Popular Music

In 1991, the band approached BMG subsidiary label Zoo Entertainment, and claiming they were the "World's First Video Only Band," offered to make the entire project (all music, videos, artwork, etc.) entirely on their own for the unheard-of sum of $50,000. Zoo signed them on the spot. The only problem was, it had been a bluff, and the band had never made a "video album" before. After buying a video camera, some wood and some lights, the band set out to learn on the job, and in Fall 1992 delivered their third album, the long-form video-only Cereal Killer. Consisting of music videos for each song, as well as a behind-the-scenes feature, the video album slowly gained a reputation in underground (although it would eventually go on to sell over 100,000 copies). Their break came when a radio station in Seattle, Washington, KXRX, played "Three Little Pigs" as a joke, but instead the station's phones lit up and it became a local hit. This caused Zoo to issue the EP Green Jellö SUXX, consisting of four songs from Cereal Killer, which in turn led to the "The Three Little Pigs" becoming a hit on "The Box" (A pay-per-play cable-TV jukebox network). By early 1993, the song was gaining airplay around the country, and after appearing on MTV Headbanger's Ball, everything exploded. MTV added the video and the full-length audio album Cereal Killer Soundtrack was finally released in April 1993. The video for "The Three Little Pigs" was directed by Fred Stuhr (who also directed Tool's "Sober" video), and it featured a claymation rendition of the classic fairy tale with modern twists, such as pot-smoking pigs, an appearance by Rambo, and a Harley Davidson-riding wolf. The video was an instant hit on MTV and was #17 for most of the summer of 1993 in the US[6], receiving both an MTV music award and Billboard music award nomination. Meanwhile in the UK the song entered the singles chart at number 5[7] (the highest rock debut in the history of the British charts at the time), though this proved to be its peak position. As a result of the "The Three Little Pigs" video, the Cereal Killer Soundtrack album went gold in the US, New Zealand, and Canada, as well as platinum in Australia, eventually selling over 2½-million units worldwide. Green Jellö spent almost a year touring the US and Europe in support of the Cereal Killer Soundtrack.