Radioactive Chicken Heads
The Radioactive Chicken Heads are an American punk band formed in Orange, California in 1993.
Operating anonymously under the guise of mutant chickens and vegetables, the Chicken Heads' music is primarily a mix of punk rock, heavy metal, and ska punk, a blend the band advertises as "Genetically Modified Punk Rock".
Originally formed under the name Joe and the Chicken Heads, the Chicken Heads first established a cult following within the Orange County punk and ska scene for their over-the-top theatrical stage shows utilizing a wide variety of props and costumed characters, all of which tie into an elaborate fictional mythology which serves as the basis for many of the band's songs and videos. Following their name change in 2004, the Chicken Heads have since focused more on multi-media projects centered on this mythology, including music videos, concept albums, YouTube skits, stage plays, a role-playing computer game and an independently produced television pilot.
To date, the band has released three studio albums and one compilation under the name "Radioactive Chicken Heads", with one studio album, one EP and six self-produced demo cassettes released during their time as "Joe and the Chicken Heads". Their most recent album, Tales From The Coop, was released in October 2017.
History
Joe and the Chicken Heads (1993-2004)
In a rare out-of-character interview, lead singer Carrot Topp explained that the genesis of the Radioactive Chicken Heads began with two comic books he had written as a teenager. One comic was about a gang of mutant vegetables called The Vegamatics; the other, called "Joe and the Chicken Heads" centred around a kid named Joe who sings with a rock band made up of headless chickens. After discovering the comedy metal band Green Jellÿ, a group renowned for their use of puppets and costumes, Carrot Topp ultimately decided to apply these concepts and visuals to a rock band combining elements of both comic books, creating the band's distinctive masks and props himself.Joe and the Chicken Heads were officially formed in late 1993, though the band didn't play their first show until February 26, 1994, at a Bar Mitzvah in Orange, California. Despite recording several demo tapes and appearing on numerous local compilations during the mid-1990s, the Chicken Heads performed few live shows until the arrival of the late 1990s ska revival helped the band attract a wider following within the Orange County's booming ska and punk scene, sharing the stage with such notable ska acts as Link 80, Slow Gherkin and Bim Skala Bim and receiving regular airplay on KUCIs influential Ska Parade radio show, which hosted many up and coming local ska and punk bands. The band's outrageous costumes and live shows soon began attracting publicity both positive and negative from local papers and zines including OC Weekly, LA Weekly, The Daily Trojan, X-TRA and Maximumrocknroll, with Thrasher magazine inexplicably describing them as "more fun than a shopping spree in a Mexican supermarket".
In late 1997, following a staged altercation with The Aquabats, the Chicken Heads waged a mock rivalry against the costumed superhero-themed band, a feud which was even covered in the OC Weekly newspaper at a time when both bands were experiencing notable local popularity. Though this rivalry never reached its fruition onstage, the Chicken Heads received a jokingly disparaging reference on the Ska Parade's infamous "Gwar vs. The Aquabats" radio skit the same year, wherein Aquabats lead singer The MC Bat Commander, turning down an offer to save the world because his band won't get paid, remarks "with that kind of motivation, you can probably get Joe and the Chicken Heads".
In 1998, the Chicken Heads made their national television debut playing the song "Pest Control" on a Halloween-themed episode of Extreme Gong, a short-lived revival of the 1970s Gong Show game show which aired on the Game Show Network. Although the band was "gonged" mid-performance, signifying that the call-in voters disapproved of their act and wanted them to stop, the Chicken Heads finished their song anyway, claiming that they were playing so loud that they couldn't hear the gong.
Joe and the Chicken Heads independently released their first and only album Keep on Cluckin in May 2000, featuring 26 songs which had been recorded over the span of three years. In wake of the album's release, the Chicken Heads began playing shows with much more frequency, forming a touring relationship with their original inspirations Green Jellÿ while also sharing bills with punk bands including the Angry Samoans, D.I., Litmus Green and The Briefs. In May 2002, the band released their final work as Joe and the Chicken Heads, a five-track mini CD single entitled Family Album.
The Radioactive Chicken Heads (2004-present)
''Growing Mold'' and early activity (2004-2007)
After a period of time performing as "The Rock N' Roll Chicken Heads" and "The Chicken Heads", Joe and the Chicken Heads permanently changed their name to "The Radioactive Chicken Heads" in mid-2004. According to their website, the "official" tongue-in-cheek reason behind the name change was due to "new government regulations which require all radioactive farm products to be labeled clearly".The Radioactive Chicken Heads self-released their first album under their new name, Growing Mold, in March 2005. Mixed, engineered and featuring instrumental contributions by avant-garde composer Ego Plum, Growing Mold eschewed the skacore influence of the band's early work in favor of exploring more eclectic and experimental musical territory, resulting in a combination of sounds Leash magazine described as "like early Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo meets Dead Kennedys meets gothabilly monster mash". While Growing Mold never reached the radar of any major music publications, the album was praised by local university papers and alternative weeklies, with UC Riversides Highlander dubbing the Chicken Heads "one of the best bands you've probably never heard of" and OC Weekly calling the album "funny" and "amusingly campy", while the single "I Eat Kids", a cover of a Barry Louis Polisar song, was selected for airplay on the nationally syndicated Dr. Demento Show.
In November 2006, the Chicken Heads made another brief appearance on national television when they were invited to perform on an episode of The Tyra Banks Show as part of an America's Got Talent spoof called "Tyra's Got Talent", which featured weird and unusual talent acts. According to Carrot Topp, the Chicken Heads were actually a last minute replacement for another act, an Elvis impersonator in a chicken suit called "Elvis Poultry", who couldn't make the shoot. The band performed the song "Our Last Song" before a mostly confused studio audience, ultimately losing out to John the Running Painter, a painter on a treadmill, by an audience vote of 73% to 27%.
''Music for Mutants'', ''Poultry Uprising'' and national touring (2008–2017)
Following further local touring within Southern California's club circuit, the Chicken Heads self-released their third album Music for Mutants in the summer of 2008, finding the band returning to a more aggressive punk rock sound. In promotion of the album, the Chicken Heads embarked on their first national tour supporting Green Jellÿ and hard rock band Rosemary's Billygoat on what was called the "Hollywood Freak Show", a tour spanning nearly sixty shows in thirty states. During this tour, all three bands toured as the same amalgamated line-up of musicians, virtually changing only the costumes and lead singers between sets.Around this time, the Chicken Heads began focusing on producing music videos showcasing the band's prop work and theatricality. Between 2007 and 2010, four music videos were independently filmed for the songs "I Looked Into the Mirror", "Pest Control", "Badd Bunny" and "I Eat Kids", each one heavily featuring elaborate puppetry, costuming and cartoonish set design. This period also found the Chicken Heads receiving new exposure in low-budget horror films, recording on Count Smokulas song "Poultrygeist" for the soundtrack to the 2008 Troma Entertainment production Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead and writing the theme song to the horror comedy Atom the Amazing Zombie Killer, which featured stop-motion animated cameos from the band members during the film's opening credits sequence.
In 2009, the Chicken Heads released Poultry Uprising, a 14-song collection of older material recorded from their time as Joe and the Chicken Heads. The same year, lead singer Carrot Topp produced a compilation album on the Chicken Heads' own label Snail Sounds Records entitled We're Not Kidding!, a tribute to children's musician Barry Louis Polisar, featuring sixty artists including The Vespers, DeLeon, Rebecca Loebe, Tor Hyams, In the Audience and a duet between Polisar and the Chicken Heads. We're Not Kidding! received high praise from children's publications, winning the 2010 Parents' Choice Award.
The Chicken Heads launched an Indiegogo campaign in November 2011 to help fund production on both a 15-minute prospective television pilot based on the band's fictional exploits and the release of a DVD including music videos and a live concert performance filmed in 2008. Although the campaign ultimately failed to meet its funding goal, the band continued work on numerous projects over the next two years, filming seven more music videos for both the band's original songs, including "Deviled Egg", directed by Hollywood special effects artist Jim Ojala, which was highlighted on horror channel Fearnet as their "Music Video of the Week", and humorous punk rock covers of popular songs, most notably the Imagine Dragons Grammy Award-winning song "Radioactive", which was released as a single. In July 2013, the Chicken Heads self-released Badd Bunny Breakout, a comedic RPG computer game based on the band's characters and mythology and featuring a soundtrack of 16-bit remixes of the group's songs.
The Chicken Heads appeared once again on national television in 2012 when they were featured on a segment of the TLC reality show My Crazy Obsession which focused on Zizi Howell, a woman obsessed with carrots. Howell was filmed going to a Chicken Heads concert at a Freak Show Wrestling event in Las Vegas, where she joined the band onstage and conducted a brief interview with Carrot Topp.
In December 2014, the Chicken Heads released a parody cover of Elvis Presleys "Burning Love", re-written as the Hanukkah-themed "Burning Latke". Heeb, a satirical Jewish magazine, singled it out as one of the "Worst Hanukkah Videos Of 2014", criticizing the "too obvious" parody lyrics but nevertheless praising the rest of the Chicken Heads' work as "genuinely fun". The Chicken Heads spent most of 2015 touring sporadically, including a three-show engagement in Lima, Peru in May. The band received further international attention when Polish radio network Antyradio ranked the Chicken Heads #18 on their list of the "Top 20 Rock and Metal Freaks", a list of costumed and theatrical rock bands, and in 2014 OC Weekly ranked them ninth on their list of the top ten horror punk bands. In 2014 and 2015, the band appeared on KNBCs 1st Look and KABC-TVs Eye on LA, respectively, on local interest shows highlighting the California Institute of Abnormalarts, both of which featured the Chicken Heads performing on the venue's stage in specially-recorded segments.
On March 28, 2015, The Steve Allen Theater hosted The Radioactive Chicken Heads Tanksgiving Special, a surrealist three-act comedy play featuring the music of and live accompaniment by the Chicken Heads, written and directed by composer and frequent Chicken Heads collaborator Ego Plum. Set in a dystopian alternate history where Colonel Sanders is depicted as an imperialist dictator presiding over a land where rock music is outlawed, the play follows a quartet of Chicken Head puppets who discover and subsequently learn to play rock and roll music in an attempt to overthrow Sanders' regime. In addition to the Chicken Heads, the play's cast included Gwars Hunter Jackson, Haunted Garages Dukey Flyswatter and Mike Odd of Rosemary's Billygoat and Mac Sabbath in speaking roles.