The Upper Crust

The Upper Crust began in 1994 as an admittedly frivolous and comical concept, with no expectation but to entertain a few friends, that to everyone’s surprise immediately took on a vigorous momentum of its own that continues to accelerate to this day. Two decades later the band has toured the United States and Europe, appeared on television’s Late Night With Conan O’Brien and the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, played with bands like Aerosmith and the Go-Gos, performed at festivals including All Tomorrow’s Parties and Tenacious D’s Festival Supreme; they have placed a song in Guitar Hero, written the theme for the History Channel’s American Daredevils; they were the subject of a full-length documentary film, produced a half-hour pilot for VH1, and were immortalized as animated characters in the children’s TV show Codename: Kids Next Door. Now that they have worked the kinks out, they are ready to take the concept to its natural conclusion, which appears to be no less than massive, worldwide acclaim and, incidentally, riches beyond imagining.

So far the Upper Crust have released five albums: Let Them Eat Rock, The Decline and Fall of the Upper Crust, Once More Into the Breeches, Entitled, and Revenge For Imagined Slights. 2016 sees the release of a back-to-back album with friends the Grannies from San Francisco, to be called Lords & Ladies, and very soon another full-length record of new hits, tentatively entitled One Hand in the Cradle, One Foot in the Grave, but in reality to be called something else entirely. This new record is almost completed; the release date is yet to be determined.

The band consists of the Lord Bendover and the Duc d’Istortion on guitar, Count Bassie on bass (replacing Lord Rockingham and Marquis Mark, who left the band after the first year to pursue less lofty ambitions) and Jackie Kickassis on drums.

In the two decades of its existence, the band has won devoted fans around the world and secured beyond dispute its position as the finest purveyor of 18th-Century Rocque and Roll to the most demanding aficionados of the genre. With the release of the new album they are poised to win over those stragglers who have been thus far slow to perceive the seismic cultural shift represented by the Upper Crust. With their powdered wigs and velvet knee breeches the band may be perceived as funny (and maybe the observation is not entirely without merit), but they’re not to be dismissed as a joke—their songwriting, their recordings and their live performances all speak to the fact that the Upper Crust are across the board, by every pertinent criteria, among the best rock, or as they say “rocque,” bands to come along since the invention of the electrical guitar and the steam-powered amplifier.

So, Gentle Reader, if you have not already done so, take notice of the Upper Crust, for they are an indispensable anachronism of our modern age, and their music will be the theme to, and the cause and effect of, both the greatest events and the smallest and most intimate occasions thereof.

Sir Frederick of Hollywood