Chart entered : 6 February 1988
Chart peak : 53
Number of hits : 16
This lot are hard to classify but built up a substantial fanbase which enabled them to rack up a fair number of hits.
The band were formed as Sharp Young Men in California in 1979 . The members at that time were bassist Billy Gould , drummer Mike Bordin and two other guys. By 1983 the group had changed their name to Faith, No Man and released a single "Quiet in Heaven /Song of Liberty " on an independent label. It's a stomping, angry, Goth / punk record that could be the Virgin Prunes or even PiL with original vocalist Mike Morris sounding like he's been influenced by Lydon. "Song of Liberty " is the more controlled number with its insistent bass line but neither has anything that could be described as a tune.
Shortly afterwards the keyboard player was replaced by Roddy Bottum ( yes that's his real surname ) and then the band decided to reconstitue themselves without Morris as Faith No More. After trying out a number of temporary singers ( including a certain Courtney Love ) and guitarists they settled on Charles "Chuck" Mosley " and Jim Martin respectively. Chuck had been in a punk band with Billy in the late seventies called The Animated and more recently had fronted a post-punk band called Haircuts That Kill, Jim came from a thrash metal band Vicious Hatred and was pally with members of Metallica.
The band then started recording their debut album without any label support, managing to put down five tracks on their own money. These were heard by Ruth Schwartz of the independent label Mordam Records who fronted the money to complete it.
The album "We Care A Lot" came out in November 1985. The opening title track written by Roddy, Chuck and Billy seems to be a sarky riposte to the burgeoning pop as philanthropy trend following Band Aid with Chuck bellowing a list of all the things that supposedly concerned them over a steely funk bassline which rears up before the chorus in similar fashion to Derek Forbes on Promised You A Miracle. It has the muscularity of metal although the lead instrument is Roddy's keyboards rather than Jim's guitar.
The album is a really frustrating listen because there's a lot of good music on it. I love Roddy's Ultravox-style keyboards and Billy's no slouch on the bass either. The problem is Chuck. He writes some intelligent lyrics but 30 minutes ( a llowing for the instrumental tracks ) of his tuneless bawling , somewhat similar to The Angelic Upstarts' Mensi , is way too much. There's good songs here but he does his best to hide the fact. Chuck actually addresses the issue in the song "Greed" - "They say that when I'm supposed to be singing, all I'm really doing is yelling". Well "they" are right man, do something about it.
The following year they signed with the Slash label which had a distribution deal with Warner Brothers. With a larger recording budget the band decided to re-record "We Care A Lot " for the next album. The new version has a cleaner production, the odd lyrical change and a slightly faster tempo but otherwise it's not much different. The video got an airing on The Chart Show which helped it into the charts here before they'd broken in their homeland.
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