by Kim Edwards, 1991

Here is the story: In the beginning, there were people and the people, they ate the apple and after the apple, the people, they took a dump and from the dump came Turd, and from Turd, Mr. Bungle.

A history of Mr. Bungle in fifty words or less, from the musings of guitar wild guy Trey Spruance: "It was 1985 when we started. We were in rival death metal bands. Jed and I were rivals with Mike and Trevor. Trevor and Mike got kicked out of their death metal band because they wanted to shave their heads and call it Turd. So we just sort of merged (okay, over fifty words) into this one band and we called it Mr. Bungle."

And then, says Mike Patton, the voice box, "Except they weren't really death metal and we were. Trevor and I wore more spikes and stuff. We still are a death metal band, that's very important to know. No one ever notes it."

Duly noted. Mr. Bungle is still a death metal band. Mike Patton continues, "We have roots deep in the death metal scene."

Deep. The name? Spruance: "We came really close to calling the band Summer Breeze." Patton: "Real close." Spruance: "And then we thought Mr. Bungle was a little better."

Mr. Bungle? Spruance: "As friends, we devised certain names for different people around school, and there was this one particular guy who was a total goober that we called Mr. Bungle. That name was inspired by the Pee Wee Herman special where they show footage of the little kid who was the amoral bastard, who didn't clean his belly button or whatever."

Yeah, so belly button lint, but what is this 'Turd' stuff? Then comes Trevor Dunn, the bass man, and he says: "Turd, I'm not even supposed to be talking to you about Turd." Hmmm... why not? Dunn: "Well, first of all, because you're a girl."

Be brave. Dunn: "Turd is just the hugest concept in the world. It's the biggest racist, chauvinist concept ever."

Turd -- Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn, and a Casio on a 120 minute Realistic cassette. Patton on guitar, Dunn on vocals.

Spruance, you know, Trey Spruance, the one who drives around his hometown, Eureka California, with girls and tries to get them to take their clothes off and then jacks off, that Spruance, he says: "We've gotten so much from Turd.
That's probably the biggest influence on Bungle, like 'Tractor in my Balls' and all that stuff is Turd. Just Trevor screaming random things into a microphone. Some of the images are really strong and it's easy to come along and put them into a neat format, because they come across so convincingly in Turd."

Hmmm. Spruance: "Yeah, you wouldn't believe it. It's pretty amazing stuff. It's on a Realistic tape. Can't be recorded on anything else. It's just that one Realistic tape. It's full now. They haven't made an album for like three years or whatever. I'm the one Turd fan and I've performed Turd surgery."

What? Spruance: "Every time they're done recording or listening to it (the Realistic cassette), they have to throw it up against the wall and wherever it lands is where it stays for the rest of the time until they listen to it again. And it broke one time and I had to fix it."

Because your'e the one Turd fan? Spruance: "Yeah, and they didn't have the know-how. Turd is like a really big union within our band. It sneaks out on stage as well. There's sort of a thing between Mike and Trevor that nobody in the world, including their best fan, understands."

The way they lick each other and stuff? Spruance: "Yeah. The things that happen are definitely Turd, even though the roles are reversed in Bungle -- Mike is singing instead of Trevor. Turd still exists. It's hiding in Bungle."

Bungle's id? Spruance: "It's a subliminal thing happening. Turd's big. It's a big thing with us. Actually, there's a new song that I'm making up called "The Road Going into the Trees," which is a Turd song. It's about this little road."

What is it about Turd that you love so much? Spruance: "Well, if you heard it, you might know." You don't have a tape, though. There's only one tape? Spruance: "There's only one." And that tape can never be reproduced. Spruance: "Exactly. You have to come to Trevor's house to hear it. There's something about it. It just has me rolling. It's really witty. Trevor can be pretty amazing sometimes."

So, Trevor Dunn can be pretty amazing sometimes, but will his mom allow a visit to hear the Turd tape, and even then, will his dad allow a foray into the Trevor room where the Turd tape resides, and the thing is, what about these guys' parents anyway? Do they listen to Mr. Bungle?

Dunn: "They asked to hear the tape (OU818, the last Mr. Bungle release) again not too long ago. But they wonder about the lyrics and say like, 'Do you have to use those words?'"

When asked about his parents, Patton says: "You have to understand, my parents are the type that own porno."

Yes boys and girls, Mr. Bungle can talk nasty. Your mom might not approve. They have words in their songs like 'butt bang' and 'dick' and 'ween' and 'wong' and 'dickweed'. There are also words like 'soliloquy' and 'incubus' and 'coprophagist' and even 'chivalry.' Yes, it's true. Mr. Bungle went to college.

They all go to college or went at one time. Spruance is sort of a music major with leanings toward physics. Dunn graduated with a music major. Theo Lengyel, the alto sax person, is a physics major. Bar McKinnon, the tenor sax guy, is a music major. Danny Heifetz, the drummer dude, has a degree in history. Patton was an English major but has sort of, you know, taken a leave of absence from university to pursue fame and fortune.

And how famous is Mike Patton? Well, he is so famous that Rolling Stone published a letter from his mom. He is so famous that when he goes to the mall in Eureka, he gets mobbed for his autograph. He is so famous that lots of people who didn't used to like him in high school like him now. And how did he get famous? Well, you know, he is that singer guy in Faith No More. So why is he in two bands? What else has he got to do? He likes it.

After Mr. Bungle initially formed, they made a tape and the tape was called THE RAGING WRATH OF THE EASTER BUNNY. A tape very close to their death metal roots, and sporting a photo of Mr. Bungle's namesake on the cover dressed up in bunny ears and the whole thing.

Spruance: "That whole thing (Mr. Bungle's music during the RAGING BUNNY era), it was something that became sort of common later, sort of having a sense of humor about death metal. But at the time we were the first."

"Then we decided that we wanted to change because we started getting way more into Fishbone and stuff. We all listened to all sorts of different stuff.
Mike worked at a record store and had all these wild tapes, so we decided to broaden our horizons. We kicked our drummer (Jed) out, who was a death metal head, we got the two horn players (Theo and Bar) and we got this guy named Hans on drums. He played like Fishbone (the first album), so we liked him.
And thus enter the BOWEL OF CHILEY (the second tape) era. That was our transition period, we're not too happy about that. That was when Mike sang just like Fishbone. We were just a Fishbone clone. It was bad."

BOWEL OF CHILEY? Spruance: "Trevor fucked up in Denny's. He wanted a bowl of chili, but he goes, 'I'll have a bowel of chiley.' We laughed for about an hour."

And named a tape after the occurence. Spruance: "Yeah, big stupid, dumb tape and then we hated it. Then we did GOD DAMMIT, I LOVE AMERICA (1988) because it was getting to be the funky days. And then we kicked Hans out, because he was a flaky mother. We had a trumpet back in those days, kicked the trumpet player out, because he was a flake too. Flakiness is the reason we kicked those guys out. Got a sax player who is Bar, who can also play keyboards and drums, and got this drummer named Danny who played in a local band who had a big influence on us too, Eggly Bagelface. He has a degree and his grandpa was Jascha Heifetz (the famous violinist)."

So, current lineup and then the most recent tape OU818. The tape with the stuff on it. The tape that has an entire song about masturbation -- 'Girls of Porn.'

Masturbation. Yes, Patton has talked about it in Spin, in Rock Scene, NME and Kerrang! Patton has talked about it just about everywhere, he always gets asked the masturbation question, so here is what Spruance has to say.

Spruance: "We're all really heavy masturbators. I'm the worst." How many times per day? Spruance: "Five. Trevor can masturbate twice a day, maximum. He's lucky if he does it three times in a week. Mike and I are similar, we talk about what feels good and stuff and we're pretty similar on that. Trevor's the real oddball."

Normal masturbation in males (that means you reader -- okay, we know girls do it too, but the stats vary, so we'll deal with boys here) runs the gamut from two to three times per month to six times per day. So nobody's too odd, hmm? Just being a dude.

So where did this OU818 come from? Are the Bungle babes obsessed with sex? What's the deal? Spruance: "The deal is this: If you listen to any of our other tapes, there isn't even one cuss word. I don't know what happened. We were just in a really good mood, but sort of a sexually frustrated mood. But then, when we get around each other, we're very comforted, because we have each other. And the band was maybe just a thing to make us a little more happy about our situations."

People grab onto the sex thing quick. Spruance: "Well, because it's such a dumb thing, you can put it on in the background. It's like a party mentality thing and people are really into that at shows. They're into like shaking their asses and having bands be the soundtrack to their courtships. That makes us accessible to the party thing. In a way, OU818 sort of is a misrepresentation, but in another way, it's really close to us because we go into phases like that. In a way, when people say it has sexual overtones to it, it's really more just masturbation overtones, and it adds increasing dimensions when, you know, here we are playing this music, then there's like girls everywhere and we're still not getting it."

And says Patton: "About the sex thing, well, you know ..."

Yeah, they are not obsessed with sex, they are obsessed with feces. And to see a real live Mr. Bungle show? Well known for their props. They wear clown and carrot costumes and S&M masks, old clown lady heads and a Frankenstein face or two. They have blow-up dolls, dance like retards, lick each other and cook and digest the occasional burrito onstage.

Spruance: "The music sounds like shit when we play it live. We're a tape band. When we're concentrating, we can sound good, but we never even try to sound good."

But the crowd loves it. Audience reaction? Spruance: "Overwhelmingly stupid positive. Like people go, 'yeah, party! Yeah Mr. Bungle!' Kissing our ass, kind of stuff."

Is going out to see a Bungle show better than sex? Spruance: "It totally depends on whether someone has had sex with the available person a billion times already or not." Is seeing Mr. Bungle safer than sex? Spruance: "Safer? No. Mike broke a girl's teeth out and broke her nose at one show. He dove on top of this girl. He was wearing a football hat. He breaks cameras all the time. So, I mean, I can't say it's safer than having sex."

A sold-out jaunt down the California coastline the first of January serves to show that people like this stuff. Even a photo and a mention in Rolling Stone's 'Random Notes' column. Imagine. From suburbia to the big city, Mr. Bungle packed them in and pleased the people with not only their own compositions but some very tasteful cover tunes.

Spruance: "We've done a lot (of cover tunes). In our stupid days, we were doing 'Earache My Eye', stuff like that. We started doing, halfway for real, but totally stupid, we did Van Halen's 'Dirty Movies'. We've done 'We Are the Champions', which we changed to 'B Are the Champions'. We do an MTV song probably at every show. Like everytime we go out, we try to make up a whole new MTV song that is sort of a mishmash of the top ten MTV hits at the time."

And what of MTV? Spruance: "I've got two people that I'm going to fucking kill if we ever go to MTV -- Ricki Rachtman and Julie Brown. Man, I'm going to stab that bitch. She's totally talking shit about us. They play the 'Falling to Pieces' video and she goes, 'That was the new one from Faith No More. Mike Patton, I think you should just rip that Mr. Bungle tape to pieces,' or whatever. Just like being a bitch. Because I guess Martha Quinn has it (the Bungle tape) and she likes it and Julie Brown hates it and she's just a ...."

Animosity from the media? Spruance: "Yeah, a little bit. Steffan Chirazi (a contributor to Kerrang!), you can go ahead and print this, I'm going to fucking kill that guy, too. He's just a big, stupid dork and hates us because he loves Faith No More. The guy can't smell anything. He's a total moron."

And this stuff, this proferred violence, pales in comparison to what Spruance says he and his band Scourge (yeah, he is in another band, too), who are total psychotic killer types, will do to the Red Hot Chili Peppers (who have threatened Patton with bodily harm for stealing Anthony's moves -- yeah of course, because RHCP are the only guys who have ever seen a rap video). Scourge, being the psycho nut butts that they are, will inflict true damage if the opportunity ever presents itself. Anthony, you have been warned.

Nasty boy. And so, is Patton being bad by being in both bands? Spruance: "A lot of people totally think that he's just kind of waiting to quit that band (Faith No More). That he's just sort of waiting for it to die down so that he can use it as a stepping stone or something. That's just not true. People always ask me, 'Who do you think he likes more, you or FNM?' How am I supposed to answer that? FNM were both his and my favorite band for a long time, INTRODUCE YOURSELF and everything. We really loved that band."

Patton: "Trey liked them better than I did."

But do you get more groupies with Patton's face being plastered all over the glossy metal rags? Has the FNM association brought you greater sex lives? Spruance: "Well, I don't know about 'getting' groupies. I mean, we have them, but we never hang out with them. I hate them, because I remember being the guy in the audience and seeing my friends, girls -- who were probably pretty cool -- act so stupid when a band came to town and it would piss me off so bad. Things like that don't really change, just because I'm on the receiving end of it, or whatever, doesn't really change it and it makes me as sick now as it did then. Especially when somebody that everyone would think is a beautiful girl is just using that to get close to people. I can't handle that and I can't really bring myself to think that they're good people. Also, there's a lot of people who try to use me to get to Mike, too. A lot of that, you can imagine. That's really easy to spot."

Fans in general. Lots of them. Lots of fan mail. Letters from girls talking nasty who get quick replies from T. Dunn, just to see how far they'll go. A tape or two of orgasmic rapture utilizing strategic Bungle member names at the height of ecstasy. Requests for tapes from all over the place, no doubt Patton's word of mouth process has gotten many a tape sold. And what to do with all these anxiously awaiting fans? Why, make them some music, of course! Mr. Bungle are doing studio time in January and February. They have John Zorn, the infante terrible of the hardcore weirdness jazz world, to help produce and/or mix the new material and some steadfast interest from Sire Records to put the noise to product and distribute the mother. Life keeps getting better. All they need to do is sit down and kick it.

Spruance: "When we do our album, we're going to sort of update all of the songs, because we're really sick of them, because they're really old. I like 'Egg'. I like the lyric, everything on that just worked out real well. I can't wait to do that in the studio. I like pretty much everything Trevor writes, actually. 'Slowly Growing Deaf' is really good, too."

And there are lots of new songs to come, "My Ass is on Fire," "Platypus," "Stubb A Dub." Spruance: "Even though I can't say that I'm so killer, I like 'Stubb A Dub' a lot, but I made it up, so it's not fair for me to say that. It's sort of a refreshing angle on the Bungle scene, it's not like what we've normally done."

And where does the new stuff come from? Spruance: "What we usually do is we write a whole bunch of songs at once. It just sort of happens in waves. We'll be playing a lot, and then we'll stop playing and then we won't even practice, and we'll just kind of make up songs whenever we feel like it, and then at the end of a dry spell, we have all these new songs. It's really strange.

"A capsule of what happens: On OU818, Mike wrote 'Squeeze Me Macaroni' and 'Girls of Porn', but a lot of those riffs are my riffs that he used in his songs and he wrote the lyrics, so it's his song kind of thing. Same thing with Trevor, he wrote all of 'Slowly Growing Deaf', I wrote some of 'Love is a Fist' but he wrote most of it. It's all a collaborative effort, but we sort of lean towards things. One is one person's song and one is the other's. We get inspiration from all sorts of stuff. It's just sort of a general outpouring of crap. It's usually a spontaneous or on-the-spot thing that happens."

But is it spontaneous with Patton in Australia or Europe and not within close proximity to dig on the Bungle vibe? Patton misses his band mates and the sit-down-together collaborative effort the band had grown accustomed to. So, he writes lyrics, etc. while on the road with FNM, but looks forward to productive time with his Bungle playmates.

Spruance: "Yeah, it really works when we sit down to do it together. I mean, like 'Girls of Porn', we just sat down and made that whole thing up in one night, just me, Mike, and Trevor. Sometimes those things work out really well, because you're not pressuring yourself to make up the best song in the world. We're just having fun, and that helps."

So, they're going to record and then they want a record company and what is it they want from a record company? Spruance: "Well, for one, we want to be able to do our songs untampered." This means leaving in all the nastiness and obscure references that anyone who is not a Bungle-man might never understand. Spruance: "I think money is kind of a big thing. Not for personal shit, but we want to do a good album. We want it to be well-produced, we just want to be able to have the luxury of doing what we want.

"I always think about how by now I'm supposed to be bored with the whole thing (Mr. Bungle, waiting for Patton, waiting to record, etc.). By now, I'm supposed to be, not excited about it. The band's been around five years, I'm supposed to say things like, 'Oh well, the world is this way and nothing's exciting to me and music is music,' and it just hasn't happened to any of us. We're still totally wide-eyed kids, even Mike. We're just wide-eyed idealistic people."

All the way from dudes who just hung out with each other -- Spruance: "At school, the group was me, Mike and Trevor. We would just hang out with each other and we never made any real friends. People knew us and socially accepted us because we were in a band, but that's kind of where it ended. Like Mike, everybody hated him. He was like a big dick, everybody totally hated him. He used to be real sarcastic, like really bad. He wasn't too well-liked, which is funny, because now I can go down and watch FNM and see a bunch of Humboldt county-ers with their eyes super wide open, just thinking about what a dream come true this all is for Eureka or whatever."

Patton: "It's like I did it for the town." -- to home town heroes. And this far, without even yet actually recording an album. What could be next? Disney World?

Only the globe and the heavens left to conquer. Mr. Bungle is on the way. From a town called Eureka, which is the state motto of California. Eureka, which from the original Greek means, 'I found it', and which is originally attributed to that wild man Archimedes, made famous for his invention of the upwards screw. They come bearing signs which they prominently display during concerts, 'Free Cock'. No one shows up after the gig to collect the offered delicacies, but those days may be behind them.