The result, of course, is often cool, fast’n’furious and served straight-up, and sometimes it sucks donkey dick.
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