Guilty Pleasures: Ugly Kid Joe: American’s Least Wanted
A week ago I found myself re-reading Chuck Klosterman’s debut book Fargo Rock City while on my lunch break at work. While Klosterman has been my favorite author since I first started to enjoy reading FRC was one of the last of his books I read. I didn’t get two shits about Glam Rock and most Heavy Metal and felt like the book probably wouldn’t be for me. How wrong I was! While I still don’t care much for most of the music of Motely Crue or KISS, I could relate to Klosterman’s obsession with stuff that is mostly “uncool”. As I drove home I was singing along with the Bloodhound Gang’s “Hooray for Boobies” album and couldn’t help but think “Chuck, there are far worse things to like than Motley Crue that harms your ‘self-proclaimed pop culture expert’ title” In one chapter Chuck provides a definition of the term “Guilty Pleasure” as stated by his friend Pat. The definition was “Guilty Pleasures are things you pretend to like Ironically, but actually like for real”
Perhaps that’s what this column is about. I’m defending the albums and movies in my collection that I pretend to only like because they’re “so bad that they’re good”, but in reality they’re legitimate albums or movies that I put on when no one’s around and have a blast consuming. Most people would hate these films and CDs; but I’m that one guy who truly loves them.
UGLY KID JOE: AMERICA’S LEAST WANTED
Ugly Kid Joe: America’s Least Wanted was the first and only album I bought solely based on the album cover. I knew nothing about this band (I didn’t even know what genre they were but I had a decent guess) but the juvenile MAD & Cracked Magazine influenced album cover had me sold. Based on how much I sincerely love this album, I should purchase more CDs this way.
Ugly Kid Joe is a Heavy-Metal/Hair Metal band from the early 90’s that came out way too late to really make an impression on anyone. Throughout the 300 pages of Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City the band is mentioned ONCE and only in reference to a friend mistaking Nirvana for them. But when I heard the opening notes to the opening track Neighbor I was hooked.
What’s ironic about my complete love of this album is that at the time I’d never liked Heavy Metal and still don’t. In fact it ranks just above “CrunkCore” and “Modern Country” as my least favorite genre of music. Regardless of all this when lead vocalist Whitfield Crane sneers “It’s a beautiful day in the Neighborhood and I hope I didn’t ruin your day/ Won’t you be My Neighbor”, I get an uncontrollable feeling of joy.
I don’t think I’ll ever truly know if Ugly Kid Joe is sincere or satire, but I don’t think they do either. That’s what makes them such a great band. Take for example their biggest hit song Everything About You. The song features guest vocals by SNL-Alumn Julia Sweeney and contains lyrics like “I don’t really care about your sister/Forget the little bitch cause I already kissed her”. The song is clearly a joke song (as well as the greatest anti-love song ever written) but songs like Busy Bee or Come Tomorrow are far to sincere to be a joke. Their cover of Cats in the Cradle is the best recorded version of that song ever (including the Harry Chaplin original which is so slow and drawn out that it outstays its welcome about half-way through) and the closing track Mr. Recordman is the most honest song about the music industry ever produced by a Heavy Metal band.
But Ugly Kid Joe wasn’t about changing the recording practices, they instead wanted to inform us that they were in fact the Goddamn Devil and bring the growing homeless problem to our attention (Panhandlin’ Prince).
The follow-up album Menace to Sobriety was critically praised but barely cracked the US Billboard Top 200 (peaking at 178). Ugly Kid Joe disappeared with an independently released 3rd album that no body bought (including me) and then silently broke up. Somehow despite only having 3 albums and 2 hit singles, the band managed to release not one but two greatest hits albums.
As of last year the band has reunited and started touring again, a fact that doesn’t seem to interest anyone (including me who ranks their debut as one of his top 20 favorite albums ever made). What makes America’s Least Wanted so enjoyable is that everything is sincere on it. Be it a serious song or a Joke-y song, it’s sincere. It was written and recorded by a bunch of guys in their mid-20’s just having fun writing music and probably extremely exciting to be given to chance to tour with Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne and Scatterbrain all who were obvious influence to anyone listens to even five minutes of the album (Scatterbrain probably the biggest influence).
People will continue to shit on 90’s alternative and as Chuck Klosterman outlined in Fargo Rock City, the general public didn’t think highly of heavy metal either. Ugly Kid Joe presented you the best of both horribly disliked worlds and the final result is pure nostalgic bliss.
