UGLY Kid Joe will mark their 25th anniversary with a Live at Whelan’s show on Wednesday, September 5.
Formed in Isla Vista, California, Ugly Kid Joe feature vocalist Whitfield Crane, guitarists Klaus Eichstadt and Dave Fortman (who replaced Roger Lahr), bassist Cordell Crockett, and drummer Mark Davis.
Childhood friends Whitfield Crane and Klaus Eichstadt took an interest in music while growing up in Palo Alto, California. In 1990 Eichstadt joined Crane’s band in Isla Vista and the two recorded a demo with another Palo Alto native, record producer Eric Valentine.
After several member changes, the band signed with Mercury Records in 1991.
The band became popular in the early 1990s, mixing satirical humor and heavy metal. Its logo was a cartoon embodiment of an “ugly kid” wearing a backwards baseball hat.
The band got its name Ugly Kid Joe as a parody of Pretty Boy Floyd, initially for a one night show in Santa Barbara opening forthe LA glam band.
Pretty Boy Floyd would pull out of the show and have the gig cancelled, but the band decided to keep the name.
The group plays basic pop-metal with touches of funk and a bratty, parodic sense of humour.
Their debut single, ‘Everything About You’ went Top Ten and helped their mini-album ‘As Ugly as They Wanna Be ‘become the first short-form LP ever to be certified multi-platinum. They went Top Ten again with a straightforward cover of Harry Chapin's ‘Cats in the Cradle’ in 1993.
The band released its second full-length album, ‘Menace to Sobriety’ in 1995 while ‘Motel California’ appeared the next year.
Motel California turned out to be Ugly Kid Joe's last album for a major label. They split in 1997, a year after its release, and over the next decade the bandmembers played in various post-alt metal bands.
As the first decade of the new millennium came to a close, there were rumblings of new Ugly Kid Joe activity, rumours that came true in 2010 when the group reconvened.