California is the third studio album by Mr. Bungle. It was released on July 13, 1999, through Warner Bros. A controversy with the Red Hot Chili Peppers developed during the album’s release, reigniting Patton’s feud with Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony Kiedis. It was scheduled to be released on June 8, 1999, but Warner Bros. Records pushed it back so as not to coincide with the Red Hot Chili Peppers similarly titled album, Californication, which was to be released on the same day. Following the album release date conflict, Red Hot Chili Peppers vocalist Anthony Kiedis had Mr. Bungle removed from a series of summer festivals in Europe. As a major headlining act at the festivals, Kiedis and his band had a say in which bands could appear. The reasoning behind his actions have never been explained, although he had been involved in a public dispute with Mike Patton and his former band Faith No More a decade prior, where he accused Patton of stealing his style. According to Mr. Bungle themselves, Kiedis didn’t know anyone involved with the band, aside from Mike Patton. Patton himself stated, “the rest of the band doesn’t care. It’s something to do with Anthony.”
As a result of the concert removals, Mr. Bungle parodied the Red Hot Chili Peppers on Halloween 1999, in Pontiac, Michigan (the home state of Kiedis). Patton introduced each Mr. Bungle band member with the name of one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, before covering the songs Give It Away, Around the World, Under the Bridge and Scar Tissue, with Patton deliberately using incorrect lyrics, such as “Sometimes I feel like I’m on heroin” and “Sometimes I feel like a fucking junkie” on “Under the Bridge”. Patton impersonated Kiedis by wearing a blonde wig and speaking with a lisp, and while pretending to be Kiedis, mockingly said to the crowd: “Don’t you call me Mike, my name is Anthony. How dare you make that mistake. Mike has been ripping me off for many years.” The other members of Mr. Bungle, amidst their on-stage antics, satirized many of the mannerisms of the band and simulated heroin injections, as well as mocking deceased guitarist Hillel Slovak and deceased friend of the band River Phoenix. In between No One Knew They Were Robots and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Dunn (dressed as Flea) walked up to Spruance (dressed as the ghost of Hillel Slovak) and simulated injecting him with heroin, which Patton interrupted by shouting “You can’t shoot up a ghost!”.
Regarding the Halloween show, Trey Spruance said:
“It was pretty weird, having been fans of the first two RHCP albums, realizing that somehow something personal had gone amiss somewhere. So amiss that a decade and a half after we’d liked this now hugely popular band’s music (and hadn’t thought much about since), we’d be dealing with the fact that they were unmistakably trying to bury us. Why keep quiet? I remember drawing everybody’s tattoos. James Rotundi our touring keyboardist knew the band’s more recent music, and he’s a great guitarist, so he did those duties.” Dunn reflected “We had a member of the tour crew buy the most recent album of them (Californication) and then we proceeded to learn it in the back of the stage before the show. It wasn’t hard. The hardest part was copying his tattoos with a permanent marker. I remember it was very funny to ridicule them without thinking about whether they would be aware or not. We were pretty pissed off for all the financial and personal damage that they caused to us based on their egos and freaks of power. We should probably have sued them.”
Kiedis responded to the Halloween parody by having Mr. Bungle removed from the 2000 Big Day Out festival in Australia and New Zealand. He said of the festival shows:
“I would not have given fucking two fucks if they fucking played there with us. But after I fucking heard about the fucking Halloween show where they mocked us, fuck him and fuck the whole fucking band. I hope they all die”.
Patton went on to claim that Kiedis‘ actions had “ruined” Mr. Bungle‘s career during a 2001 interview, while Trevor Dunn remarked:
“It really screwed us up. It screwed up my life in a personal way.”
The band officially split in 2004, although they had been on hiatus since playing their final concert on September 9, 2000 in Nottingham, England.
Tracklist:
- Sweet Charity
- None of Them Knew They Were Robots
- Retrovertigo
- The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
- Ars Moriendi
- Pink Cigarette
- Golem II: The Bionic Vapour Boy
- The Holy Filament
- Vanity Fair
- Goodbye Sober Day
Mr. Bungle
Trevor Dunn: bass guitar, artwork concept and production
Danny Heifetz: percussion, drums, keyboards and production
Clinton “Bär” McKinnon: saxophone, keyboards, French horn and production
Mike Patton: vocals, keyboards, artwork concept and production
Trey Spruance: guitar, engineering, production strategy and production
Additional personnel
Bill Banovetz: English horn
Sam Bass: cello
Ben Barnes: violin and viola
Henri Ducharme: accordion
Timba Harris: trumpet
Marika Hughes: cello
Eyvind Kang: violin, viola
Carla Kihlstedt: violin and viola
Michael Peloquin: harmonica
David Phillips: pedal steel guitar
Larry Ragent: French horn
Jay Stebley: cymbalom
Aaron Seeman: piano
William Winant: timpani, mallets, tam tam and bass drum
Billy Anderson: engineering
Gibbs Chapman: mixing
Ryan Cooper: publicity
Elizabeth Gregory: legal representation
Josh Heller: engineering
Malcom Hillier: sleeve photography
George Horn: mastering
Adam Muñoz: engineering, mixing and editing
Mackie Osborne: sleeve layout and graphic design
Justin Phelps: engineering
Rob Worthington: mixing
