We Care a Lot

Album information

The title track "We Care a Lot" was later rerecorded for their follow-up album Introduce Yourself and released as their first single. This later version of the song was incorrectly listed as the original and the album Introduce Yourself was also listed as the début in the sleeve notes for some subsequent releases, such as the 1998 compilation Who Cares a Lot?.

The band is known to have re-recorded only one song from We Care a Lot in the studio with current singer, Mike Patton, on vocals. "As the Worm Turns" was recorded during the Angel Dust sessions.

However, a number of live recordings of songs from this album with Patton on vocals have been officially released over the years.

1. "We Care A Lot"
2. various "Falling To Pieces" singles
3. Live At The Brixton Academy
4. "We Care A Lot" (contains Patton's live version from Live At The Brixton Academy and Mosley's studio version from Introduce Yourself)
5. "I'm Easy/Be Aggressive" CD2 Single
6. "We Care A Lot/I Started A Joke" (contains Patton's live version from Live At The Brixton Academy and Mosley's studio version from Introduce Yourself)
7. various "I Started A Joke" singles
8. "Mark Bowen"
9. "I'm Easy/Be Aggressive" CD1 single
10. "Chinese Arithmetic"
11. various "Epic" CD singles
12. "As The Worm Turns"
13. various "Epic" CD singles
14. Live At The Brixton Academy

A later recording of "We Care a Lot" (from the album Introduce Yourself) is used as the theme song for the Discovery Channel's show Dirty Jobs, hosted by Mike Rowe.

Production

The band initially started recording the album without backing from a record label and, after pooling their money, recorded five songs. This gained the attention of Ruth Schwartz (who was then forming the independent label Mordam Records) under which the band (after receiving the finances to do so) finished and released the album. It was the first official release for both the band and the label.

The album was recorded in a short space of time on a low budget. In a 2015 interview, bassist Billy Gould reflected "There are probably things we could have done better, but at the same time I think that the performances were pretty damned good. And that had to do with us keeping focused and needing to work within those budget restrictions. We rehearsed quite a lot before we went in to record, so we were ready."

Release history

While released on vinyl and cassette in 1985, this album would not be released to buy as a CD until 1995 in Australia (on Mushroom Records) as a pink disc for the first pressing, and black disc for the second, to coincide with the tour for their fifth studio album King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime, released that year. In 1996 it was reissued on CD, vinyl and cassette in the UK and Japan with slightly modified artwork, one being a purple disc.

2016 reissue

The album was reissued by Koolarrow Records on August 19th, 2016, and includes nine additional tracks, including three remixes, four demos and two live recordings from a 1986 show at the I-Beam, San Francisco.

Music and lyrics

The third track "Mark Bowen" was titled after an early Faith No More/Faith No Man guitarist of the same name.

Critical reception

Select magazine, while also mentioning the roughness of production, said that the music is inexorable and "a lustful marriage of mutoid metal and dancefloor verve that owed nothing to anybody". Allmusic made repeated reference to the absence of future front man Mike Patton and criticized Chuck Mosley's vocals, calling him "often off-key, fairly monotonous, and colorless", but credited the album for having "lots of attitude" comparing it to early Public Image Ltd works.