Mr Chi Pig RIP - This Is The End
Sad to hear of the death of Mr Chi Pig today. Many of my musical and personal influences are spoken about often: Dead Kennedys for the politics; Bad Religion for the harmonies and philosophy; Henry Rollins for the anger and the reading; Nomeansno for the bass playing; NOFX for the shitty stage banter we thought was funny... but the secret ingredient in the mixture of influences that is me has always been SNFU and Mr Chi Pig especially. Hearing his voice growing up I realised that was the closest thing I’d heard to what I called my own “power vomit” - flat, low, weird but goddamn going for it with all the passion he had! And those odd lyrics! It made me realise you could write and sing about anything. Just be yourself. And his artwork - cool, creepy cartoons. Then there were the photographs - this was pre-YouTube - I would stare at pictures in zines and on the backs of my SNFU records of Chi Pig leaping in the air (like this one) and know exactly the level of energy I would have to give in a live performance. Anything less would be a disservice.
My overriding memory of my early development as a bass player and singer will always be standing, amp on and microphone turned up way too loud in my childhood bedroom, trying to sound like Mr Chi Pig as much as possible singing covers of “Painful Reminder” and “Stepstranger” so loud I hoped my neighbours across the road would hear (and, in my mind, go out and buy some SNFU) then blasting out Better Than A Stick In The Eye on vinyl to celebrate a job well done.
At school you would often see me humming “Eric’s Had A Bad Day” or “Drunk on a Bike” to myself as I worked, or singing the lyrics to “Cannibal Cafe” to freak out the people I didn’t like on my table. And I never walked by the weird little Futon store in Solihull without saying to myself “I think it’s time!” On the Academy Morticians song “There Must Be More Than This To Life” I always said “you know!” in my best Chi Pig Canadian.
The songs and memories are still there, but it’s sad to think the guy who gave me them all isn’t. RIP Mr Chi Pig. Never met you. Never saw you play live. Yet I’m forever changed by what you did.