Forty minutes late, but here it is finally. Dazed, Fat Mike (real name: Michael Burkett, 56) comes waddling onto the stage at ten past nine on his own. The singer of the Californian punk band NOFX – light blue hair, shorts, tall Dr. Marten’s tight Bad Religion shirt with the bulbous paunch that gave Burkett his nickname – puts his fingers to his lips and waits patiently.
And then, when the sold-out Amsterdam Milky Way is finally quiet, it starts to whisper. “I lost my voice,” he croaks. “The rest of the band will sing everything. It’s not a joke, sorry. Anyone who wants can get their money back. See you in ten minutes.”
It’s a farewell in style. Because anyone who saw Fat Mike before in Amsterdam knows that all local temptations never do his vocal cords (and state of mind) any good. „I don’t care how bad I fuck up”, he sings (normally) in “60%”, the band’s self-titled “mission statement”: “I care about how fucked up I get.” Also on Tuesday evening, he finally admits with the last remnant of his vocal cords: “I have never played here while I was not on MDMA (XTC).”
It all started so beautifully: on Friday there was suddenly the message that NOFX – which, together with Descendents and Bad Religion, is considered the founder of the melodic punk rock that would conquer the world after grunge in the 1990s – is still holding its ‘last club show’. ‘ in the Milky Way would give.
Expensively paid goodbye moment
That would be a brave end to an impressive career of a band that remained recalcitrant against the rocks: from endless persistence in corny underpants fun to sincere activism (such as the anti-election campaign Rock Against Bush).
The surprise concert sold out in no time, even if it raised some eyebrows. Because if NOFX really loved Amsterdam as much as the band members continued to claim on Tuesday (“De Melkweg is our favorite club in the world”), why was this show crammed in between the festival performances at the very last minute? And how dare the band (which, unlike many contemporaries, always remained true to the independent do-it-yourself principles of punk) suddenly ask € 57.50 for a ticket?
With a battered and silent frontman, this expensively paid farewell moment could only turn out to be a disaster, the crowded room feared, when Fat Mike hung up his bass with visible reluctance a little before ten o’clock.
That was wrong thinking. The brave work of guitarists Eric Melvin and El Hefe to take over all vocal parts was hardly necessary. Amsterdam roared along and turned the worst conceivable concert into the coziest punk karaoke ever.
“Beforehand I told the band: this is stupid and wrong”, Fat Mike groaned after the first four songs. “But this is fucking awesome.” And he promised, along with the band members who could talk: “We will come back next year.”
 whispers: ‘I’ve lost my voice’){kind=link}