Fat Mike

Fat Mike with NOFX, Dirt Session 2009 in Duisburg

Fat Mike (born January 31, 1967 in Boston ; real name Michael John Burkett ) is an American musician and producer. He became known as the singer and bass player for the band NOFX .

Career

Michael Burkett came to the conscious consumption of music when he was in the fifth grade through the soundtrack of the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show , the soundtrack of which he recorded with a cassette recorder, which he held in front of the loudspeaker of his home television set, in order to listen to the music To be able to listen to film continuously on cassette. A 17-year-old neighbor who lived near his father's apartment introduced him to rock bands like Rush , Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath . During his high school years, Mike Burkett worked as a DJ for the school's own radio station, as a radio host everyone called him "Mike Misfit". As a schoolboy, Mike Burkett worked as a courier for a pharmacy, delivering medicines to Sammy Davis Jr. , Johnny Carson and Elizabeth Montgomery . Before Mike went to college where he majored in social science and minor in sexology, he was quite thin and skinny, but after that, due to an unlimited university meal plan, he had gained a body weight of 73 kilograms, whereupon he became a member of punk rock -Band Subculture, with which NOFX were on tour, nicknamed "Fat Mike" - regardless of the low body weight for a young man. Before founding the band NOFX together with Erik Sandin and Eric Melvin in 1983 , he was a member of the music group False Alarm . To this day he also plays in the band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes . He can also be heard under the pseudonym "Fat McMichael" as a guest musician on the CD 10.000 Shots of the group Real McKenzies . When Fat Mike was in a deep crisis of meaning and was about to break up NOFX after their first European tour in the summer of 1988 due to unsuccessfulness in order to work as a roadie for Operation Ivy instead of as an active musician, he listened to the then just released album Suffer from Bad Religion on, which was highly inspiring to him with its melodic mix of poppy punk and hardcore. From this awakening experience, Fat Mike felt motivated to improve the musical skills of NOFX in order to produce something qualitatively comparable to that of Bad Religion with the record Suffer . As a result, Brett Gurewitz , the guitarist of Bad Religion, produced NOFX's 1988 debut album Liberal Animation . In addition, Gurewitz offered to release the first NOFX album on his label Epitaph Records , but Fat Mike preferred to set up his own label called Colossal Wassail . The budget for the debut album was $ 675, which Fat Mike paid for, and was recorded within three days, with an initial pressed circulation of 2,000 copies. At this point in time, Fat Mike developed into the band boss of NOFX, as he drank significantly less alcohol than his band mates, had not yet consumed drugs and therefore had the necessary clear head to book gigs and keep in touch with promoters. Years later, as NOFX became commercially successful, Fat Mike sold the rights to Liberal Animation to Epitaph Records for $ 50,000.

In terms of his sexuality, Fat Mike is an avowed fetishist and lover of Sado-Maso , although he is particularly attracted to dominant sadistic women. He often processes this weird side of his personality in the song texts he has written, for example the title of the 1989 NOFX album S&M Airlines , on the cover of which an oversized whip-wielding dominatrix rides on an airplane, goes back to his idea. In the video clip for the title song S&M Airlines , which the then unknown director Gore Verbinski , who later enjoyed great success with the horror film Ring from 2002 and the pirate film Pirates of the Caribbean from 2003, shot with the punk band, a young dominatrix appears next to the musicians with a whip and a black leather cap. The filming on the runway on which the punk band is performing in the video clip took place at Edwards Air Force Base . In the song Hot Dog in a Hallway , which is on the album Heavy Petting Zoo from 1996, Fat Mike sings about a very overweight woman whose arms are thicker than his legs (“ Her arms are bigger than my legs “), Which is why he is breathless when she takes him in her arms and which is why he falls in love.

In 1991 Fat Mike founded his own label, Fat Wreck Chords , which he runs with his ex-wife Erin. He borrowed the start-up capital of $ 20,000 for founding the label from his father, who was a shoe seller and was often on business trips and with whom Fat Mike had a strained relationship. He is also the organizer of the music projects Rock Against Bush and Punk Voter, as well as the publisher of the music magazine PunkRock Confidential . He was also in bands such as B. The Dance Hall Crashers , Mad Caddies , Lagwagon , Lunachicks and the like. a. works as a producer and owns a recording studio. He is the inventor of the term “Nawesome”, which is supposed to mean the opposite of “awesome”. Fat Mike lives in San Francisco , California . He was married from 1993 to 2010. The couple have a daughter, Darla, who was born in 2003.

In 2014 he started working on a fashion label called Fatale Design , which specializes in producing lingerie for men. The products designed by the designer Jessica Louise came onto the market in 2018.

In 2019 he released his solo album You're Welcome under the name Cokie the Clown .

Fat Mike is an atheist . Just like NOFX guitarist Eric Melvin, Fat Mike is of Jewish descent, with his parents not being Orthodox Jews, so Fat Mike didn't go to bar mitzvahs when he was young . The title of the 1992 NOFX album White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean alludes to the Jewishness of Fat Mike and Eric Melvin .

Discography

With NOFX

see NOFX

With Me First and the Gimme Gimmes

see Me First and the Gimme Gimmes

As Cokie the Clown

• 2019: You're Welcome

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Information at www.allmusic.com
2. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. P. 6 f.
3. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. p. 115
4. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. P. 70
5. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. p. 79
6. ↑ Credits 10,000 shots on allmusic.com. Retrieved August 20, 2014 . 
7. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. p. 110
8. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. p. 115
9. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. pp. 3–5
10. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. pp. 82–85
11. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. p. 133
12. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. pp. 140 f.
13. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. pp. 215 f. + 5
14. ↑ Spontan intervju med NOFX , July 9, 2010. Accessed January 1, 2011.
15. ↑ About. Retrieved June 21, 2019 . 
16. ↑ Simon Hereth: Fat Mike (NOFX) starts lingerie line for men. In: AWAY FROM LIFE. November 13, 2018, accessed June 21, 2019 (German). 
17. ↑ Simon Hereth: COKIE THE CLOWN - Fat Mike releases solo album. In: AWAY FROM LIFE. February 28, 2019, accessed on June 21, 2019 (German). 
18. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. p. 133
19. ↑ NOFX : The hepatitis bathtub and other stories . Autobiography of the punk rock band NOFX written with co-author Jeff Alulis, Verlag Edel (Optimal Media GmbH), Röbel / Müritz , 1st edition, February 2017. pp. 215 + 70

Web links

• Official website of NOFX
• Official website of Fat Wreck Chords
• Official website of Fatale Design