By Christina Fuoco,1999
Yes, Mike Patton, former singer of Faith No More, is in Mr. Bungle. But the similarities between the two bands end there. To dismiss Mr. Bungle as a simple rock band sells it short. These are accomplished musicians who create a jagged musical landscape. Its self-titled debut, produced by Knitting Factory hero John Zorn, is a nightmare you might get after spending all day at a carnival, whereas the follow-up, "Disco Volante," ventures into noise music. "California," Bungle's latest, is a surprisingly poppy CD, but you still won't catch any of this on the radio. Live, Mr. Bungle is a car crash with massive fatalities. The members have a propensity for hiding their identities. It's Halloween year 'round. Guitarist Trey Spruance filled citysearch in on the mania.
I saw Mr. Bungle a few years ago and people were shouting for Mike to take off his mask. Do you thrive on not giving the audience what they want?
Do you have any future plans to work with John Zorn?
You've produced your last few CDs. Do you like that better than working with a producer?
Would you like to do any movie soundtracks or does Danny Elfman have the market cornered?
Groups like Mr. Bungle and the Butthole Surfers are expected to put out the unexpected. Do you think you've lost any shock value since you started?
Have you played in Japan?
It seems like you would really go over there.
Will you be busier now that Mike isn't splitting his time between bands?
In a review of "California" in Spin Magazine, it was stated that Mr. Bungle and Primus were both major influences on Korn and Limp Bizkit. If you're responsible for bringing them into this world, could you take them out?
Would you play the OzzFest if Ozzy personally asked you to?
Bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit. No, just kidding, actually bands like the Deftones and Coal Chamber.
No, not at all actually. It's weird, I think a lot of people think that. What's happening is usually we're doing some really involved piece of music, and people are screaming a bunch of stuff. A lot of the perception is that we're defying what's going on. But if you took a few steps back and looked at it, we're generally just doing what we do, and there's just a bunch of people yelling at us. So if you start giving in to that, what are you doing up there? You're just being an idiot. I think we have more of that to deal with than most bands, so we have really strong blocking mechanisms. Now we've learned how to work with the audience a little better, and have it be a little more of a shared experience. But during that tour, it was a real awkward transition for our fans because we were doing more difficult music. The people who wanted to hear funk metal outnumbered the people who wanted to hear the experimental music. So we got used to people yelling at us all the time. Just had to ignore them.
No, it was just a one-time thing with the first record. It would be fun to do a one-off thing. We all do different things [individually] with Zorn. It's just that Mr. Bungle hasn't done anything with him since the first record. All of us have played in Cobra [Zorn's traveling avant-garde musical game] and done various recordings with him.
The only reason we even had a producer on the first record was simply because it was John Zorn. We don't really need a producer. We can pretty much do it ourselves. The advantage is you don't have to pay somebody to put their spin on ideas that you already have fully formed. We really know what the music is supposed to sound like. Technically, I've gotten a lot better at knowing how to pull it off. If we were to hire somebody, we'd be paying them to get in the way at this point. If it was somebody who was a creative artist, who knew something that we didn't, we'd certainly hire them to do it.
It seems like it, doesn't it? We've never been approached for anything seriously. It's weird. It seems like it should have happened. And we're definitely receptive to the idea. Now Billy Corgan is writing them, and all the rock stars are writing movie soundtracks. Then again, would we really want to score the soundtrack for a stupid Hollywood piece of shit? It would be nice to at least be asked.
[Laugh] Fuck no, man! Because, check it out. We did "Disco Volante," so suddenly the people who were into the [earlier] stuff, a few of them drop off. But then everyone starts listening to avant-garde music and noise music and stuff that's really crazy and that's great. Do you realize how easy it would have been for us to continue doing that, to keep constantly being this weird band? I think the absolute craziest thing we could have done is exactly what we did. Which is really, really work hard on this monumentally polished set of pop songs with our spin on them. I think it shocked the fuck out of a lot of those people. That's the only people who are our audience [people who like avant-garde music]. The mainstream isn't going to listen to us, they're never going to, I'm almost convinced of that. The only people we have to shock are our fans who are already there. I think we did a pretty good job of it.
Amazingly enough, no. I've played with other bands over there, but I've never played there with Mr. Bungle, we've never gone.
Yeah, yes I know. You don't even want to know the political problem we had, last time, it's just gross, horrible. Things got screwed up with our "then" management. We'll go there probably early next year, and clean up the mess we made.
We're able to do more touring. We have pretty extensive tour plans going well into next year. Our recording schedule will be easier to deal with now. But on the other hand, this frees up more time for all of our various side projects. We all have them, and we all work really hard on that stuff. The pace will probably quicken a little for Mr. Bungle, but it's not like we're going to put out one record every year or anything.
A lot of people think that we should be flattered by that. It's such a fucking insult! Think of "Sweet Charity" [the first song on California] and then think of Limp Bizkit. What the fuck are people talking about? OK, the first record, maybe. But we're talking about 10 years' time elapsed. I just don't understand how that connection can be made. I don't hear one microsecond of that on our new record, or on our last record. What are people talking about?
Sure, why not? Who's on the OzzFest?
Yeah, I would rather play to dirty [rockers] than to the new school skate "wuss" metal thing. I'm not really into that. I don't know, I'll play to anybody. I don't give a flying shit.