Fat Mike
Fat Mike |
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Michael John Burkett (born January 31, 1967), better known as Fat Mike is an American musician, producer, lead vocalist, and bassist for the punk rock band NOFX, as well as bassist for the punk rock supergroup cover band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.
Musical career
The moniker "Fat Mike" was given to Mike by friends after he returned from college and it was evident that he had gained a little weight.[1] While attending Beverly Hills High School, Mike began his musical career with the band False Alarm. After the band split up in 1983, he met Eric Melvin and Erik Sandin and formed the original line-up of NOFX.
Mike is the owner and founder of Fat Wreck Chords, one of the biggest independent labels in the United States. He was also the founder of the Rock Against Bush tour. The purpose was to encourage young Americans to vote George W. Bush out of office in 2004.
Mike recently recorded the Cokie the Clown EP with NOFX, playing as Cokie on both the cover of the EP and the music video for the title-track, "Cokie the Clown". In the video, Mike dresses as Cokie and puts white powder into his squirting flower, representing cocaine. Cokie then walks around the city, squirting powder in pedestrians' faces, as chronicled in the song itself.
Mike has also appeared as himself as part of a new wave of protest music sweeping across America in music documentary Sounds Like a Revolution.
Personal life
He lives in San Francisco, California with his wife Erin and their daughter Darla. The couple has been married since 1993. They divorced in 2010. [2]
He is Jewish.
At Emo's, a popular nightclub in Austin during the 2010 South by Southwest festival, Fat Mike made a one time only appearance as Cokie the Clown. He recounted several graphic and disturbing stories about his life, and played several songs both previously released and unreleased. He also tricked several members of the audience into drinking tequila, before showing them a video of himself filling a partially full bottle of tequila to the top with urine to shocked reactions. Although it had been a joke, as shown on NOFX's website, Fat Mike urinated in to a tequila bottle, and then switched it with another before making audience members drink it. Mike was later banned from Emo's.[3]
Discography
References
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