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UGLY
KID JOE
Nestled high in California's Santa Inez Mountains are five of the most rambunctious men in rock. Ugly Kid Joe are recording their second full-lengther-their third release to date -Menace to Sobriety, and are having quite the time. They are living next door to tennis star Jimmy Connors-actually, in the house that Jimmy Stewart built and Dean Martin last owned, and which the band has renovated to suit their present needs. A beautiful, palatial estate complete with fireplaces in every room, one couldn't ask for a more comfortable atmosphere in which to record. Vocalist Whitfield Crane thinks there are Indians in the vast gully the property overlooks. While sitting in front of the outdoor fireplace, taking in the beauty, Whit and new drummer Shannon Larkin (ex-Souls at Zero) suddenly take off as if they've seen a ghost. Tresa Red-burn, their lovely publicist/taxi driver/damage-control officer, and I follow, unsure, and discover that there are indeed what sound like wild dogs or Indians. "Do you hear that, dude?" asks Whit. We all nod. "That's the Indians." Could be. The house is located at the very tip-about half a mile up-of an Indian reservation. But it might also be wild dogs. Of course, Whit likes to believe it's wild Indians. After listening for a while, awestruck, we stumble back over to the fireplace and wonder where we're going for dinner. A couple of hours later, we're all tucked into cars and on our way to the local eatery. After only knowing the Kids a couple of hours, they have bogied all of my party favors and not even shared! Once at the restaurant we order dinner and wine. Guitarist Dave Fortman, who replaced original guitarist Roger Lahr in '92, tries to start casual conversation with me. I am not amused. "I met you two hours ago-it's not like we're old friends, and what you did ain't cool," I reply. Everybody dies of hysteria. "You're looking at the guilty party right there," Dave says, pointing to Whit. "Look, I got something to back you up," Whit claims. But the point here is not that Whit the Bogie King was selfish, but that UKJ are releasing a record, helmed with great care by producer Garth Richardson (Rage Against the Machine, L7, Mindfunk). Whit's leaning back in his chair munching veggies, "Bogart" Dave is sulking, Shannon's pounding back the beers, Klaus (Eichstadt, guitarist) and Cordell (Crockett, bassist) are laid-back. Conversation has flowed from the new Ozzy record to how the Kids baby-sat Oz's offspring when they were on tour to video games to football. But what about the new disc? "I'd ride my bike from my apartment down to rehearsal. It was two blocks from the beach. For a while there I'd be able to ride my bike from my apartment down to rehearsal and then go along the beach on my way back, go by the batting cages, hit some balls and stuff," Klaus explains. "It was a really cool place to work on songs. That's what we did for a long time. We had to audition a bunch of drummers. How long did that take?" he asks Cordell. "Last year, through January, we did the Rio-thing-the festival. We had a sit-in drummer do that," Cordell explains. "The sit-in drummer was Bobby from the Electric Love Hogs," Klaus interjects. "He also did the Black Sabbath track ('N.I.B.')" Anyhow... So we auditioned for a couple of months. We were auditioning everybody in any way we could. Then Whit went snowboarding in Colorado..." "Tell her the Shannon Larkin story," Cordell and Klaus encourage Whit. He declines because it had been written about in RIP Rap some months back. Cut back to RIR September '94. Whit calls in because he's just bonded like there's no tomorrow with Souls at Zero drummer Shannon Larkin, whom he met while snowboarding in Denver. "You know how you lust kind of click with people? I definitely clicked with him. Shannon is the king," he told us then, and Shannon was vibin' as well. So here we are. "Then we started jammin' with Shannon. We booked a little room inside the warehouse," Cordell explains. "Then Klaus and me' got some eight-tracks goin' on; we were doin' demos, bringin' in rifts and ideas. Then Shannon and I just worked up our parts. We'd sleep on the couch half the time and we'd be working constantly, kicking at it." Klaus continues: "The whole process was just like us in this warehouse, Dave with his stupid Natural Light beers, like 20 cases of 'em. All we'd do is beers, play ping pong and jam." "Totally," Cordell affirms. "Started like being in a garage band again." "There's two songs that have that funk vibe-'C.U.S.T. (Can You See Them)' and 'Suckerpath'; most of them are just straight-ahead, hard rock, metal," reiterates Klaus. "With the way that Shannon plays, there's like a strong groove goin' on with him and me. You can just play funk, you can play rock, whatever," Cordell gloats. "The guitar player writes rifts, then the band writes songs." What?!?! The Bogie King comes out of the fog and speaks! "Whit mouths it. Like the 'God' rift, he mouthed; '10/10's chorus, he mouthed. Mouth rifts are rad! 'Clover's dududadadan. 'Tomorrow's World' is the best example ever of complete co-writing. Shannon wrote the whole chorus for 'Tomorrow's World,' which is one of my favorites." "It's been really neat. It's cool to just have someone join the band as a drummer, and then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, this dude can do it all!" Klaus confirms. And the band continues having Whit "mouthing" for all the songs. "There's a song called 'Oompa.' It's a song about the Oompa Loompas [the characters from Willy Wonka And the Chocolate Factory] and sounds like the song [from the movie]." What about the market now? Is it receptive to a new Kids record? "Market? There's a market down the street. It's pretty good. You can get like french taters," Klaus jokes. Shannon throws in, "Fresh avocados, guacamole... "The last record I bought was Scorpions' Love Drive," Klaus continues. "When we came back, it was just like time to kick back and get out of the scene. We'd been touring quite a bit, and we came back and got apartments and started life all over again in one way," the guitarist continues. "We just totally started from scratch in a way. Wrote all new songs and everything-you know?-find a new drummer; so we really haven't been keeping our noses in music magazines or seeing what's hot or whatever. It's whatever they play on the local radio or the CDs that we have. It's way good for us," Klaus notes. That's how rock 'n' roll should be, though-not a poor imitation of the current flavor. Originally, the band had 17 tracks for Menace..., but only a dozen are on the record. They figure the rest can be used for B-sides and what-not. (That's something to look forward to!) "In Europe, they still sell vinyl, right? And they sell these 12-inch singles," explains Cordell "So like the first time we were ever there, these people come up with these 'Neighbor' singles. They're like 12 hits of records, like three other songs-live 'Neighbor,' re-mix, whatever. So in Europe, that's the way they do it. They sell more singles-they're more of a singles market-but four songs! If you're ready to work, its a great way to release new stuff." Between America's Least Wanted and Menace..., UKJ have been on the Airheads soundtrack (Whitfield singing "Born to Raise Hell" with Lemmy and lce-T) and an accompanying video that aired frequently. As with most bands, they get a chance to read the scripts before tracking a song. If the script's cool, they'll do it. "We've gotten some really f?!kin' weird movies. We're like, 'Naw, it's all right,' " Klaus explains. "I mean, we really never think about it that much-doing a movie thing-but you never know. Why would we want to do a song for a movie? But then again, if its a rad movie, and you're like, 'This is rad, dude! Yeah, we'll do a rad song for this one!' I mean, if it's a James Bond movie, we're there! Guaranteed! Speaking for myself, that would be a dream." Like a bolt of lightning: "That's what Bond needs-like a heavy metal/hard rock theme song! All sneaky and shit. What about the transition from living in Santa Barbara and traveling to L A to play local clubs-the Whisky, etc.-to gigging all around the world? "It's raaaaaad!" Cordell breathes. "It's like a new adventure every time. You don't know anybody." "It's neat, man," Klaus overlaps. "You gotta make new friends fast." Last time around the Kids were fortunate enough to tour with legends like Ozzy; this time around they won't be lumping into the arena spotlight so quickly. "We'll stay in clubs forever! I'd love it if we got big enough to go and play big places. Fine. But it's not like a goal in life to be an arena headliner;" says Klaus. "The thing is, it's not really the band's fault, because we got suckered into that a few times where our record happened to be doing really well at that particular time in that particular city, and they'd try to book us into 2,000-seaters. The last time we were there, we played for 200 people six months earlier. What now happens to a lot of bands is ...it's the promoters, everything, up and down, the band just wants to play. A think a lot of the bands would rather take it a little more gradually. That way, you don't go down!" concludes the guitarist, laughing. "I mean, we've had great shows at bars and great shows in front of 60,000."
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