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Mr Bungle (semi) reunion

Started by Shaky, August 14, 2019, 01:04:27 AM

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Noodle Lizard

Quote from: Shaky on September 02, 2019, 12:47:24 AM
Patton just covered Retrovertigo with Mondo Cane:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9fqpxKBcEE

He really struggles with the vocals but sounds on point for the other vids.

Oof, yeah that's about as shaky as I've seen from him.  Fair enough, though, it's a tough song to sing and maybe his voice was knackered.

Shaky

Yeah, I started getting creeping Meatloaf/Paul Young vibes during that but happily he sounds pretty spot on for the main Mondo stuff.

DrGreggles

It could well be a lack of practice on Retrovertigo though. Bet he hasn't sung it much post-Bungle over the last 20 years*.
The rest of the set sounds great from what I can tell.


*20 years! Fucking hell...

samadriel

Quote from: Shaky on September 02, 2019, 12:47:24 AM
Patton just covered Retrovertigo with Mondo Cane:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9fqpxKBcEE

He really struggles with the vocals but sounds on point for the other vids.

Gosh, those vocals are a bit disappointing, aren't they.  Music's good though.

dallasman

Yeah, he doesn't seem to fully get his throat around it, and looks apologetic. Probably shouldn't have been sitting down. He says "que" something at the end, seemingly commenting on the rustiness. Could be the first time they do it live? Not a trainwreck by anyone's standards, but certainly underwhelming by his. Love the grown-out hair, though. I'm thinking it could even be a conscious bit of preparation for the upcoming shows? He looks thinner than he did in the last FNM video I saw, too. Trying to fit back into his old Slayer T-shirts? It's likely not going to be the boiler suits and gimp mask look of the 1992 tour, though Trey confirmed in the Vinyl Guide interview that he has his costumes in storage.

Here's one of the spicier comments on the Retrovertigo clip:

QuoteI really hate, HATE, to ruin every happy moment with some criticism. But here are some thougts. As you guys probably know, Patton never made any kind of warming up before a show and never took care of his voice. The live shows always showed some distractions here and there, not reaching any note only because of slack, because two minutes later the man would hit an impossible one.

But years have passed and the chickens are coming to roost! Since I listened to "Forgotten Songs" and that awful singing on "Retrovertigo" and only said "this guy just don't give a fuck". Mondo Cane came to Argentina and the performance was OK, but in "Legata..." you can hear a terrible missing in the last note, covered by applause. Now, Mr Bungle is coming and Mike will have to do something that is really easy for him: yelling at Death Metal songs. A man with destroyed chords, like Burton C Bell, does the same. But, nevertheless, Mondo Cane played... "RETROVERTIGO"! And it sounds terrible. This is really disappointing.

"I don't think, I just go on stage" (interview, Chile, 2011), "I feel like I'm on a wave" (interview, Chile, 2013), "are you sure of not using a scarf? No, it's ok" (interview, Argentina, 2011. Cold day indeed).

I'm not asking to be an obsessive that will even "listen" if a woman is singing better of worse if it's pregnant, like Ennio Morricone, or almost a music psycho and sociopath like Zorn... but Mike, you can't put up a show like this. And no one will say anything because he is treated like a God.

Obviously, there's something to the "chickens coming home to roost" theory (not so sure about the pregnancy tangent). Just the other day, I was recommended another video of a vocal coach listening to Patton singing, and making astonished faces. Maybe now in his shaggier, glasses-wearing twilight years, he'll get the "uh-oh" feeling and start wearing scarves at all times? It would complete the look, for one thing. A strict new throat regimen could also secure him additional years of live performance, which is obviously in everyone's interest. He's not an egomaniac, and knows he's not indestructible, so I'm sure he's taking steps already. At the end of the day, though, it's not that bad of a performance, and it was really cool to hear him do it. There'll be better versions up in due course, I'm sure.

Noodle Lizard

To be fair, it was the final song of a long performance, presumably after a fair bit of international travel and stress.  It amazes me that touring vocalists are able to sing at all, honestly.  Back when I used to do a bit of touring, even a slight headache would throw me off, let alone a cold or nausea or any number of other things traveling makes more likely - and I was in an unpopular death metal band, so it didn't even matter.  I think it's more noticeable with Patton because he's unusually note-perfect a lot of the time, so a few rough notes stand out far more.

I read that spicy YouTube comment and it just made me laugh.  "Mike, you can't put up a show like this".

Shaky

Yeah, to be fair Patton has had an incredible vocal range for what... 30-odd years now? Eventually something was going to give in his voice from time to time. He's already a fair bit gruffer than he once was. Reminds me of that discussion in a previous thread about Patton's more recent work  - once you've heard the man who can do everything, er, do everything, the audience can only be a bit disappointed as the years pass whether that's actually fair or not.

Dirty Boy

I haven't had time to listen to the clip yet (so maybe it sounds reeeally bad), but just to say that we've had this discussion about his voice on at least two occasions recently: during the Tomahawk gigs in early 2013 and at the start of the US tour for Sol Invictus he was noticably struggling with his voice and we were predicting the worst until he got a bit further into his stride and sounded much better and (to my ear) not much different from in the 90's.

If he's worried about fucking his voice it hardly seems likely he'd still do things like Dead Cross/ thrashy early-Bungle etc. I worry more about his onstage nuttery to be honest given he fell onto concrete at Rock in Rio a while back and managed to pull a tendon at the very first FNM reunion show in Brixton.

Anyway, here's a new interview.

alan nagsworth

he also had to cancel a dead cross show last year because he fell off a skateboard

sponk

If I'd been in that crowd I'd have been dead cross

PlanktonSideburns

Sure I've seen a bungle live video where he struggles on retrovrrtigo - is it like a really high, hard song to sing?

It feels like a song that belongs at the last third of a live set, being a slow epic thing. Is it a combination of that and it being bastad style on the vocal chords maybe?

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: sponk on September 03, 2019, 07:18:14 PM
If I'd been in that crowd I'd have been dead cross

I was in that crowd, and I was.  Especially since I'd gotten in arse-ache for having to leave work early, paid for a poor friend's ticket/Uber and couldn't go to the make-up date the following day.

On stage, the band members made it sound far more serious than what it actually was: a 50-year-old man falling off a skateboard.

McFlymo

Bit surprised by how bad Patton's vocals were on that Retrovertigo video, my thinking is if you'd just done a concert of intense belting that Patton does in Mondo Cane, it's not surprising that his vocal cords would be throbbing and tired and thus he'd find it harder to control his voice for the softer stuff in that song.

On the other hand: There's absolutely no way Patton could have had a career this long, doing the vocally demanding singing he does and doing the amount of touring he does without attention to his vocal health and having some good warm up / warm down / rest techniques under his belt.

I've done a bit of singing in bands and I can hear the difference in my voice after a small run of gigs. To do that for years: There's no way you won't completely fuck yourself unless you work at it, which includes things like changing your diet, getting proper rest, not speaking, drinking the right things, breathing exercises, warm ups all that boring shit.

McFlymo

But more importantly! Patton playing Retrovertigo with Mondo Cane is an interesting move in light of the Bungle Reunion.

I had the sense that it was Patton's idea that the Bungle reunion should be their earliest metal stuff, so this Retrovertigo cover is strange.

Could it be Bungle fans, being disappointed that they're only getting the thrashy early demo reunion, have persuaded Patton to at least test the waters with this song?

Or because Patton has access to a full band (brass section and orchestral instruments) in Mondo Cane he thought it's a good cover to do for shits and giggles?

Is he just being troll?


Shaky

Quote from: McFlymo on September 09, 2019, 01:18:30 PM
But more importantly! Patton playing Retrovertigo with Mondo Cane is an interesting move in light of the Bungle Reunion.

I had the sense that it was Patton's idea that the Bungle reunion should be their earliest metal stuff, so this Retrovertigo cover is strange.

Could it be Bungle fans, being disappointed that they're only getting the thrashy early demo reunion, have persuaded Patton to at least test the waters with this song?

The Bungle reunion seems to have been largely Dunn's doing, reading a few of the recent quotes. He feels the music on the demo holds up and deserves a proper airing etc etc. Interesting that Retrovertigo is a Trevor song, but there might be nothing more to that than it suits orchestral backing better than most Bungle tracks.

Noodle Lizard

I thought I read in one of the comments that Patton's pulled out Retrovertigo a few times over the years, in various projects.  Could be complete bollocks, mind you, as this recent one is the only example I've seen/heard.

All of this chatter and what-for has made me re-listen to every Bungle thing I have over the past few weeks, though.  I hadn't really listened to the studio albums properly in a while, and the demos even less so, so it's been an interesting return.  I did the same thing with some of Devin Townsend's back catalogue, and I was surprised to find that my tastes have obviously moved on a fair bit - albums that literally changed my entire musical perspective as a late-teenager now showing their flaws good and proper.  It's a sad feeling, but doesn't detract from my overall admiration for the band and what they've done.

Couple that with knowing that my wish finally came true and I will be going to see Mr. Bungle live in February ... only it's them playing their least impressive work with only half their "proper" members and nothing else.  Why would anything nice ever happen?

alan nagsworth

I revisited the three Bungle albums as well, due to this thread and also having a general trip down memory lane with some other corkers like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and the like, and was relieved as I always am that for the most part it all holds up as golden. My attention span doesn't particularly enjoy all the field noise shite in the first album but pretty much everything else is fucking great. California is such an immaculately produced piece of work, the whole thing having a deliberately slightly-too-heavy shine and shimmer across it, despite having its own unique flavour not only as the work of a particular band but as a standalone record as well.

McFlymo

I've stuck on the three Bungle studios albums occasionally over the years and I still love them! The first album holds up surprisingly well, maybe that early 90s Californian heavy rock / metal thing has slowly come back into fashion in a subtle way, recently (the way the 80s have been ploughed so shamelessly over the last 10 years or so). I first had a hint of this 90s comeback when I heard some shit pop song using the Chemical Brothers Electrobank beat recently. And then all the kids at my work who dress in plaid and look like Kurt Cobain. Supergrass reforming and such....

Anyway, what surprised you by being really good / really not so good with your recent re-listens of Bungle nagsworth and Noodle Lizard?

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: McFlymo on September 13, 2019, 02:21:06 AM
Anyway, what surprised you by being really good / really not so good with your recent re-listens of Bungle nagsworth and Noodle Lizard?

It's not so much that it's "not good", moreso that it just seems less revolutionary or unique than it used to.  It was actually most apparent on California, for me.  I've always shrugged off the odd tracks of theirs ('Love Is A Fist' and 'The Holy Filament', to name a couple), but I found myself getting slightly irritated by a lot of other songs this time round - a lot of 'Slowly Growing Deaf' and 'Egg', some entire sections of Disco Volante, 'Golem II: The Bionic Vapour Boy', 'Ars Moriendi' even 'Sweet Charity'.  I don't know what happened, they all started seeming a bit naff.  It's not that they're bad at all, but perhaps more impressive when you've heard less other similarly "weird" music (i.e. when I was 18).

Conversely, I think I have more appreciation for songs like 'Vanity Fair' and 'None Of Them Knew They Were Robots' than I used to, and some of the wankier/ambient sections of 'Disco Volante' are more interesting to me now.  I think a lot changes in that teens/20s decade.  I also realized that I think about half of Faith No More's output is shite as well, once I was over the initial fascination with it all.

McFlymo

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on September 13, 2019, 03:52:01 AM
It's not so much that it's "not good", moreso that it just seems less revolutionary or unique than it used to.  It was actually most apparent on California, for me.  I've always shrugged off the odd tracks of theirs ('Love Is A Fist' and 'The Holy Filament', to name a couple), but I found myself getting slightly irritated by a lot of other songs this time round - a lot of 'Slowly Growing Deaf' and 'Egg', some entire sections of Disco Volante, 'Golem II: The Bionic Vapour Boy', 'Ars Moriendi' even 'Sweet Charity'.  I don't know what happened, they all started seeming a bit naff.  It's not that they're bad at all, but perhaps more impressive when you've heard less other similarly "weird" music (i.e. when I was 18).

Conversely, I think I have more appreciation for songs like 'Vanity Fair' and 'None Of Them Knew They Were Robots' than I used to, and some of the wankier/ambient sections of 'Disco Volante' are more interesting to me now.  I think a lot changes in that teens/20s decade.  I also realized that I think about half of Faith No More's output is shite as well, once I was over the initial fascination with it all.

The more leftfield / ambient environmental noise elements to Disco Volante seem more interesting to me now, the whole atmosphere of it always had a big impact on me, but there are some meandering bits on it that I can't be arsed with anymore.

I also agree with FNM: There's a certain acceptance of all of their music for me, just because it's so deeply ingrained in my memory, but yeah, it's hard to justify some of it, really. I'll still keep wearing my FNM t-shirts partly to signal to other sad losers how much of a sad loosser I am, but partly because I feel it's like embracing the fact that I'm fat and old now and not even bothering to hide it.

Noodle Lizard

I also have to remind myself constantly that the vast majority of Bungle's output was recorded when they were younger than I am now, and I'm not old by any means.  If you were to drag up whatever shit I made in my teens/early 20s, it'd be 1000x times worse.  So my take on them now really isn't a comment on the respective quality of the work itself.  They're an insanely talented bunch of lads.

alan nagsworth

Agree on FNM. I've always felt that way, though: outside of Angel Dust and KFADFFAL, they've never particularly grabbed me all that much save for a few odd songs.

Shaky

Yeah, for me those two albums plus The Real Thing are the band's only absolutely essential complete LPs. I have a hard time admitting Album of the Year is a bit shit because I heard it at a very pivotal time in my life but there's a lot of tossed off, first draft stuff on there. Really sounds like they couldn't be arsed anymore (and of course some of band members genuinely weren't by that point).

Having said that, I'm chuffed a track as good as "Matador" came out of the recent reunion so there's obviously potential there still.

DrGreggles


non capisco

Quote from: DrGreggles on September 15, 2019, 08:03:03 PM
Looks like he practised 'Retrovertigo':
https://youtu.be/QNvzwffXBaw

Yeah, he's note perfect on that one. Patton was never going to go the way of Paul Young, Meat Loaf and Bobby Kimball from Toto. You don't lose those kind of pipes forever.

non capisco

Quote from: Shaky on September 13, 2019, 11:39:28 AM
Having said that, I'm chuffed a track as good as "Matador" came out of the recent reunion so there's obviously potential there still.

Yeah, I don't go back to Sol Invictus all that much but Matador is one of my very favourite FNM songs. And the bastards didn't play it at the show I went to! (Although aside from that omission the 2015 gig at The Roundhouse was all kinds of wonderful)

Shaky

Yeah, Matador is such a beast it dwarfs the rest of Sol Invictus. I like the album but a couple more monsters would have gone a long way. I had a listen to Superhero today and it struck me yet again that half the track is wasted noodling.

Anyone else listened to Corpse Flower yet? Have to say... after a few spins I'm not hating it, surprisingly.  In fact, it's actually rather good and Patton sounds more engaged than he has for a long time. It helps that the songs and arrangements are excellent in places.

lankyguy95

Quote from: Shaky on September 16, 2019, 12:46:48 PM
Anyone else listened to Corpse Flower yet? Have to say... after a few spins I'm not hating it, surprisingly.  In fact, it's actually rather good and Patton sounds more engaged than he has for a long time. It helps that the songs and arrangements are excellent in places.
I've listened to it once but yeah I enjoyed it. Nice collaboration for him I think.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Shaky on September 16, 2019, 12:46:48 PMAnyone else listened to Corpse Flower yet? Have to say... after a few spins I'm not hating it, surprisingly.  In fact, it's actually rather good and Patton sounds more engaged than he has for a long time. It helps that the songs and arrangements are excellent in places.

Been listening to it today and enjoying it. I'm more a fan of JCV than MP so I'm not really surprised to be finding the arrangements excellent. It works as a collaboration too- when I first heard about it I couldn't decide if it sounded inspired or like it wouldn't work at all, so I've been pleasantly surprised.

I saw him at the RFH conducting L'enfant Assassin De Mouches and Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson. If you've not heard that particular JCV album before I'd check it out, you'd probably enjoy that too.