UGLY KID JOE
Ugly Kid Joe is an American rock band from Isla Vista, California, formed in 1987. The band’s name spoofs that of another band, Pretty Boy Floyd. Ugly Kid Joe’s sound includes a range of styles, including rock, hard rock, funk metal and heavy metal. To date, Ugly Kid Joe have released four full-length albums, two compilation albums and two EPs. Their best selling records are As Ugly as They Wanna Be (1991) and America’s Least Wanted (1992), which were both certified double platinum by the RIAA; the former is notable for being the first EP to go platinum. The band broke up in 1997, but announced a reunion in 2010. (More from Wikipedia)
Ugly Kid Joe, America’s Least Wanted – Allmusic describes Ugly Kid Joe as a “fun-loving hard rock/funk/alt-metal group from Southern California”. To find the fun, you don’t have to go any further than the band name (a takeoff on “Pretty Boy Floyd” – actually a band by that name, Pretty Boy Floyd, not the Depression-era outlaw) or their album names that have similar word play, such as this one plus Menace to Sobriety, Motel California, and Stairway to Hell (with the latter album released just two years ago). This 1992 album is their first and includes their biggest hit song, a faithful but slightly quirky remake of the Harry Chapin classic, “Cats in the Cradle” that made the Top Ten. Of this album, Allmusic says: “Listeners who are too far removed from their adolescence to remember the joys of spitballs and Saturday schools won’t find America’s Least Wanted engaging in the least, but it wasn’t designed for them. Ugly Kid Joe rocks for the average high school kid, the one that doesn’t think about anything except girls, partying, and metal.” Like many of the CD’s that I got that day, my copy of America’s Least Wanted is missing the jewel-box booklet, so I hadn’t seen the album cover until just now: a cartoon drawing of a spiky-haired kid standing in for the Statue of Liberty, holding a porno magazine called Skin and flipping the bird, with the band’s name rendered in Green Jellö-style dripping letters. Additionally, Ugly Kid Joe had previously released an EP called As Ugly as They Wanna Be (1991) that includes another Top Ten song, “Everything About You” (this song is also included on America’s Least Wanted). The band went into the record books since As Ugly as They Wanna Be became the first short-form album to go multi-platinum.
(December 2015)
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
December 2015 – 1990’s pop/punk band AMANDA JONES; Story of the Month on the early American singles by the Beatles; also, Rochelle Harper, Lisa Loeb, 3 Doors Down, Level with the Ground, Chris Stamey with Yo La Tengo, Meri Wilson, Bobby Brown, the Cruzados / the Plugz, Terence Trent d’Arby, An Emotional Fish, Bruce Hornsby and the Range, Hunters & Collectors, Looters, Shakespear’s Sister, Robert Tepper, Y Kant Tori Read / Tori Amos, Ugly Kid Joe, Paul Young, the Rolling Stones, Mandy Brix, the Joneses.
(Year 7 Review)
