Faith No More
Edinburgh Corn Exchange, 25th August 2009
Back in the early '90s, Faith No More were pioneers of funk rock fusion. Fronted by bug-eyed wild child Mike Patton, an unlikely skater pin up with his long blond hair and baggy shorts and driven by bespectacled beardie weirdie guitar wizard Jim Martin, they mixed soaring melodies and Rainbow-style keyboards with deeply funky basslines and screaming thrash metal riffs to produce a sound like nothing you'd heard before that, often, was nothing short of… epic.
But while contemporaries the Red Hot Chilli Peppers continued to drive the funk-o-metal moped into the 21st century (where they traded it in for the Volvo estate of stadium dad rock), FNM crashed by the roadside, imploding under the weight of endless line-up changes, personality crises and 'musical differences'.
But now they're back (sans Big Jim), with a select string of hotly-anticipated UK gigs, one of which happened to be in Edinburgh. With tickets changing hands for hundreds of pounds, expectations were running high. But could the band deliver?
Things certainly get off to a good start, the mournful Midnight Cowboy theme segueing into a blistering version of 'From Out Of Nowhere' that proves that, while Patton many now resemble a cross between a used car salesman and Nigel Planer on stage in Hairspray, when it comes to delivering the vocals, he's so still got it, leaping round the stage like a loon, bellowing into a megaphone and even dragging a fan on stage to share the limelight. And while the rest of the band may look like a bunch of dads in a bar band, musically, they're tight as a drum, creating a wall of sound as huge and powerful as a pneumatic drill.
But somehow, as they power their way through a set that combines monster hits and alternative dance floor faves like 'Epic', 'Be Aggressive', 'Midlife Crisis', 'Surprise! You're Dead!' and 'Easy Like Sunday Morning' with, um, the EastEnders theme tune and 'Chariots of Fire', things don't take off quite as stratospherically as I'd hoped. Maybe it's the suffocating humidity, or the fact that I really needed to revisit my FNM vinyl and my turntable's knackered, or just because I'd forgotten that, as well as writing some of the best rock songs ever (including 'Falling To Pieces', which annoyingly they don't play) they also produced some fairly tedious jazz thrash nonsense that I can't really be doing with.
Eclectic, aggressive, quirky and arrogant, FNM were never a band for the casual fan and that's all I've ever been, but as the curtain falls (metaphorically anyway) on the most self-indulgent, uninspiring encore I've ever witnessed, I can't help but feel a bit disappointing, Midlife crisis? Possibly – but is it them or is it me?
