People Drank Fat Mike's Pee at SXSW... and They Cheered for It

Fat Mike as Cokie the Clown

Lost in the deluge of South by Southwest coverage was news of a performance by lead singer/ bass player/ co-founder of NOFX, Fat Mike, as an alter ego he created for their recent EP, Cokie the Clown. He dressed up in full clown costume, handed out a few shots of tequila to some fans up front, did a couple of shots himself, and did a few acoustic songs without the band present including The Decline (which I would have loved to hear.) One can not listen to much NOFX music and not wonder what sort of dark events shaped Fat Mike. Mike let some of those events find light during his performance at the Austin's SXSW festival including the story of him helping his mother die when she was terminally ill, stealing a record from his friend after he had committed suicide while the friend was still hanging there, and possibly the most disturbing story from this review from Pinpoint Music of the performance...

"The series of stories Cokie told started off with an account of how back in the mid -’80s Mike and Eric Melvin had witnessed a girl being forcefully carried down the stairs of a club on her way to being raped. As it goes, they both stood there watching slack jawed as she stared at them helplessly, then she grabbed onto both of them and yelled, “Help me!”. The men told Mike and Eric not to say a word. They did exactly that and went upstairs to watch the Vandals perform."

Wow. Wow. I could type wow about twenty more times. Not to mention at the end of his performance he let a video play that began just as he was offstage about to come on and perform which showed him peeing in the bottle of tequila from which he poured the shots he and the crowd drank at the beginning of his set. "That'll teach you posers to clamor to get up front", could be the message he was trying to send with that stunt. Some people have tried to post videos of the performance on Youtube, but they have all been taken down for copyright infringement claims by NOFX's label, Fat Wreck Chords, which is owned by Fat Mike. That is a rare move by Fat Wreck, but I can understand it considering the circumstances. I have been sitting on this story for three days trying to find a video, and then out of nowhere Fat Wreck's twitter feed posts a link to a story TMZ did on the event. TMZ even got a quote from Fat Mike. Say what you will about TMZ, but they get to the bottom of stories. They really give it their all. The quote from Mike was,

"I confirmed that urine was not classified as a biohazard waste and not subject to the risks of legal ramifications of blood, semen, or feces."

Here is the video from TMZ's website:

And now a favorite Youtube clip of NOFX---
Green Corn