As
my musical interests continue to grow and diversify, I’ve found that the
greatest surprises don’t always stem from stumbling upon a little-known artist,
but from rediscovering new things about the artists to whom I used to listen, whose
CDs I spun to death in middle school and about whom I thought I knew
everything. When I began exploring ska music in my senior year of high school,
I was shocked to find that so many of the bands I loved and listened to either
already fell into that genre or had dabbled in its sound. Thus, when I again
came across Smash Mouth’s Fush Yu Mang,
I was hardly surprised to find it soaked in upstroke guitar chords and horn
arrangements. If anything, they only solidified my resolve to re-experience
this band that, when I was quite young, had meant the world to me.
For
my eleventh birthday, I received as a gift my first ever CD, the inaugural
album that would kick off a lifetime obsession. This album was Smash Mouth’s
sophomore effort, Astro Lounge, and
although I hardly listened to anything but “All Star,” for the next few years,
I proclaimed Smash Mouth my favorite band. I quickly abandoned that record and
that band, however, once Goldfinger entered my life, and it wasn’t until my
senior year of high school, playing in a ska/punk band with my three best
friends, that my drummer burned me a copy of Smash Mouth’s first record, Fush Yu Mang. As I spun the CD for the
first time, I was floored to find ska and punk influences from a band I’d once
loved, but had gone years without hearing, and with each subsequent listen, my
former obsession with Smash Mouth again began to bloom.
Fush Yu Mang is three
things: energetic, diverse, and tons of fun. Smash Mouth is a band that thinks
while it plays, and all four musicians provide us with intricate compositions
that capture our attention without sacrificing an ounce of energy or
enthusiasm. Furthermore, when they decide on a sonic avenue for a tune, they
absolutely nail it: their punk thrashes about in distortion and slash beats,
their ska skanks against the beat with upstroke barre chords, and their pop
grooves with impeccable melody and upbeat progressions. Smash Mouth plays into
each genre completely, but the music never deviates from sounding like Smash
Mouth. The sounds these four gentlemen create are their own brand, through
which they express and experiment with different tastes and styles, and the end
result is brilliance.
The
distinct musical flavor of Fush Yu Mang stems
from Smash Mouth’s commitment to their music. Their sound is honest and whole
because they are first and foremost making this music for themselves—they play
what they want to play, regardless of genre labels or outside expectations. In
an interview with NY Rock, singer
Steve Harwell remarked: “When we formed the band in 1994, we didn’t have one
style of music in mind. We wanted to write songs that feel good to us and make
others feel good. The question of a particular style never once crossed our
minds.”[1]
It is this simple
delight in creation that gives Fush Yu
Mang such an accessible sound, one that invites the listener back time and
time again. Furthermore, the fact that they produced this record entirely on
their own,
[2] without the input
of countless detached corporate bodies, shows that Smash Mouth is a band
committed to their craft and everything it represents about them as individuals
and as a band.
While there is a plethora of sounds to sample of Fush Yu Mang, the focus lies in the thin
area between punk rock and ska. Greg Camp’s guitar playing is forefront in both
mix and composition on this record, and his choice between clean barre chords
or dirty power chords is the base to which the rest of the band reacts with immaculate
fervor. For instance, “Flo,” the record’s opening track, tears out of the gate
with a monster beat worthy of moshing. While the verses are peppered with ska,
the song’s vehicle is distilled punk: Kevin Coleman trashes his kit while
Harwell accusatorily shouts “Who the fuck you think you’re foolin?,”[3]
pleading with his girlfriend to cease deluding herself in her unresolved
feelings for her former lover. While “Flo” erupts off of the disc like a missile,
in sharp contrast, “Disconnect the Dots” completely foregoes that punk vehemence
to focus on a full ska arrangement. A bright and beaming horn section owns the
intro, and Paul De Lisle’s bass walks perfectly lock with Greg Camp’s clean
upstrokes. Topped with gang vocals in the chorus, “Disconnect the Dots” encapsulates the ska side of Smash Mouth,
standing in stark contrast to the more battering beats of “Flo” and proving
this band has an incredible capacity for diversity in their music.
Smash Mouth’s mastery of their craft is hardly limited to the
instrumentals. Fush Yu Mang is laden
with lyrics that are engaging, cognitive, and especially fun. Smash Mouth has a
serious sense of humor which they constantly flaunt: “Beer Goggles” describes
the 2 A.M. slump in standards, “Padrino” marks the invention of the new genre
“mafia rock,” facetiously celebrating the lifestyle of the mob, and “Flo” and
“Heave-Ho” both capture different chapters in the band’s history, retold in
hilarious hindsight.[4]
Other songs take on a more serious tack, addressing real issues of the world
from which this band arose. “Nervous in the Alley” deals with the effects of
parental abandonment, giving us graphic images of a girl “waiting for her fix”
and paying for it with her body.[5]
Similarly, “Walkin’ on the Sun,” the record’s seemingly upbeat lead single, is
actually a call to arms, urging us to “snuff the fires and the liars” that
dictate our world’s behavior before the entire thing gets “bushwhacked.”[6]
Smash Mouth uses their debut record to paint a portrait of their world, and
every tale is regaled through interesting language that ranges from hilarious
to horrifying.
In my opinion, Fush Yu
Mang is a remarkably deep first record, and each track features some idea
or riff into which I can really sink my teeth—with the exception of
one. Unfortunately for this band, there
is one fatally crappy song on this record, the penultimate track “Push.” The
instrumentation, while partially interesting with its effect-laden guitar parts
and slight tempo changes in the verse, feels very rushed and underdeveloped,
giving me the impression that this song was more than likely written in the
studio right before recording. And if the riffs took fifteen minutes to flesh
out, the lyrics must have materialized in less than five, as they completely
lack for any semblance of meaning, emotion, coherence, or even rhyme. Harwell
rants at some undefined adversary, seeming to cycle through every limp cliché
he can think of while he “spin[s his] wheels and [tries] to figure it out.”[7]
There is no focus for the song other than vague and meaningless expressions of
frustration, but the vocals are front and center in the mix and composition,
thus giving the listener absolutely nothing to which the listener can relate.
“Push” might border on absolute drivel, but it is an anomaly
in the sea of awesome music that is Fush
Yu Mang. Every other tune displays deep thought and honest enthusiasm from
start to finish, and none more so than “Heave-Ho.” A three minute Smash Mouth
history lesson, “Heave-Ho” relates the band’s true experience with a crotchety
neighbor[8]
who is so unpleasant, even “church mice at St. Leo’s down my street / have
moved so far away.” Because the band practiced (and later recorded demos of two
Fush Yu Mang tracks) in Greg Camp’s
apartment, they quickly received an eviction notice,[9]
which they attributed to the complaints “lazy cow” next door. Harwell sings of
the band’s plight with a serious tone, but his language is completely
laughable, as he compares his future to hers: “Maybe someday when I’m jaded / 9
to 5 at a job I hate / I’ll come home and razz my neighbors too.”[10]
“Heave-Ho” is an honest and hilarious assessment of the troubles of being in a
band while hanging on those myriad naysayers that attempt to impede every
musician’s crusade for creativity.
From its inception, Fush
Yu Mang was never meant to be more than a collection of Smash’s Mouth’s
enthusiasm for their craft, and there is no lack for integrity or intellect on
this record. Both the content and the performance are exuberantly enjoyable,
but the delivery system of genre-hopping composition and spirited word play
keep the listener’s mind as engaged as the heart. Listening to it now, I now
have no doubt as to why the eleven-year-old me loved this band, and why the
eighteen-year-old me adored this record: there is simply too much fun to be
had.
Tunes to Check Out:
1) Flo
2) Why Can't We Be Friends?
3) The Fonz
