Faith No More: Ricochet
“Ricochet” wouldn’t have been on my short list of songs to release as singles from Faith No More’s 1995 album King For A Day…Fool For A Lifetime. It’s like a bad first date: a little too straightforward, revealing just about all it has to give in the first listen. But then, that’s pretty much how I felt about the entire album, which was a follow-up to Angel Dust, the best album ever: good, but that’s it?
The b-sides are two covers. “I Wanna F**k Myself” by G.G. Allin, who eventually probably did figure out a way to do just that. Seriously, if you don’t know who Allin is, take a minute to peruse his Wikipedia entry:
Allin is best remembered for his notorious live performances that typically featured wildly transgressive acts such as Allin defecating and urinating onstage, rolling in feces and often consuming excrement (coprophagia), committing self-injury, performing naked, taunting people to perform fellatio on him and committing violent actions toward the audience—often doing many of these things more or less simultaneously.
My fave part is that they tell us the word for consuming excrement.
Faith No More is crazy faithful in their cover versions, to the point where they sometimes sound better than the originals, as in their version of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” Here they capture Allin’s style with massive amounts of noise, distortion, and intentionally awful recording techniques. It works, though…you wouldn’t want Allin’s literally s**t-stained music to sound pristine…it’d probably hurt worse that way.
Then, in a complete contrast but also the same thing, is the band doing what they do so well, recording a song that fits more comfortably on easy listening radio as if that were their idiom. This time it’s “Spanish Eyes,” probably most famously done by Elvis and Engelbert Humperdinck. This one isn’t quite as eye-poppingly amazing in its uncanny recreation of prior versions as their cover of The Commodores “Easy” (…like Sunday morning) was, but it’s still pretty good.
Rating:
Mixers: nothing
Keepers: everything
Filed Between: The other two singles from King For A Day, “Digging The Grave” and “Evidence”
Tags: 1995, 3.5 lunchboxes, CD reviews, music