This year marks the 17th Anniversary of Faith No More's best-selling album and is a perfect time for reflection on what this album has meant to me. First of all, just because it's their best-selling album, doesn't mean it gets the respect it deserves. Secondly, this album is hard hitting where it needs to be, catchy without being the sort of radio-friendly that makes you want to tear your teeth out, surreal and complicated enough to be appreciated more and more after multiple spins on the old compact disc player.
I was introduced to Faith No More in my last year of high school ('98-99) by my buddy Pete. Pete was a fan the way Cindy Crawford was a pretty lady, that is, very.
Says I "Say man, that's a pretty cool tattoo of an angry red dog on your arm."
Says he "That's the Faith No More dog... dog. What's up?"
In short, my initiation.
I bought Angel Dust a year later on a whim in Kingston from one of those CD sales they used to have on Campuses with the expressed intention of establishing my "alternativeness" to an army of peers. That night I commandeered the CD player after U2's "One" made its third trip on the rotation, it played about a third of the way through when one of the gals rolled her terrible eyes, the host ran with it and said "Yeah Jer, what the hell is this". Philistines. Anyhow, my defense of the music wasn't enough to steer the room from the "lets talk about our high school boyfriends" vibe so the album got shelved and I think thrown out the window by my friend Cam, though I've never been able to confirm my suspicions. The important thing was I knew fundamentally then and there that me and Faith No More were right, and they were wrong. When all my CD's were stolen out of a car my girlfriend bought me a new copy along with The Downward Spiral and some Mudhoney Bootleg. Yes, I went on to marry her. A few months after that, I finished a double shift at the ole' Mac's Milk with this prototypical townie coworker who had hours earlier snorted "found" drugs he scammed from the toilet of the punk bar across the road and summoned the energy to keep me company in the latter half of my shift. We walked home, and after rousing my roommate for a wake n' bake I mentioned casually that I had been listening to Angel Dust lately, to which he replied "That is the best fucking album ever made". So there you have it, a second authority on the matter.We listened to the entire album and played Tony Hawk, and I'm pretty sure he got arrested shortly thereafter. Some years later a track (Midlife Crisis) showed up on the radio in San Andreas. I was slowly drawing a bead on Ryder as he tried to swim away. Ryder was a friend and I felt bad doing it, but somehow Faith No More made it ok.
The point of all this is that knowing about Angel Dust has been like a secret handshake for me on a whole bunch of occasions. But not a cute badminton club sort of handshake, the sort of hand shake you could expect from David Lynch, or the guy covered in tattoos just before it was cool to be covered in tattoos, or maybe even the guy working the midnight shift at Mac's Milk in the 3D glasses. So go and buy the damn thing. It might open the door to a world full of kicks you never knew you wanted.
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