A lot has been said about NOFX. The band has been around for over thirty years, helped invent melodic punk alongside Rancid and Bad Religion, battled skinhead punks in the eighties, major-label executives in the nineties and George W. Bush in the early 2000s, and recently released a New York Times bestselling memoir NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub And Other Stories. Now the band is laying themselves bare in their new album First Ditch Effort. “This album is more personal than anything I’ve ever done before because once we put everything out there in the book it opened all of these doors are far as what I want to sing about,” says frontman and bassist Fat Mike.
Fat Mike says he was felt more comfortable with being himself on this record, “A large part of that is due to my relationship with my wife and involvement in the BDSM world. …I used to live so much of my life in private but I’ve slowly started going to parties and out in public without being embarrassed of my true identity and that confidence just transferred over to my entire life,” he adds, “When you’re dressed in rubber and heels and corset and you’re waiting in line for an omelette in Jamaica, well, after that there’s nowhere else to go.”
This new honesty appears on the song ‘I’m a Transvest-lite’ which has the line, “I’m done with self-pity/ I don’t need to feel shitty/I just want to be pretty” and details how Mike became interested in cross-dressing and to the extent to which he prefers to dress up. It is a fast-paced and empowering in a way only punk can be, by saying essentially ‘fuck you, I’m going to be me.’
The album is fun, raw-boned and pulls no punches. First Ditch Effort comes out October 7th and is well worth listening to.
Catch NOFX live!
10/22/16
San Diego, CA
Waterfront Park
Ye Scalleywag
11/02/16
Portland, OR
Crystal Ballroom
11/03/16
Seattle, WA
Showbox SoDo
11/04/16
Vancouver, BC Canada
Commodore Ballroom
11/05/16
Vancouver, BC Canada
Commodore Ballroom
11/07/16
Edmonton, AB Canada
Union Hall
11/08/16
Edmonton, AB Canada
Union Hall
11/09/16
Calgary, AB Canada
MacEwan Hall
11/11/16
Winnipeg, MB Canada
Burton Cummings Theatre
11/12/16
Minneapolis, MN
Cabooze on the West Bank
11/13/16
Milwaukee, WI
The Rave
11/14/16
Cleveland, OH
House of Blues
11/16/16
Omaha, NE
Sokol Auditorium
11/17/16
Lawrence, KS
Liberty Hall
11/18/16
Dallas, TX
Gas Monkey Live!
Words: K. Hules.