Fat Mike: First tell me what do you understand under Yugoslavia?
-Well .... Yugoslavia!Fat Mike: Are you form ex Yugoslavia?
-(Confused) ...well, yes, all this is ex Yugoslavia.Fat Mike: Are you from Slovenia? (republic from ex Yugoslavia. Now independent country.)
-No, I'm...Fat Mike: From Croatia?
-No, but I'm...Fat Mike: Todays Yugoslavia? Serbia?
-Something like that...lets say...Guy from Unwritten Law: “Mike, let her ask you - you aren't the journalist here.” -
Fat Mike: OK!
-How is it on such big tour?Fat Mike: Nice ... we are here with lots of friends and we meet a lot of new people.
-What happens when you travel with the same persons every week?Fat Mike: It's good. We are getting along just fine. We don't exactly travel together. We are just together on the stage. All the bands have their own bus or van and we hang together only on breaks.
-What is with your new attitude? You don't give any interviews and that MTV and commercial radio stations are guilty for everything.Fat Mike: Yes, we don't give interview any more. Just occasionally ... when somebody asks me nice ... when I find in me excuse. "I'll give an interview to her because that and that", like I'm giveing interview to you. And we don't make any videos, too. Because we don't want to end like Green Day.
-What bad do you see in that?Fat Mike: I don't want to be that kind of person. I don't want to become like that ... ANT! At this time we all live from music. We all have great time; we sell determinat amount of CD's and we are happy. I think you can be satisfied even if you don't reach the gold. Great luck is also if you only do what you love.
-Don't you think that with attitude like this you make yourself even bigger star?Fat Mike: NO! I don't thin so. We didn't sell more albums then before. We didn't get any bigger.
-And how long will you be where you are with attitude like this?Fat Mike: I hope we will be where we are forever. I don't think we'll get bigger then we are.
-Forever?Fat Mike: We'll stop when our apearence on scene will cause a boom.
-"Boom" in what way?Fat Mike: You know, I'm sure that sometime in the past you saw a band on scene and tought "aren't they already shamed to apear" or "why don't they stop already". Like D.O.A. for example. They had their days, but now it looks like they are riding a dead horse. On the other side, some bands play for a long time, but they are still good. Like Bad Religion. They are together for a long time, but they are still good. And they are good all the time. When I see that we are becoming this category, I'll turn where I turn when I'm not on the scene. Because there will not be a place for me anymore. Definitly...
-What do you do when you are not on the scene?Fat Mike: I work in my label, I play golf...
-Golf? What is interesting in golf?Fat Mike: (laugh) ...a lot of things. Then I spend a lot of time with my wife.
-I have the feeling that even if you agreed to give me the interview, you don't exactly want to talk ... you don't exactly "give your best".Fat Mike: Simply ... we stoped giveing interviews, among everything else also because we started to lie and make up stories so we wouldn't repeat ourselfes and that we wouldn't be boring. I don't know... but I want to tell you something else: I'm very sory that we won't play in Yugoslavia this year. We were in Ljubljana (capital of Slovenia) 3-4 years ago. And we also tryed to play in Sarajevo. Somebody told us Sarajevo is only a few hours away. We went there and then it tourned out that we need 16 hours to get there and in 2 o'clock in the mourning we tourned around and drive the same road for 10 hours... we'll play there in '97 again.
-How was it there?Fat Mike: I can only say "Thanks for the wine". Some guy brought us full cask of home wine. And logicaly - it was great. We'll play again, al least for this great wine.
It was very hard to persuade Fat Mike to give me an interview, but finaly he said yes. They really surprised me in positive way on the stage but when I talked to him it was just oposite: to much "hard to talk to" guy who says "I'm not a star", but acts diferently. Shortly - very bad. (remark: I don't know how is it now, but when this interview took place NOFX didn't give any interviews and my luck is that he was in "good mood")
DANA