Single Awareness: NOFX – “Bob” (1992)

When you’re younger and desiring to get into punk music, it is very difficult to ignore the charm of NOFX. While you could argue that certain corners of the genre are terrifying, maybe even unpleasant and unwelcoming, there was something amazing about a band who seemed to exist as nothing more than a career-long joke. This is the group who released two concert albums featuring the phrase “I Heard They Suck Live” and constantly make fun of their own laziness. It is the perfect teenager ethos, where not trying is most appealing. Of course, the joke is funnier because NOFX had more charisma than they let on, either being the smartest dumb band or the dumbest smart band.

Not knowing any better, I just took them at their word and thought it was interesting that no topic was off-limits. I still remember randomly meeting this girl in high school and singing the sex-change song “My Vagina” with her, finding some momentary connection. They had tons of “novelty” songs that I really latched onto and to some degree still think of from time to time. Even if I feel like I’ve outgrown the idea of being a bratty punk, I’m not above the prankish nature that they have here, like making an epic parody of a sea shanty ("Theme from a NOFX Album"), or writing a minute-long love song called “Monosyllabic Girl.” Given that they did a cover of Minor Threat’s “Straight Edge” in the style of an old blues singer only makes it more brilliant. As someone who still finds the career of Andy Kaufman wonderful, it’s frankly all the more endearing.

I wouldn’t say that I’m their biggest fan. I never heard all of their albums and eventually gave up on their exhaustive amount of E.P.’s. I probably gave up after “Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing” if for no other reason than I was reaching a shift in my tastes. 

However, I do know that there’s something exciting about listening to every album when you do get it. Contrary to the endless negative reviews that they packed into their compilation “The Greatest Songs Ever Written (By Us),” they were a delightful mix of commentary and one-note jokes. They were on the cutting edge and made everyone else seem pretentious. On one level, it was a defiant act that kept them from becoming mainstream. On the other, it’s what makes them a mainstay and a rite of passage. If you like punk, you have to at least appreciate the lyricism.

As a former bass player, I was also a fan of frontman “Fat Mike” Burkett, who struck me as a much more interesting player than he let on. Every now and then he would get a good bass riff going and I really responded to it, most notably on “The Idiots Have Taken Over.” He was also the owner of a record label (Fat Wreck Chords), and there was so much that made you admire him blazing his own trail. He did his own thing and, again, as a teenager, you had to admire someone who followed their dream to its rightful conclusion.

Which brings me to my point. No matter what magazines I read, “White Trash Two Heebs and a Bean” was listed among the essential punk records. As someone who was just collecting any information that I could, it made purchasing it easier. Add in that there were actual places that sold CD’s and I had one of those records I spun a lot. It was like opening a window into a new world. Even by the comparison of punk bands that I had listened to, it was strangely more complex in its subject matter. There was that “Straight Edge” cover, the subversive “Please Play This Song on the Radio” that ended with a delusional commentary on censorship (I did hear it once on Indie 103.1, so they got their wish). “Liza & Louise” devolved into a lesbian oral sex scene. Then, of course, there was “Bob.”

I feel like thanks to some strange barometer, “Bob” has become their most recognizable song. I can’t totally explain why since they have an immersive body of work that expands to far more significant topics and better hooks. But alas, this song about a guy named Bob has come to epitomize their whole career. Maybe it’s the bridge that features semis blowing their horns that transitions into a ska breakdown. Maybe it’s that it somehow is the closest they’ve come to reaching a seriousness without breaking their comic chops.

To be completely honest, it felt like an interesting topic for National Novel Writing Month, at a time when I’m trying to explore the world of songwriters. I’ve explored more involved stories that take artists on these big emotional journeys. By the end, you feel like a changed person because Ice Cube created this beautiful commentary about world peace, Jim Croce complaining about socioeconomic careers. What did Fat Mike choose to focus on?

With a single guitar playing behind him, he begins to sing, unassumingly, in the style of a folk singer:

He spent fifteen years getting loaded

Fifteen years until his liver exploded

Now what's Bob gonna do

Now that he can't drink?

Everything from there is catapulted to a regular song, finding the guitar usher everyone else in as Fat Mike suggests that Bob “won’t think about nothing.” One would have to wonder if this will be a poignant commentary on alcoholism and sobriety if we’re about to see Bob become an upstanding citizen. Yes, there has to be light at the end of the tunnel. Well, did I tell you that this is a band whose cover of “Straight Edge” sounds like a guy haggard by drugs? They wouldn’t even take their own (metaphorical) cancer diagnoses seriously if you asked them about it.

It starts out promising, finding Bob talking to his doctor about what his life has turned into. It’s the fear of how alcoholism has zapped his brain of any deeper meaning. He suggests “Now I gotta do something else.” Following an idiosyncratic “Oi, oi, oi!” from guitarist El Hefe, and it takes the opposite direction of what you think. “Oi” would suggest partying and going crazy. What’s going on with Bob? The fantasy feels like one of those cutaways in a hacky 80s sitcom where the person imagines what a perfect situation would be. The screen goes wavy as we cut to Bob’s future.

The guitar picks up, detailing everything that he’s done. This includes: shaving head, a new identity, wearing Doc Martens (“Sixty-two holed air-cushioned boots”), and has a girl who rides a scooter with him. That final detail is humorously offbeat from the rest but reflects something delightful. Bob seems like he is finding some peace, at last, getting exercise, and watching traffic. Given how upbeat this whole bit is, having Fat Mike sing “As the trucks drive by, you can hear the motherfuckers go…” feels like one of those pointlessly offensive ways of saying something nice. The following trumpet solos return Bob to a center of peace, but can it last?

A couple of lines, an extra thermos of joe

He'll be kicking in heads at the punk rock show

Bob's the kind of guy who knows just what

Bob's the kind of guy who knows just what to do

Apparently, sobriety didn’t last as long as we’d like to believe. The guitar picks back up, returning from the fantastical ska bridge to something more straightforward. It ends with an all-out thrashing as we enter the world of Bob. He has given up alcohol, but there’s plenty to suggest that he’s just replaced it with new vices, which are cocaine (“a couple of lines”) and presumably coffee (“thermos of joe”). He claims that he feels just great, leaving Fat Mike to ask “Will he ever walk the line?” 

That’s a fair question. More importantly, it’s asking a lot about just what is going on with Bob. Is he just going to spiral into some new problems? Maybe alcohol will return. Despite this song not having a lot of detail, it has a lot of open-ended scenarios that make you perplexed at who Bob actually is. Sure, it could be a depiction of addiction and our need to have some vice to keep us happy. However, there’s no positive conclusion. It’s antithetical to almost every D.A.R.E. campaign you likely saw around this time. It’s futile in the way that Joker (2019) is: everything that’s terrible is inevitable.

Though the two details I keep getting hung up on come directly after the “Oi, oi, oi!” portion. We think that we know who Bob is because of how the song ends, but it’s said that he has a new identity. Who was he before he shaved his head? Was he even into the punk scene or was he just some suburban sad sack who spiraled out of control? The instrumentation itself shows how manic his personal recovery is. 

Finally, who is that girl on a scooter? Is he actually in love with her? Is he just using her as his form of transportation, or is there something more genuine? After all, he can’t think about nothing. Did they fall in love, was he using her, or was this a tragic misdirect into a cocaine addiction? After all, it jumps directly from that scooter into cocaine talk. There has to be something with this girl, whether as an enabler or a failed relationship that made him down his sorrows in drugs. Also, does Fat Mike truly care if Bob gets sober when he says “Will he ever walk the line?” or is just pity?

It’s important to note that you should never take your addiction advice from punk rock. If you’re suffering from alcoholism or any other cause, please seek help. You are worth more. 

With that said, this anticlimactic tale of replacing one problem with another has a perfectly punk vibe that is humorous. It’s the anti-story, coming right in the middle of The George Bush Administration, the tail end of the “Just Say No” generation. If anything, it suggests that just saying no just leads to more problems. There needs to be a better way of handling everything. There has to be an outlet for our desires that don’t involve drugs. One has to wonder if that can be achieved in the punk community, or if Bob’s new identity is mere self-destruction.

While there are dozens of songs from NOFX about addiction, an interesting counterpoint to "Bob" is “Quart in Session,” which finds him singing about sobriety. There’s something more sincere about it. Even amid screaming and suggesting that his career is more successful, there is still that desire to give in to your former lifestyle. He sings repeatedly “Nothing seems much fun anymore to me.” Even if it’s amid a comical group of songs, it’s something that sounds sincere, reflecting a changing tone about addiction. It’s like a flat note at the end of “Bob,” deflating the air out of the song’s humor.

Given that NOFX still has decades ahead of them and will be singing about Beck's beers and bongs by the next album, it’s unlikely that any of this means anything. Maybe Fat Mike just replaced drinking with cocaine like Bob did. At a certain point, I stopped following the band’s life story and have forgotten large portions of it. Based on how they advertise themselves, that’s pretty much how they want to be remembered. It’s all one hazy, anarchic blur and it was fun while it lasted. Looking for nuance in their career may be the stupidest thing anybody has ever done, even when they’re singing about important things like alcoholism. You just have to take it for what it is.