Podcast 4 about IY? Favorite song would be Anne’s Song, followed by Faster Disco. But I love every song on the album. It is the best FNM album in terms of 5 guys fighting for their part to be heard, yet servicing the songs. It’s got the best guitar tone of all the albums. The only possible criticism I can think of for the album is the one that Chuck gave it…that the drums are a little similar song to song…Puffy would stay intense but add more versatility on later albums. This album has so much tongue in cheek but also goes so dark and goth…that is a tough transition…but is a very consistent album.

Faster Disco – is it about vampires or just people out all night drinking? The quiet background lyrics make it interesting. It is certainly in the FNM tradition of sun worship. The guitar soars on this song. Patton tried this song live once…did pretty well, but he can’t hit Chuck’s high notes full throated like Chuck did on the album or singing it live.

Anne’s Song – one of the most fun songs ever and so relatable. Who doesn’t have those great memories of hanging out with friends and feeling all the world was at your feet? The bassline is great, the keys add a great care free mood, and it’s the best guitar solo in the FNM catalog. And like a great movie that you find out is a true story, this song was about real people who got to enjoy their own song! When I heard the fake ending and then the fade up back into the song with the quick cut to the title track…that was wild, I’d never heard anything like it.

Introduce Yourself – The band’s best short song, it stayed in the live set tour after tour and remained a highlight b/c it is so energetic and fun. I’d never heard a punk-pop song with Spanish lines before…and I’d certainly never heard a band calling out record label executives after listing all their own names! I’ve never heard such a ballsy song that also references wetting your pants.

Chinese Arithmetic – began as a Puffy & Jim instrumental track like Pills and Woodpecker. They performed it as a set opening instrumental originally before Chuck finally put some words to it. Roddy’s keys add great mood. The verse drum pounding with the bass and guitar riffing is possibly the world’s introduction to nu metal. Puffy just seemed to have so much fun with this beat in live shows…and it became the song for Chuck and later Patton to throw ad-libs over the intro. Chuck finally gets to full-on rap and invent a new genre. The title had appeared right around the same time on Eric B. & Rakim’s album, but Chuck’s analogy for the complexity of love is as deep as any other artist’s poetry.

Death March – an old beat and riff from 1983. Fierce Chuck screaming over the loss of a friend. The whole band’s wailing in the background makes for a legit scary song after the silly intro rant that is so memorable. I used to call up my friend’s answering machines when they weren’t home, press Play on my player set right at Chuck’s “Fuck you!”, then hit stop and hang up. They’d tell me someone keeps screaming cursing on their phones…I had to stop when caller ID was invented. The choice of using the Black Plague rhyme adds so much sadness and filth to the song…it’s a brilliant way to close an otherwise fairly upbeat Side A.

WCAL Redux – better in it’s own way, but I also love the original. As a kid, if felt great to hear a band singing about my Garbage Pail Kids cards and my Transformers, as well as the Challenger disaster. Not sure about the rest of the world, but every kid in America was watching the NASA shuttle launch with Kristy McCullough, the first school teacher to go into space, on board. Classroom were this big open pods, so you’re watching multiple TVs in this big room, then slowly as it’s dawning on everyone what happened, pockets of crying open up and it’s our generation’s Pearl Harbor, or Kennedy Assassination, or 9-11. And Chuck is singing it so earnestly, it feels for a second like the band is dropping that snotty sarcasm and empathizing…at least that’s how I felt it. Jim really closed this song out live so well with that extended solo.

R N’ R – Bill used to use this riff to check his tuning on some of the live bootlegs I have. It’s such a great, nasty bassline. This is the first example of Chuck recycle a rap, something he said he liked to do, reference back to other songs but with a twist. Earlier he was trying to teach his nephew to walk (though live it was to Fuck…just like how they got to Patton on Epic for “do it some more”), now in a less serious song, he’s teaching how to fart. This is another FNM song referencing the power of the sun and how it can burn. Jim’s guitar lick also adds a lot of edge on this song. Chuck has a great call and response effect going here again, which goes back to early American slave labor work lines. The building keyboards give the song it’s momentum.

The Crab Song – deeply touching and poetic, FNM never quite got here again b/c Patton keeps us all at a distance from his real thoughts. Then the groaning bass leads into sick drums and deep guitar bends. Every piece is a weapon in this song. The keys turn this song into a high art opera. Early live versions sound like a space-age psychedelic song, then they sped it up and it got so intense. I was blown away when I was sitting next to my parents and I saw Patton singing live on MTV in Brazil in ’91 “Love hurts, hurts, hurts, like a motherfucker!” and they both busted out laughing! After the song, they looked absolutely confused, “But that was a rap song…since when do you like rap music?”

Blood – probably the least talked about song on the album but it rocks just as hard. It’s a propulsive song with Jim and Chuck in the mix, whereas it was a little more ethereal with Courtney Love on vocals. She laid the ground work, making it about Blood, but Chuck’s lyrics are clearly better. A flowing river crimson, a flowing river burning with desire!!! Then the lyrics start referencing the Blarney Stone but I never quite hear Chuck mention it. The beat and keys of this song were somewhat re-used in Rise Of The Fall later, another song written by Roddy. Live, Chuck put a lot of energy into the ending.

Spirit – so glad this song re-emerged finally in the setlist in recent years. The song began as a Joe Pye lyric he stole from “Jamal”. It is an intense jam after a harmony intro. A nice return to Faster Disco references of being out for the night and partying and the power of the sun. It has a “Lola” moment that’s funny and then we get into existentialism. Ghe lyrics of this song were written by Bill, just like his great writing on Why Do You Bother and his lyrical contributions to “The Real Thing” along with Patton. As a kid at the time, I had convinced my parents to stop making me go to Sunday School. I didn’t know that my parents weren’t really religious either, but they thought I should be referenced with such things. My father actually went through a midlife crisis a few years after hearing this album, and he read all the world religions and all the philosophers searching for some meaning and goodness. He was always my book supplier, so I read all these materials as a pre-teen with him. The closing line of the album has always remained a powerful summary of the big questions in life…”So do me a favor don’t talk to me about freedom. From a quintessential existential nightmare…to a sanctuary waiting in the sun”.

My favorite FNM album, and my favorite album of all time.

I still watch video croissant on my vcr .. I love the live footage of the bottle throwing and i loved the everything’s ruined video at the time too ..

The best thing about phoinex 93 is the fact that the audio was released long before the shaky footage was synced together. I listened to that audio for years and had so many questions about that show that the video answered… I think it was hot Canada who actually shared the show with me in exchange for the Slane 92 bootleg ..

Me and many other listeners…”DUNE!!!!!!!” A great choice to walk out to…David Lynch directed movie (ambitious but complete shit!!)