Mr. Bungle
Mr. Bungle is an American experimental rock band formed in Eureka, California, in 1985. Having gone through many incarnations throughout its career, the band is best known for its experimental rock period. During this time, it developed a highly eclectic style, cycling through several musical genres, often within the course of a single song, including heavy metal, avant-garde jazz, ska, disco, and funk, further enhanced by frontman Mike Patton's versatile singing style. This period also saw the band utilizing unconventional song structures and samples; playing a wide array of instruments; obscuring the members' identities and dressing up in masks, jumpsuits, and other costumes; and performing a diverse selection of cover songs during live performances.
The band was founded as a death metal project while the members were in high school. It is named after a character in the 1960 children's educational film Beginning Responsibility: Lunchroom Manners, as featured in the 1981 HBO special The Pee-wee Herman Show. Mr. Bungle released four demo tapes in the mid-to-late 1980s. On the back of Patton's success as frontman of Faith No More, the band was signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1990 and released three studio albums between 1991 and 1999 in the eclectic, experimental style it became known for. The band toured in 1999 and 2000 to support its third album before going on an indefinite hiatus that was confirmed as a dissolution in 2004. It reunited as a thrash metal band for a series of shows in February 2020 to perform its 1986 demo album The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny with Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian and former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo. The band then returned to the studio to re-record the demo as a professional album, released in October of that year.
Mr. Bungle has gone through numerous lineup changes, with Patton, guitarist Trey Spruance, and bassist Trevor Dunn the sole consistent members. The band was based in San Francisco during its tenure with Warner Bros. During much of the band's existence, it was in a public dispute with Red Hot Chili Peppers, particularly between Patton and Chili Peppers vocalist Anthony Kiedis.
History
Formation (1985–1989)
Mr. Bungle emerged after its members were kicked out of their respective previous bands. "It was kinda like a merger between two bands," Mike Patton recalled. "One really horrible gothic metal band, which our guitarist and original drummer were in, and one really horrible metal band which did Metallica covers, which is the one Trevor and me came from." Mr. Bungle initially described themselves as a death metal band, but also dabbled in speed metal, thrash metal, and hardcore punk. The members came very close to naming the band Summer Breeze before settling on the name Mr. Bungle. The Mr. Bungle name was inspired by a 1950s propaganda film that they had seen as a segment of The Pee-wee Herman Show. The members previously used the name to refer to a classmate that they thought to be "a total goober" before adopting it as their band's name.Within a year of formation, the band expanded their sound to include ska.
Trevor Dunn noted in 1991: "After about a year we got tired of playing speed metal and wanted to do something a little more creative. So we just stopped and started writing our own style of music, which was influenced by bands like Camper Van Beethoven, Oingo Boingo, Bad Manners and kind of funky, ska-oriented stuff. Then we added a two-piece horn section and a new drummer, so now we don't really have any kind of limit on the music we play." Trey Spruance corroborated this: "When I was 15, I was in a death metal group," Spruance reminisced. "We had this idea that we were going to play a bunch of ska tunes for a bunch of metalheads. We just had this idea, you know: 'Okay, we're going to play this ska music, and that'll be amazing.' Half of the audience hated us, but there was definitely a joy in confronting that wall between styles."
Given that the band's background was exclusively in heavy music at that point, some band members experienced difficulties expanding their sound early on. In particular, Spruance noted that Mike Patton had to teach him to play the ska stroke for a performance at their high school talent show. Spruance later explained, "Oh, what I remember was... this was our first... like, we had only done, uh, death metal up to that point. And so this was our first time trying to ever play ska. And I'd never played... on guitar, like, I'd never played... I didn't know how to do that skanking guitar shit at all. But Patton could do, like with one finger on the thread mark, he could do the, the rhythmic part of it pretty well. Like, he could... he taught me how to do it. So, I just sort of awkwardly... I would fill in and make the chord and he actually played guitar, but would just kind of use it percussively. And we played these Camper Van Beethoven songs, and I don't... I dunno if we played The Specials, but that's what we were listening to."
Mr. Bungle played their first show in November 1985 at the Bayside Grange Hall in Bayside, California. The band's first demo, The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny, was recorded during Easter of 1986. It featured a fast, lo-fi death/thrash metal sound, with touches of ska. Instruments utilized on the album included a train whistle, saxophone, bongos and a kazoo. The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny was followed in 1987 by the Bowel of Chiley demo; it featured a much greater ska presence, as well as the sounds of jazz, swing and funk. Bradley Torreano noted at AllMusic that the recording was "essentially the sound of some very talented teenagers trying to make their love of jazz and ska come together in whatever way they can." In 1988, Mike Patton became the lead vocalist for Faith No More, getting the job after the band heard him on the first Mr. Bungle demo. Patton continued to be a member of both bands simultaneously and Mr. Bungle released its third demo, Goddammit I Love America!, later in 1988, which was musically similar to Bowel of Chiley. Mike Patton described its style as "funkadelic, thrashing, circus, ska." OU818, their final demo tape, was recorded in June 1989. OU818, was the first release to feature both tenor sax player Clinton "Bär" McKinnon and drummer Danny Heifetz. At the time of this release, Mike Patton described Mr. Bungle as a "weirdo funk band".
''Mr. Bungle'' (1990–1993)
During 1990, the band members left Eureka for San Francisco in search of greater musical opportunities. Trey Spruance said the change in location influenced the band's style, remarking " Slayer and Mercyful Fate. Later it was The Specials and Fishbone. Then we moved to San Francisco and got all sophisticated. Now we are improv snobs who rule the avant-garde universe by night, and poor, fucked-up hipsters by day." Having established a following in Northern California, Mr. Bungle was signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1990, with the label releasing all three of their studio albums during the 1990s. It has been speculated that Patton's success as frontman of Faith No More was the primary reason Warner Bros. signed the band. The Los Angeles Times stated in a 1991 article that "Under normal circumstances, you'd have to describe Mr. Bungle's chances of landing a major label deal as... a long shot."Their debut album, Mr. Bungle, was produced by jazz experimentalist John Zorn and was released on August 13, 1991. The cover featured artwork by Dan Sweetman, originally published in the story "A Cotton Candy Autopsy" in the DC Comics/Piranha Press imprint title Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children. The record mixed metal, funk, ska, carnival music and free jazz, but was normally described as funk metal by music critics. It received mostly positive reviews, with journalist Bill Pahnelas calling it "an incredible musical tour de force". On the style of the album, critic Steve Huey wrote in AllMusic: "Mr. Bungle is a dizzying, disconcerting, schizophrenic tour through just about any rock style the group can think of, hopping from genre to genre without any apparent rhyme or reason, and sometimes doing so several times in the same song."
The album's first track and sole single was originally titled "Travolta". At Warner Brothers' encouragement, it was renamed "Quote Unquote" in later pressings, due to fears regarding a potential lawsuit by John Travolta. The band created a music video for the song, directed by Kevin Kerslake. However, MTV refused to air the video because of images of bodies dangling on meat hooks. The album sold well despite MTV refusing to air their video and a lack of radio airplay. Almost all the members went by obscure aliases in the album credits. To promote the album in some stores, a Mr. Bungle bubble bath was given away with copies of the record sold. Following the release of the album, the band toured North America.
''Disco Volante'' (1994–1997)
Due to artwork delays and the band members' many side-projects, it was four years before Disco Volante was released, in October 1995. The new album displayed musical development and a shift in tone from their earlier recordings. While the self-titled album was described as "funk metal", with Disco Volante this label was replaced with "avant-garde" or "experimental".The music was complex and unpredictable, with the band continuing with their shifts of musical style. Some of the tracks were in foreign languages and would radically change genres mid-song. Featuring lyrics about death, suicide and child abuse, along with children's songs and a Middle Eastern techno number, music critic Greg Prato described the album as having "a totally original and new musical style that sounds like nothing that currently exists". Not all critics were impressed with the album, with The Washington Post describing it as "an album of cheesy synthesizers, mangled disco beats, virtuosic playing and juvenile noises", calling it "self-indulgent" and adding that "Mr. Bungle's musicians like to show off their classical, jazz and world-beat influences in fast, difficult passages which are technically impressive but never seem to go anywhere". Additionally, writer Scott McGaughey described it as "difficult", and was critical of its "lack of actual songs". Disco Volante included influences from contemporary classical music, avant-garde jazz, electronic music pioneer Pierre Henry, Edgar Allan Poe, John Zorn, Krzysztof Penderecki, and European film music of the 1960s and 1970s, such as those composed by Ennio Morricone and Peter Thomas. The album notes also contained an invitation to participate in an "unusual scam" – if $2 was sent to the band's address, participants would receive additional artwork, lyrics to the songs "Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz" and "Chemical Marriage" and some stickers. The vinyl release of this album shipped with a 7" by the then-unknown Secret Chiefs 3.
Mr. Bungle supported Disco Volante with their first world tour, performing across North America, Europe and Australia during 1995 and 1996. After this tour, founding member and original saxophone player and keyboardist Theo Lengyel left the band due to creative differences.
In early 1997, the band began work on a covers album, but it was put on indefinite hold due to Patton's touring commitments with Faith No More. Later in 1997, the Seattle-based Rastacore Records started distributing CDs of Bowel of Chiley. This was done without official authorization from Mr. Bungle or Warner Bros., and as such production was halted, with only a limited number of CDs surviving.