In the 1990s, Fun House was a staple of children’s television in the UK, with two teams completing gunge-filled challenges and racing go-carts, battling it out to win prizes. And presiding over it all was mulleted presenter Pat Sharp. Now a DJ with a new spoof autobiography out, we got him on a Zoom call and set him a challenge: to listen to 10 of the most fun metal songs, as chosen by us, and rank them in order of least to most fun.
But first, we wanted to know if he likes metal. “Yeah, I used to go to see Sammy Hagar, and various people from my generation when I was kid,” he says. “I went to see heavy metal concert after heavy metal concert, but they were the poppier end of it. People like Gary Moore and Thin Lizzy and Phil Lynott, shining his mirror on his guitar in the crowd at Hammersmith Odeon. But then I discovered Abba!”
What does he consider to be a ‘fun’ song? “For me, it would be something that smells of the summer, and makes you feel good. I work for Greatest Hits Radio, and their strapline is: ‘The Good Times Sound Like This’. I would choose something like Beach Baby by the First Class. It’s from the 70s, and it’s all about this guy meeting this girl again, who he used to know from college. Probably not what your guys like...”
Probably not. But will Pat like these? On your marks, get set…
Vodka (Korpiklaani)
Pat: “Okay, well that was extraordinary. It reminded me a bit of those guys who won the Eurovision Song Contest a few years ago, with all those masks, from Finland. I’m guessing they’re actually from Scandinavia. I’ll tell you how I know, it’s because my wife’s Norwegian, and Norwegians have a terrible habit of pronouncing Vs as Ws, and they sang the whole song as ‘Wodka’, not ‘Vodka’.”
Hammer: “Yeah, they’re from Finland, so you’re right. The same country as Eurovision winners Lordi.”
Pat: “That’s probably what reminded me of them. Scandinavians speak fantastic English, as good as the Dutch and the Belgians, but they do have a problem with their Vs and their Ws, and they get very confused, so it’s always been that way. So Wodka is a great song.”
Hammer: “How fun did you think the song was?”
Pat: “I thought it was quite fun. It sounds a bit crazy, it’s pretty catchy, it’s not something I would turn off.”
Hammer: “The next song is called Party Hard.”
Pat: “Let’s Party Hard on a Friday morning, with my orange juice.”
Party Hard (Andrew W.K.)
Pat: “I thought it was good. Very commercial. I especially liked the opening of it, where they used the [covers his mouth] vocoder, to make it sound like that. That’s an old school trick, first heard – by me, anyway – on Peter Frampton’s album, Frampton Comes Alive!, in the ’70s. He was the first guy I ever saw in concert. And he was not metal, but certainly guitary, and on the track Do You Feel Like We Do he uses the vocoder where it goes [sings] ‘Do you feel like we do’. And anybody who has an album about swimming called I Get Wet, well they’re all good in my book, certainly.”
Hammer: “Have you heard of Andrew W.K. before?”
Pat: “I haven’t, no. What does the W.K. stand for?”
Hammer: “It’s an abbreviation of his surname, Wilkes-Krier. But he basically calls himself a sort of party king, and has had columns in the New York Times about partying.”
Pat: “Well I liked it. I can imagine playing it at Snowbombing [festival] in Austria. I play every year, except for this year of course, because nobody’s playing anywhere. But I play quite a lot of songs at those kind of gigs for younger people. I play a lot of The Vaccines and things like that. It’s not metal again, but certainly guitar-based. If I’m doing a gig and it’s not just a party crowd and I can get away with it, I love to play guitar songs, because I think their impact is brilliant. Driving guitars are my thing, always have been. A lot of people probably don’t associate me with them, but I love them.”
Jagerbomb (Crossfaith)
Pat: “Okay, enough of that. As Alan Partridge once said, ‘That was just a noise!’ Alan Partridge said that when he was talking to Michael from the northeast, and he couldn’t understand what he said. And that’s what I think it was – it was just a noise. It was tuneless, it was aggressive, and unnecessary and horrible. That’s too heavy metally for me and just didn’t do anything for me. They can stick their Jagerbombs in their Crossfaith and enjoy it without me.”
Hammer: “It wasn’t fun enough for you?”
Pat: “No. It was just a load of people just hitting any button they could, and any guitar string they could.”
Party All Day (Steel Panther)
Pat: “Well, Steel Panther think they are Bon Jovi. And it just is everything about Bon Jovi, from the ‘wah um wah um’ noise on the guitar, to the sort of sound they’ve got there from Livin’ On A Prayer. But it’s catchy, and the singer does sound like Jon Bon Jovi as well. It’s very 80s, even the keyboard stuff at well at the start. It’s nice, I like it.”
Hammer: “They’re actually a parody band, so they started in Vegas and did a stage show, and it was a take-off of all these 80s bands.”
Pat: “Mmm, perfect, really good. Liked it. They did well. Party on, Wayne!”
Hammer: “Did you have any thoughts on the lyrical content? They were singing about VD, and they have lots of lyrics about sex, drinking and drugs.”
Pat: “Hey look, that’s quite metal anyway, isn’t it. A lot of songs in metal are like that – they’re based around being a bit more edgy with the lyrics, because they’re probably not going to get played on Greatest Hits Radio anyway, especially not new songs. But even if you go back to AC/DC and ‘She told me to come but I was already there’. That’s the line on my favourite AC/DC song, You Shook Me All Night Long.”
Rollin’ (Limp Bizkit)
Pat: “Okay, so I remember that. I remember the chorus certainly, with the rollin’ rollin’ rollin’, very repetitive. It’s not my thing. I’d rather have a Digestive than a limp one. I’m okay with your Blink-182s and bands like that, which are more catchy. I like songs where I can hear a lyric on them, understand it, and equally like the tune more than anything. I don’t even need to hear the lyrics if I like the tune. So it’s no from me, I will not be going through to bootcamp with that classic song, sorry.”
Hammer: “Limp Bizkit aren’t fun enough for you?!”
Pat: “No, they’re not. It’s too serious and too aggressive. Whereas Party All Day was fun. Party Hard was fun. Jagerbomb was not fun. Vodka was almost fun. Sorry, Wodka.”
Shot In The Dark (AC/DC)
Pat: “I don’t think it’s a very fun song, as it hasn’t got that cheeky sound of You Shook Me All Night Long, which has, as I say, the lyrics – ‘She told me to come but I was already there'. And then it goes [sings] ‘YOU! Shook me all night long’. It’s not fun enough.’
Hammer: “What a shame, it’s their new song!”
Pat: “Sorry, it’s gotta have that catchy sound. I’d rather hear Party All Day than that.”
Living After Midnight (Judas Priest)
Pat: “Yeah yeah, nice, like it, remember it, you can hear the lyrics, they’re very clear, they’re not just screaming. You could almost get away with playing that on a station like mine as a classic song people would remember, even though it’s a bit heavy for what we do – but that’s not the point. The point of it is for me it’s commercial enough to like and enjoy and remember. They must be old now; they’ve been around since the ’70s.”
Hammer: “They’ve just been on our cover.”
Pat: “Amazing, yeah, brilliant. Like that.”
Dragula (Rob Zombie)
Pat: “Yeah, not bad. Quite catchy. I quite liked the guitar riff as well; I could tell when it was coming, because I know that sort of thing with what I do. I thought it was tricky to understand. I’m not sure what a ‘Dragula’ is, if it’s Dracula in drag.”
Hammer: “It’s by a guy called Rob Zombie. He’s a metal musician but he also directs horror movies, and ‘Dragula’ was the name of the drag racing car in The Munsters.”
Pat: “Okay, yeah. I like The Munsters, and I thought that was fine. I’d say that was a fun song there. The guitar made me want to go like this [headbangs].”
Ace Of Spades (Motorhead)
Pat: “We know how it goes, we know it well, it just reminds me of all the things I don’t do. Gambling, the Jack Daniel’s, and the cigarettes, and everything else – I don’t do any of those. But it just sums up metal for me, that song. I like it as a pop song as well – it’s not a pop song, but it’s catchy enough to be included as popular, which to me makes it a pop song. Hence what popular means.”
Dance Macabre (Ghost)
Pat: “I don’t know what to say about that. It doesn’t sound like it’s on the right playlist – it sounds completely different than everything else. It just sounds like a pop song, really. It doesn’t sound metal at all to me. I don’t hear enough guitars, the vocals are very clear. It’s differently produced… It’s alright, an average pop song, it sounds quite 80s as well.”
Hammer: “They draw on the 70s and 80s occult thing, and the main character is dressed like a pope, and they have this amazing stage set-up. It’s a dark, tongue-in-cheek vibe, which is how they’ve made it into the metal world.”
Pat: “Okay, cool. It just doesn’t sound like a metal song, so I’m surprised people who like metal like that. To me it just totally stood out as being on the wrong playlist, and in the wrong Zoom call, at the wrong time!”
Verdict:
10. Jagerbomb (Crossfaith)
9. Rollin’ (Limp Bizkit)
8. Shot In The Dark (AC/DC)
7. Dance Macabre (Ghost)
6. Dragula (Rob Zombie)
5. Living After Midnight (Judas Priest)
4. Vodka (Korpiklanni)
3. Ace Of Spades (Motorhead)
2. Party Hard (Andrew W.K.)
1. Party All Day (Steel Panther)
Pat: “I would definitely put Party All Day as most fun, because they are a fun parody band, and that’s a hell of an endorsement to do that. If I’m doing my gigs, and people turn up in a mullet wig and dressed in red and yellow, then it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s nice!’ A bit of Steel Panther might be going on my playlist.”
Re-run The Fun – My Life As Pat Sharp, is out now via Little, Brown
