They’ve opened for huge bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam.

Great Pumpkin Billy Corgan produced their last album under the pseudonym Johnny Goat. Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain idolized them.

After nearly 20 years of wacky stage antics, freakish costumes and celebrity attention, why hasn’t anyone noticed The Frogs?

That question is perpetually on the mind of Frogs drummer Dennis Fleming.

“There should have been a niche for The Frogs a long time ago,” Fleming says. “They should’ve been able to put us somewhere in the hierarchy and say ‘Hey this is a great band with something to say.’ It sounds pompous but we were too far ahead of our time with the content.”

Formed in 1980 in Milwaukee, Wisc., The Frogs have thrived on controversial lyrics, notorious live shows and their infamous disguises.

Guitarist Jimmy Fleming typically wears a turquoise-sequined full-body costume, complete with a pair of 6-foot in diameter bat wings.

During their golden year, 1987, Fleming says the band wrote close to 500 songs. To date, the Frogs claim to have written as many as 2,000 tunes, if not more.

“Our best songs you haven’t heard yet,” Fleming says, adding that The Frogs will release a new album called “Bananimals” on Oct. 12. With such a high song output, The Frogs haven’t gotten around to releasing most of their songs, but the upcoming record will bring The Frogs a tiny step closer.

The Frogs switch labels often because “most labels want to own the artists’ work and exploit it, forever,” Fleming explains. “Obviously we want to be in control of our own destiny so we can exploit our music in any way we want to.

“On one hand we’re a band that’s kind of played to the anti-hero, but on the other hand we’re sentimental as all hell, which you’d never guess,” he says.

With lyrics like “Grandma’s in the corner with a penis in her hand going kill, kill, kill, kill, kill,” it’s easy to see why the Frogs’ image is not a sentimental one.

Get him talking about the music industry and Fleming won’t stop.

He lashes out at bands like Limp Bizkit.

“This stuff is not gonna be remembered. It’s gonna be forgotten — very quickly,” he says. “They have nothing to teach me. They have nothing to teach the world. They’re just young and energetic but that doesn’t count for talent.”

Though his band hasn’t even scratched the surface of the commercial success of their friends Eddie Vedder and Billy Corgan, The Frogs haven’t enjoyed the same promotional tools as those bands.

“We’re not hooked up with corporate sponsorship, payola and radio airplay. We’re kind of naive, I just thought it would happen because this band is good.”

But that’s not how the music industry works according to Fleming. He says good music gets no recognition.

“It’s too easy out there right now, nobody takes chances,” he explains with a hint of anger. “It’s all corporate, bought and paid for. It’s all regurgitated. It used to be if you were good enough, you got signed to corporate. Now if you get signed to corporate, it’s garbage.”

Flash back to 1995.

Only a year has passed since Kurt Cobain’s suicide, and The Frogs are opening for Seattle grunge band Mudhoney at the Metro in Chicago.

Decked out in his signature bat-winged costume, Jimmy Fleming climbed up the speaker cabinet mid-song and leaped over to the balcony. Standing up there he yelled down to the crowd, cracking a joke about Cobain.

“He said something like ‘C’mon, play something that’d bring Kurt back,’ and these girls in the front row got really mad,” Fleming recalls. “They turned towards the stage and kinda went ‘fuck you.’

“Kurt was rock and roll, Kurt was punk, he would’ve understood the gesture. He wouldn’t have given a fuck. He would’ve applauded us,” Fleming continues. “When Kurt OD-ed in Italy, the first thing he asked for was a walkman and his Frogs tape, according to [ex-Nirvana guitarist] Pat Smear.”

Giving the crowd more for their money has become a mainstay in their performances and strange happenings on stage are commonplace for the band.

“Most of the time when we play, it’s after midnight, it’s a rowdy crowd and they just want nudity, that’s all it’s all about at that point,” Fleming explains. “You just have to experience a Frogs show.

“Most of the people that come to see us, like us,” he explains. “Or if they don’t, they’ll like us by the end of the show.”

In spite of the positive vibe at Frogs performances, there will always be critics, but Fleming keeps going despite what anyone else tells him.

“I’ve gotten all kinds of rejection letters from labels that are like ‘you’re not what we’re about.’ But then again I saw other bands that were making it that were like us,” Fleming explains. “We’re still struggling. We just want some support. I demand it, dammit.”