Smash Mouth Fush Yu Mang

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Yes, I did just say Smash Mouth. As in the band who made the song All Star. Which was adopted by the Shrek franchise. Which has become one of the biggest internet jokes in recent times. You know, the one about the world who's gonna roll him and sharp shed tools and all that. Stick with me here.

A month ago, if I had taken a glimpse into the future and seen a Smash Mouth album posted on my own blog, I would probably be a little concerned about my health. For years I've known Smash Mouth as a pop band fronted by a guy who looks like Guy Fieri, and little more. I'm sure this is the case with many people. One drunken night, "All Star" ended up on the speakers, and YouTube's autoplay brought me to an entirely different understanding of the band.

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I often get on these tangents involving me listening to a song such as "All Star" for sheer humor and then I begin to wonder, who the hell are these guys? Most of them are pretty short lived, as I usually find I'm just as un-interested in the artist as I thought I was. When Smash Mouth came up to the plate, I didn't really expect to find much of interest.

I was wrong.

It all started with their apparent other hit single, prior to 1999's "All Star", "Walkin' on the Sun". At first, it pretty much met my expectations of what I'd expected them to sound like. But as the song progressed, we started to hear playfully intelligent lyrics that led to us hitting the restart button and wondering, "what's this all about?"

We listened to the song a few times and said "fuck it, we gotta listen to the album". This is when things got weird. I hit play on the 1997 album Fush Yu Mang and a 90's ska/punk record came on. I had to make sure I was listening to Smash Mouth.

The lyrics are fucking clever, and the band really had something. I was SO FUCKING SURPRISED THAT I WAS ACTUALLY GENUINELY ENJOYING A SMASH MOUTH ALBUM. I've tried to write this article in a few different ways but my writing ability has been entirely replaced by my shock. I listened to the album like half a dozen times that night. And the more I looked into them, the better it got.

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Ok, maybe not the music. After listening to their other albums(I didn't really make it through most of them to be honest), I came to the conclusion(i.e. personal opinion) that they really hit their peak on that debut album. But it was a hell of a peak. What got more interesting was the story behind the album, the band, singer Steve Harwell, and just other random shit.

In one interview I read with Harwell, he discusses the origins of "Walkin' on the Sun" and how it came to be on that ska/punk record. And I absolutely love this story. Harwell states that at a time when most of Fush Yu Mang had been recorded, they had, in his words, a drummer who "just sucked". I'll leave his name out even though it's easily found because, well, he seems like a nice guy (har har).

Anyways, guitarist Greg Camp would deal with their shitty drummer by giving him random old demo tapes to take home and practice to. Gotta feel kind of shitty when your band's recording an album and they're asking you to practice so they can complete it, huh? (This is why I didn't feel it necessary to include his name). Anyways, drummer-who-must-not-be-named was practicing one night, came across an old demo, called up the rest of the guys and said "YO! I THINK WE GOT A HIT HERE!" (not verbatim, lol).

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Anyways, that led to the recording of "Walkin' on the Sun", which was the song that really put them on the map. If you listen to the album you can tell it is a very, very distinctly different sound than the rest of the music they were making at the time. And I guess, from there, that impact weighed heavily on their influence, and things changed.

This was the first genre-shift for Harwell though. I also learned, that prior to ska/punk Smash Mouth, Harwell pretty much wanted to be Chuck D. Below is a song recorded by him under the name Freedom of Speech(or F.O.S.) during his short-lived 90's hip-hop experiment. It ain't bad.

As I mentioned above, I had several starts to this that didn't really work out. Maybe I'm a little out of practice, but I'm not sure if this article turned out exactly the way I wanted it to. Regardless, I wanted to put out some news about how I came to have an entirely different respect for Steve Harwell and Smash Mouth. They have quite creative lyricism that I think became mocked in "All Star" because of the re-branding of the song as the Shrek theme song. I didn't enjoy the rest of their albums nearly as much, but I strongly encourage you all to check out this debut album. As with some of the albums I post here, I can't provide you with a full stream but, if you click the first track below, it should bring you to a playlist :)

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