Margaret BauerFor much of the past four years, the Ugly Man Contest has stood atop the trash heap of Wash U campus bands as the only lily white, critically important, aesthetically engaging, and erotically stimulating gang of super-sonic swashbuckling pirates, residing unscathed over all other pretenders like the very sweetest of sugars, fats, and oils atop the motherfuckin’ food pyramid. Listen: “Arms raised in a V, the dead lay in pools of maroon below.” During the past year, however, the UMC has remained quiet following a messy break-up due to internal friction, outside pressures, and rampant and recurrent herpes outbreaks among all members. Fans wept. But this very Thursday the band will be returning to reclaim its crowns of thorns and once again bear the cross of rock messiahs that has been passed on through the ages from Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath to Hall and Oates to Stryper to White Snake to Poison followed by Van Halen, then back to Hall and Oates for a little while, on to Genesis (pre-Phil Collins as lead singer), then to Peter Gabriel’s solo career, to Slayer, and finally to the Ugly Man Contest. With a new line-up that involved moving multi-instrumentalist Neal Bessen from drums to guitar and keyboards and adding Drew Sellers (yeah, that kid) on drums, the Ugly Man has attempted to move one after the departure of legendary lead man Cowboy Dan Briggs, and seems poised to return triumphantly for itsmost rocking, underpants wetting show yet, with enough mojo left afterwards to boink your mom later that night. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview the bassist of the UMC, myself, as we sat alone over some pork rinds and Kool-Aid on his fire escape.
Q: Hi.
A: Say I won’t. Say I won’t do it.
Q: I hear the set for Thursday’s show is almost entirely new material. Tell me how these new songs compare with the “art” rock stylings of earlier UMC incarnations.
A: Let me first clarify a common misconception. We are not an “art” rock band, nor have we ever claimed to be. We are frequently cited as such only because every member of the band gets truckloads of ass from art school girls, because, to be blunt, art school girls are crunk pieces of real estate. Our current sound, however, falls more within the genre of post-apocalyptic innocuous robot rock, whereas in the past we had more of a pre-Reagan-era nihilistic hypersincere rock edge that borrowed heavily from chaos physics and professional wrestling.
Q: So you’re basically the musical equivalent of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse?
A: You could say that. You could definitely say that, and not be wrong. Some bands use their music as a forum to discuss politics, critique culture, or emote over very private internal feelings relevant to interpersonal relationships that have left every one of us going to bed with broken dreams, but the Ugly Man Contest, we like to sing about partyin’ and drinkin’ and gettin’ it on.
Q: What would you say to someone who might criticize such subject matter as being trite and valueless in today’s world?
A: I would tell them that their puny excuse of a brain is too inundated with predictable and masturbatory collegiate self-realizations spawned by bullshit microwave-ready theories of academia that they have failed to grasp the underlying existential consequences implied by both the music and words of our songs, and then I’d tell them to fuck off, or go suck an egg, or something like that.
Q: Where do you find inspiration for such magnificent music?
A: We smoke weed and watch the Simpsons.
Q: What’s your favorite food?
A: Pork rinds and Kool-Aid.
Q: But concerning the actual creative process, though, how do songs become developed into the modern Wagnerian masterpieces that your devout fans experience at the shows?
A: I can’t speak for the other guys, but Nick just tells me what to play on bass. He might let us run through the song a few times at first and let me think whatever I’m playing is okie dokie, but then he’ll say, “hey, Andrew, how about you play something more like this?”
Q: And you will?
A: Yeah, because it sounds better.
Q: Every time?
A: Every time. I can get a corn dog?
Q: What would you cite as some of the UMC’s more important musical influences?
A: We drive out to construction sites in the suburbs, way out where they’re building some new strip mall, and we’ll do yoga and listen to the cacophony of the machinery. That was the inspiration for one of our new songs. On another song, we tried to recreate the sound we thought a cat might make if it was buried completely into the ground except for its head, and then brutally run over by a lawn mower. You know how every neighborhood has got a kid who does crazy shit like that growing up? We’re trying to reach that kid, trying to speak to him with our music and touch his heart, with a kind understanding and unconditional love. If we touch one heart in this way with out music, and maybe save one cat’s life, then we’ve accomplished all we could have ever hoped for.
Q: Do you think the fans are ready for what you’re going to give to them sonically at this reunion show?
A: No. But have they ever been ready? Our fans have always been nothing more than a mindless mob more attracted to the immediate eroticism of our performances than to the exigent theoretical underpinnings. This time, however, we will set our messianic message deliberately before them on a platter, tie a bib of perspicacity tightly around each of their necks, and force them to eat the fruits of our endeavors, and as we shove the pummelos of understanding down their throats with maternal vengeance, and castigate each personally for waiting until this last hour to completely offer their souls as a sacrifice at our bloody altar of rock and roll, they will finally heed our call: Party! Party! Party!
Give in to the demands of the Ugly Man Contest this Thursday night, April 15th, at the Red Sea, where they will be playing with Champion (Doug Ott). Doors at 9; show at 9:30. You will be subsumed.