by Rob Clymo,1991

Chances are, most of those madcap stories you've heard about San Francisco's Mr.Bungle are true. Indeed, it's eight in the evening our time and even I am falling foul of the band's seemingly oddball sense of humour. On calling Danny Heifetz, the band's drummer to do a swift phone interview, I'm greeted not by his voice but a tape playing the closing seconds of the final Twin Peaks episode shown on TV recently. Hmmmm ....

Ten minutes later I'm on the phone to Kristin Yee, the band's manager who sounds equally as confused as I do. "Would you like to talk to Trey Spruance, the guitarist," she enquires. Frankly, I tell her, I'll talk to anybody, let's just do it.

Another ten minutes later and I'm calling the six-stringer's home, and yes, you guessed right, it's another answer-phone. Only this time the message is even more bizarre. Anyway, I'm about to hang up and ditch the whole idea when I finally get a real life, human voice.

"Yeah, this is Trey," comes the more than welcome reply. "We have to vet our calls now," explains the guitarist, shedding some light on the mystery. "It's because the number gets out and we have all these thirteen-year-old girls phoning up and all that shit."

Although Mr. Bungle hasn't been one of those freak overnight success stories. They've actually been around some six years now, emerging from small town obscurity quite recently due to the fact that their singer, one Vlad Dracula, also doubles as Mike Patton, who of course fronts the mighty Faith No More. It all started back in Eureka, a town in Northern California, when the bunch were still at school together. "Eureka is far stranger than its name suggests," laughs the guitarist.

"We all lived there for a long time, like 15 years, and most of us went to the same school. Eureka is just the scariest place, although now three of us live in San Francisco."

Even if you're unfamiliar with their wacky music, it's entirely likely you'll have been hearing the name Mr. Bungle quite a lot recently, so much so that it's resulted in the band being snapped up by Warner Bros. in the States and Slash/London for the rest of the world. Comprising Messrs. Spruance, Heifetz, Dracula and Trevor Dunn on bass, along with Theo Lengyel and Bear McKinnon, a pair of sax players, Mr. Bungle have become world reknown for their highly collectible demos, particularly the notorious "OU818." Naturally though, it's Patton and the FNM connection that everyone is talking about. A fact that seems to mildly irritate guitarist Spruance.

"It was a little weird at first," he says, recalling the point when FNM first approached Patton following the departure of their original singer Chuck Mosley. "We were being approached by quite a lot of record companies at the time. But we figured that if he didn't do it, it would have turned out to be something that Mike would have regretted for the rest of his life. We weren't doing anything super important at the time I guess, so off he went. It wasn't that big a deal at the time because back then FNM weren't that successful. 'Introduce Yourself' had only sold like 80,000 records or whatever. They weren't like the huge thing they are now. We thought it was gonna work out a lot easier than it has."

The guitarist sounds concerned, but was he ever worried that they'd lost Patton for good? "No," he retorts. "There was always this kinda understanding between us."

However clear cut the whole thing appears to be, I must admit to being a little skeptical about how the arrangement is gonna unfold. Let's face it, surely the two bands are going to collide at one point once the rigorous work schedules are arranged? "I don't really see it like that," the guitarist disagrees. "The people who work it out at Warner's are the ones with all the headaches, but as far as I'm concerned, as long as it doesn't come between the band members then there's no real problem."

What's also noticeable is Dracula/Patton's reticence about doing interviews, he appears to be playing the whole thing down, doesn't he? "No, not at all," claims Spruance. "The thing is that Mike has said a lot about the whole thing already, so he feels it's kinda time to give the other people in the band a chance to speak. It's good to be able to give our side of the story, although there are a bunch of different versions. They change depending on our moods. A lot like the music in fact."

Signing the record deal was also a bit of a messy experience by the sound of it? "Well, we didn't really think the Slash thing would be too good for us originally," explains the guitarist. "But they started pulling some legal stuff on us so they ended up with the deal for overseas. It's good in some ways because they seem to have a better way of handling things over here, so we thought 'screw it, we'll do it'."

The music, meanwhile, is a far more entertaining proposition than all that legal nonsense, and to say the band's newly unleashed, eponymously titled debut is a tad unorthodox would be the understatement of the year. In short, it's bizarre, but again, do they ever have to discard stuff they think might draw comparisons with FNM? "No, I don't think that's ever come up," says the six-stringer. "That's the same as saying we'd throw something out because it said 'Fuck' or whatever. As soon as we start doing that then I think it's pretty much the beginning of the end. I don't think our stuff sounds anything like them anyway."

Not surprisingly, a bulk of Mr. Bungle's material has been culled from the band's infamous demos, about half in fact, with the rest being gadded after some careful "picking and choosing" according to the guitarist. But has anyone ever dared suggest that the concept behind Mr. Bungle could be more than a little contrived? One listen to the album certainly proves that the outfit like creating a bit of controversy. "Well, that's sorta been our concern lately," offers the six-stringer. "We had one demo which was really heavy on all the pornography stuff which is a lot of fun to do and some of that material is on the debut. But actually if anybody's pushing the controversial thing it would have to be the record companies. It's those guys who do that kinda thing the most. Y'know, it's like we're being made out to be this big, sexy funk thing, which we're doing our best to fight off. That's not what we want either.

"People also try and put us into the whole Red Hot Chili Peppers thing," adds the guitarist with a huff. "I really don't see it and that can be very annoyingat times. That's the worst thing we can be called because it's really not what we're about at all."

Similarly annoying have been some people's misguided observations that Mr. Bungle is nothing more than a joke concept. Not at all correct according to the guitarist. "Well, I think that anybody who listens to the whole album, more than once, then comes and sees us live will realize we're not a joke band. That question has come up before, but I could point to a couple of songs on the record that are goofy, a couple that are heavy, and a couple that are whatever. But, really, what's the point?"

So do they have a serious point to make along the way? "Well, there's no point to this at all," retorts the six-stringer sounding a trifle peeved. "It all comes from our whims mostly. Our music is like a series of mood swings, and there's no real message in a mood swing, no real point, or anything, but it still kinda happens, y'know."