Steve Harwell in 2014 (Image by: Getty Images)

Although Smash Mouth singer Steve Harwell may share superficial characteristics with a pigeon—namely experience being shooed away by annoyed urbanites—unlike his avian counterparts, he doesn’t appreciate having bread thrown at him.


Harwell expressed his irritation with the leavened foodstuff at a concert in Fort Collins, Colorado over the weekend, where festivalgoers at the Taste Of Fort Collins apparently started throwing slices of bread at the stage during Smash Mouth’s set. This was not a Rocky Horror reference, but a reference to the fact that one of the booths at the festival was giving away free loaves of bread, probably figuring that it couldn’t hurt anyone.

Wrong. It hurt Harwell, who he stopped in the middle of the band’s set to berate the audience, launching into a nearly three-minute obscenity-laced rant that lasted until the rest of the band managed to defuse the situation by launching into “All Star”:

That’s one way to handle it. But should this happen again, The A.V. Club would like to suggest that, rather than dropping a bunch of f-bombs on a crowd full of children, Harwell should change his lyrics to address the situation instead. Here, we went ahead and started it:

Somebody must tell you the whole grains you are throwing / They’re flying awfully close to my head / You’re dropping all those crumbs from the baguettes and the loaves / That you got from the guy with the free bread Well, the food starts flying and my band starts crying / Came to the show and I don’t think I’m lying / Doesn’t make sense to hit me with a bun / Try it again and you will get punched So much to do, so much to see / So why do you throw your bread at me? / You’ll never eat if you don’t quit (quit) / So knock it off with the bread shit (shit) Hey now, that’s enough bread, knock it off now, joke’s spent / Hey now, don’t throw French bread, it’s not funny, get bent / We know we’re playing state fai-irs/ But you’re being rude, it’s making me swe-ear


[via Billboard]