Listen to a New Mix of the Original ‘We Care a Lot’ From Faith No More



Cleaning his basement was a dirty job, but Billy Gould had to do it.

The Faith No More bassist and co-founder and his wife had been accumulating stuff for about 30 or so years, so one day about two years ago, she said it was time to sort through it all. It turned out to be a blessing in a few ways. Not only did Gould end up with a cleaner basement, he found master tapes and other recordings from Faith No More’s first album, “We Care a Lot,” which was released on an independent label in 1985.

“I didn’t even know I had them,” Gould says. “It’s embarrassing.”

Now the band, which blended hard-rock, funk and punk stylings in the 1980s and 1990s, is releasing “We Care a Lot” in a deluxe package, including remastered versions of the original 10 tracks, some live cuts, a few demo versions, and three original tracks that have been mixed anew. The album, which has been out of print for 20 years, goes on sale Friday, Aug. 19, from Gould’s Koolarrow Records. The 2016 mix of the title track debuts above today on Speakeasy.

“We Care a Lot” is considered one of Faith No More’s signature songs, but most listeners are familiar with the faster, bouncier version on the band’s 1987 album “Introduce Yourself,” its first for a major label. The Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs” used it as a theme song because the song’s refrain is “Oh, it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.”

While the original version of the song lacks the “Transformers” and “Garbage Pail Kids” references that have turned the song into a nostalgic favorite, it has the same playfully sarcastic attitude embodied by then-singer Chuck Mosley‘s vocals, which sound a little more solid on the 2016 mix of the song. (After “Introduce Yourself,” Faith No More replaced Mosley with Mike Patton, who remains the band’s singer to this day.)

Gould says he asked original producer Matt Wallace to take another crack at mixing the various individual tracks that comprise “We Care a Lot” and a couple other songs on the deluxe re-release. While the new mix of “We Care a Lot” has a few changes, including a different arrangement, Gould thinks it doesn’t sound all that different from the album version.

“That kind of surprised me,” he says. “Thirty years of technology and experience, and here we are, still at kind of the same place.”

Gould, 53 years old, says he’s happy with the overall result of resurrecting the “We Care a Lot” album. Now that he’s had three decades to mature and develop his talents, he can appreciate the band’s early output as the core of what it would eventually end up doing.

“It’s good to see the whole story from beginning to now,” Gould says. “I think you need that warts-and-all comparison to put it in context. At least I do.”

The process has brought Mosley back into the picture a little bit more, too. The singer has shown up to do guest vocals at Faith No More concerts in recent years, but he’s in the spotlight again because of the re-release. There could be room for further collaboration, too, according to Gould.

“Right now, we’re on pretty good terms,” Gould says. “I can see us doing something creatively together.”