It hasn't taken long for the toll of success to hit Faith No More.
The San Francisco quintet seemed to be on a treadmill for more than eight years. But they broke out of that mode this summer with "Epic," a bizarre song from the album "The Real Thing" that features an unusual mix of rap, rock and even classical piano that was immediately picked up by MTV.
"The album had been out for six months and we'd been all over the country twice and it had only sold 50,000 copies," said keyboard player Roddy Bottum, whose training is in classical piano and whose musical favorites include George Michael and New Kids On The Block. "Then, all of a sudden, bam! The video for 'Epic" was repeatedly aired and the album is on its way to platinum [1 million copies] next week."
So what, besides becoming an opening act on Billy Idol's tour, which stops at the Capital Centre on Sunday, is the reward for all of this success?
"Well, we have to go out and keep playing these songs every night and we're really sick of them," Bottum confides. "It's kind of like a Broadway show where you have to go out every night and act like it's the first time you've ever done it.
"Right now, a couple weeks in the studio to work on some new music would be like a breath of fresh air."
But, along with singer Mike Patton, guitarist Jim Martin, bassist Billy Gould and dread locked drummer Mike Bordin, Bottum said the band has cooked up some interesting cover songs to play live.
At a show at Hammerjacks in July, the band did The New Kids On The Block's "(You've Got) The Right Stuff" and The Commodores' "I'm Easy."
"The other problem is that we're only getting about half of our normal time to do the show because we're opening," Bottum said. "We're trying to get as much as we can into those 45 minutes.
"Don't get me wrong, we're very grateful that people are buying the album, so we try to give them what they want when they come to our show."
The tour with Idol began last Saturday in Cleveland, and %J continues for another 39 shows over the next two months.
"We go to Japan after that and then we'll probably rest no matter how well the album is doing," Bottum said. "But inevitably, we get home and after a week we're bored and we need to start working again."
Child's Play is still waiting for its MTV debut after being bumped from the play schedule once again, most recently because of technical problems.
The band's video for "Rat Race" was scratched from the play list on MTV's Headbanger's Ball Saturday night.
The network told the band that an engineering problem that resulted in a 30-second blank screen caused the engineer to skip the video and move ahead to the next one.
At Max's On Broadway, O Positive and the Last Picture Sho tonight, The Cave Dogs and Gengus Angus tomorrow, and Obstructed View on Saturday. Later in the month, Blues Traveler comes to Max's on the 21st, the Connells appear on the 27th and Pylon comes in on the 30th.
At Hammerjacks, Monkeyspank appears tomorrow, Savatage RTC and Trouble on Saturday and The Shot on Sunday. Future shows include YNot? (Sept. 22), Wrathchild America (Sept. 28), Mannekin (Sept. 29), The Ramones (Oct. 5), Extreme and Alice In Chains (Oct. 6), Company of Wolves (Oct. 11), Eddie Rabbitt (Oct. 12), Joe Jackson (Oct. 14), Kix (Oct. 18), Vixen (Oct. 21).
Tickets still remain for Suzanne Vega's show at Shriver Hall on Nov. 4.
At the 8X10, Ben Vaughn and Ten Times Big appear tomorrow, the reggae act Souljahs perform on Saturday and Tom Principato appears on Sept. 28.
Two country shows, Randy Travis (Oct. 19) and Conway Twitty (Nov. 10) have been booked for the Arena.
The final two shows at Merriweather are The Allman Brothers (Sept. 22) and Emmylou Harris (Sept. 26).