Lead singer Brendad Brown formed Wheatus in 1995 when he began writing songs in New York City, U.S., and recruited his brother Peter Brown on drums, Rich Liegey on bass and Philip A. Jimenez as multi-instrumentalist, inlcuding percussion, keyboard and the harmonica. The name Wheatus is a play on the word “Wedus” which is what the Brown brothers’ father used to affectionally call them as children.
In 1999 the band hired the attorney Ray Maiello, who helped the band get signed with Kevin Patrick at Columbia Records and was subsequently hired as manager. Wheatus’ self-titled debut album was released on August 15, 2000 and proved to be the band’s commercially successful album, featuring the unforgettable “Teenage Dirtbag” The single reached No. 2 in the UK’s Singles Chart and has since been the soundtrack in the movie “Loser” and the TV series “Generation Kill”. The single’s follow-up, a cover of Erasure’s “A Little Respect”, also performed well in the charts, peaking at No. 3 in the UK’s Singles chart.
Shortly after, lead singer Brown refused to lip-sync on the UK show Top of the Pops and in response Columbia Records, under the ownership of Song Music Entertainment refused to release the band’s sophomore album. The refusal led to a change in album titled from “Hand Over Your Loved Ones” to the rather aptly named “Suck Fony”, the album was eventually released on their own label Montauk Mantis in February 2005.
A consistent series of personnel changes left Brendad Brown as the only remaining member of the original line-up. Wheatus has since released three albums 2005’s “TooSoonMonsoon”, 2009’s “Pop, Songs & Death” and 2013’s “The Valentine”, the latter of which concerned issues regarding LGBT individuals in school and sexual equality. In 2013 the boyband One Direction started covering Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag”, introducing the band to a newer audience.
The group’s embryonic stages trace back to 1987, Palo Alto, California. Two of the groups founding members Whitfield Crane and Klaus Eichstadt bonded over a shared interest in music and by 1989 were playing together in a band based out of Isla Vista, California. The friends eventually branched off to record a demo of their own with the help of Eric Valentine (Good Charlotte, Taking Back Sunday, Queens of the Stone age). The group went through several line up changes before settling on Crane, Eichstadt, Mark Davis, Roger Lahr, and Cordell Crockett.
The group garnered it’s name from a satirization of the glam rock band Pretty Boy Floyd. Unsurprisingly Ugly Joe Kid earned a reputation not only for their catchy heavy metal tone influenced by acts like Bon Jovi, Black Sabbath, and Mötley Crüe, but also from their comedic outlook. The group slowly but steadily started building a fan base and in the early 90s were opening for acts like Scatterbrain and Ozzy Osbourne. They released their debut EP “As Ugly As They Wanna Be” in 1992. The album was a huge success producing the hit single “Everything About You”, which found it’s way on the “Wayne’s World” soundtrack and sold over 1,000,000 copies in the US certifying it as the current highest selling EP.
This EP acted as the gateway in to the mainstream for the band and helped set the stage for the success of their proceeding efforts. Their proper debut album “America’s Least Wanted” came out in the Fall of 1992 and featured the five hit singles “Cats in the Cradle”, “Everything About You”, “So Damn Cool”, “Busy Bee”, and “Neighbor”. The latter of the tracks was spotlighted in the popular TV series “Beavis and Butt-head” and garnered them even more attention. The album charted at No. 27 on the US Billboard 200 and No.11 on the UK Albums Charts and of 1995 it has gone double platinum. The group supported this release opening for Black Sabbath and Def Leppard on a sold out European tour and subsequently went on to play more sold out shows in Japan and Australia.
Ugly Joe Kid spent several more years on the road, headlining festivals in Brazil alongside Aerosmith and Poison, warming up arenas for Bon Jovi and Van Halen and fronting their own tours such as the “Excuse to Go Snowboarding Tour”, on which they shared the stage with Goldfinger and Dog Eat Dog. The band’s 2nd studio album “Menace to Sobriety” was issued through Mercury on 13 June 1995. Though the album was critically praised and spawned several successful tour legs, Mercury decided to discontinue their contract with the band. Their next album “Motel California” (a parody of the Eagles’ “Hotel of California”) was released on 22 October 1996 through the independent British label, Castle Communications.
The album failed to chart in the US, but did place at 128 on the UK album charts. After a string of small venue tours the group called it quits in 1997. Their drummer at the time, Shannon Larkin moved on to Godsmack and lead vocalist Crane joined forces with Life of Agony and later worked on two other projects: Medication and Another Animal.
Ugly Joe Kid reformed in 2010 to play several live gigs and by 2012 they released the EP “Stairway to Hell” (their 1st release of original material in almost 16 years). Their 4th studio debut “Uglier Than They Used Ta Be” is set for release in 2015 through UKJ Records.
There’s no real doubting ‘Teenage Dirtbag’s status as one of the biggest hits of the noughties; the flipside of that success, for Wheatus, is that it’s pretty firmly secured them one-hit wonder status. Everybody knows that song, but plenty of people couldn’t even name the band behind it, much less tell you what they got up to next; those with sharper memories might recall that their next single, a cover of Erasure’s ‘A Little Respect’, was a reasonable chart success, too, but after that, they pretty much fell of the radar, following a label dispute over their poorly-promoted second album that would eventually lead to them reissuing it under the name ‘Suck Fony’. In fact, though, Wheatus are still going strong today, and their relative anonymity these days has at least afforded them the possibility of experimentation, recording their last album, The Valentine LP, in the super high-fidelity DSD format. They continue to tour the UK, too, on an annual basis, with their latest run of dates set for October; if you’re after a quick shot of nostalgia, you could do far worse than check them out - and, just in case you were wondering, no, they haven’t done a Radiohead: ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ remains very much pride of place in the setlists.
Joeg_67
Ugly Kid Joe often get a bit of hammering whenever they seem to crop up in conversation. They're a band that everyone seems to know but no one really cares about. With the juvenile sense of humour that runs through their material and revolving door line-up, it's understandable why they've never been taken too seriously. After seeing them live however, I do think they deserve a lot more respect than they are given. Playing in support of Skid Row with a patched up line-up including founding members Whitfield Crane and Klaus Eichstadt, Ugly Kid Joe are playing to their perfect demographic. Everything about the show has feeling of pure fun and sillyness to it. This is a band who instead of leaving the stage for an encore tell the crowd to 'imagine we've left the stage and we're not here' before standing perfectly still for two minutes.
There's obvious good times to be had belting along to 'Everything About You' and 'Cat's in the Cradle' while holding your pint aloft. There's also moments where they demonstrate how cohesive they can be as a band. Their heavier songs like 'Milkman's Son' and 'God Damn Devil' are hammered out with conviction while Klaus delights in letting rip with the odd wailing guitar solo. They finish by blazing through a cover of Motorhead's 'Ace of Spades' as Whitfield Crane whips up the crowd into one last burst of energy. This perhaps best sums up the Ugly Kid Joe experience, you know you're not going to be moved emotionally or have the best night of your life but this is a band who know how to have a good time and it's an energy that really comes across through their performances.
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