Monday, June 25, 2012

Song of the Day: Faith No More, "Epic"

Years ago, Richard and I caught a movie in Times Square. As was our tradition, we celebrated the event by visiting Dave's Tavern, the area's last surviving dive bar, and enjoying the free peanuts, pool table and company of the heavily-tattood bartender, Reina. We punched some of our favorite songs into the jukebox.

As each one of our tunes came on, a patron in the back, near the pool table, shouted his approval. "White Zombie, that's what up!" "Beastie Boys, you guys rule!" Each time, we acknowledged his kind words and went back to our Yuenglings. That was until the unmistakable first chords of Faith No More's "Epic" blared through the PA. Our fan lost his mind.



"FAITH NO MORE!" he screamed. "FAITH NO MORE! Yes! Yes! Youuuu wannnt it alllll..."

Flailing his arms, pulling all stops on his air instruments and struggling to hold on to his beer, our new companion looked like too much fun to ignore. Richard and I sang along with the chorus and flashed horns at him while he went completely nuts to Jim Martin's mind-bending solo, each one of Mike Patton's voices and of course, the greatest question of them all, "What is it?"

As the instruments cut out, leaving Roddy Bottum's piano outro to clean up the mess, our friend lost a few steps and dropped his pint, which shattered on the floor amongst the peanut shells. He looked back up at Richard and I. "That's all there is to life," he said in an amazed tone. "You just die."

He walked out of the bar.

2 comments:

InsaneLoudLifer said...

A well-told, awesome story about a great song!

Ben Apatoff said...

Thank you!