Part III-2: The Descent Still Cum-Tinues Unimpeen-ded

Following my earlier methodology, I’ll now attempt to condense the sixty minutes of Forty Dicks into a manageable, cogent and beautifully written narrative, with brilliant, insightful asides devoted to examining and interpreting certain aspects of the album. Feel free to listen as you read, you multi-tasker you, for in doing so you will find that Forty Dicks is above all else a philosophical treatise – a dicklaration of the moral cumpulsions signifagcunt to a specifuck peeple, time, and place.

The complacency and inwardness characterizing the Pax Bonera gives way to a new, painfully acute awareness of the terrors of the world in Prelude to Erection, where Max obliquely bemoans universal social inequality over a bouncy beat by stating “everyone down the street” is sodomizing him, and, in a poignant acknowledgment of gender hierarchies, intimates that “being a girl is bad for you”. Max unfurls the overarching storyline of the album: he is a man without a penis. How did it leave him? Where did it go? Did he ever have a penis in the first place? It is clear from such questions that this is not a physical penis that Max is missing, but rather it reflects a profound sense of loss that has become central to his character, and to the Artists’ universe as a whole. Whereas life was once bold and dynamic it is now impotent in the deepest sense, as meaningless as the phrase Max yelps, “Ass hair! / We need ass hair / without ass hair we’re nothing” in an attempt to give value to his penisless self, and his penisless world.

In the face of these problems Max’s character believes the only course of action is to refashion the world in the image of the Pax Bonera, a misguided effort that Forty Dicks initially follows, interjecting his saga with parables and fables that offer critiques and wisdom regarding society, psychology, and interpersonal relations, as well as various colorful and inventive transformations of the word “dick”. It then moves forward into a narrative of Max confronting a series of major trials that represent various philosophies, presented of course with an absolute lack of sophistication, wit, and taste that one would expect of a Dickcore group.

The first move that Max and the Artists take to change their world is to look to the past for solutions, a clichéd political formula satirized in the second track, Stick That Dick Somewhere Else! by Max’s stipulation that a disembodied person stick a penis in his nose. Max’s demand is purposefully absurd, a conscious throwback to the chaotic early days of the Artists’ Universe that first heralded the glory of the Pax Bonera. His past-oriented program of preposterousness is promptly picked up by the other Artists, with Tom spitting out rapid-fire homophobic insults against all of the Artists assembled, and Chris chanting “nutsack” loudly in the background. Since the fall of the Pax Bonera, contexts and conditions have irrevocably changed, and any attempts to recreate such a time are themselves absurd, and will lead only to more frustration – the kind of frustration one might feel with a penis in their nose, for example.

The Nutsack Blues - Reduced Version

Such setbacks lead inevitably, as the Artists imply in Nutsack Blues, to criticism of the external world rather than an analysis of the fundamental issues one faces. Max’s character in Blues decries materialism and the self-serving ideology of capitalism, recounting an incident in which a man lost his testicles when he had to use them to make a purchase at a liquor store. The crass commodification of Max’s nutsack serves to mimic the long-winded, hysterical diatribes of contemporary socialist and anarchist activists, whose large-scale agendas, like the idea of a man paying for booze with his balls, have little connection to reality.

Soon after Max’s issues are presented, Chris describes the ongoing situation in his bowels, “I can feel some tension building up inside my ass / It’s not bad / But it could be worse / About to dump out / My diarrhea curse”. The sudden concentration on such toiletty topics represents the focus on the natural world and natural processes central to the modern Western Romantic response to industry. Chris thus argues that this type of thought process – the countering of materialism through a reconnection with an idealized ‘nature’ construct – is like diarrhea: wishy-washy and shitty. Almost as shitty as the bass performance on this track, provided incompetently by Steve/Ashley Sampson.

The Artists’ critiques stop momentarily with The Parable of the Shirt, also known as Movement 4: Slippery Thomas Speaks His Mind, in which Slippery Thomas enunciates, through speaking, things on his mind that he would like to say with words. This parable offers a brief glimmer of wisdom, for as Thomas tells of the troubles he had with his t-shirt, “I wore that shirt, you know, and people saw me wearing the shirt… after a while people were just seeing the shirt, man, so I had to get a new shirt”. Thomas’ insight here is that identity and processes of identity formation are at the heart of social conflicts, both in the Artists’ Universe and our own.

He speaks of the tyranny of essentialism and pressures to conform, and of a need for acknowledgment of the ambiguity of identity boundaries, while also emphasizing his own folly in believing that buying a new shirt would solve his problems. However, his message is quickly bastardized by the demands of his audience, who still zealously seek a phallo-centric answer to their problems, and thus his “shirt” becomes a “dick”. As Thomas howls, “So I got this new diiiiiiick! / I got this new motherfucking diiiick!” we see the ultimate irresponsibility and short-sightedness of trying to find lasting solutions through changes in material conditions. This idea is further impressed upon us as Thomas references Will Smith by chanting, “I’m going straight to / the Wild Wild West!”, which then devolves into “I’m going dick dick / the Dick Dick Dick!”. Even the notion of escaping to a new location – even one as exotic as the wild, wild West – is pointless if the underlying problem of being obsessed with dicks has not been appropriately dealt with.

The pointed centrality of dicks in this section of the album can be reflected in the following disjointed dialogue:

Max: Put your dick in the designated locker…

Tom: A-he’s got a dick, a-she’s got a dick!

Max: Dick!

Tom: That woman’s got a dick! That woman’s got a dick! She’s a man!

Max: Transvestite!

Tom: She’s a man

Max: Transvestite!

Such an extreme emphasis (and resolutely juvenile and simplistic understanding of gender differentiation) lampoons the social power of vapid buzzwords and catchphrases. Yet this extremely witty satire obscures the truth that dicks do in fact share a connection with everything in the Artists’ world, a fact that will be pounded mercilessly into the listener's skull for the rest of the album. Nevertheless, such an extreme concentration on dicks is subtly presented here as equally unhealthy as the alternative – that of not recognizing the centrality of dicks. What is necessary is a deeper comprehension of what constitutes a dick – a recontextualization of dicks – and in order for this to happen, Max must experience the physical loss of his penis, which he does in Max Gets His Dick Cut Off.

An unnamed character, presumably a doctor, suddenly arrives and tells Max he will “slowly, slowly cut off [his] penis /(snipping sfx, Max shrieking)”. The doctor then throws it in a river and sings the following telling lines, “Max’s penis is gone forever; it’s lost in a river. Maybe some inbred mutant down the line will retrieve it, and bring it back to him – maybe not”. The mention of “forever”, combined with the evocative, timeless image of a river, when taken into account with the fact that the in the Artist Co-Op Universe, everything is nonsense, should quickly inform the listener that Max’s penis will no doubt return, and the purposefully clumsy foreshadowing about the penis-finding mutant only serves to reinforce this. Surely enough, within a minute Max has been reunited with his physical penis.

Max's Penis Problems

In his fleeting, inexplicable re-loss of a penis Max realizes how easy it is to become like a dick lost in a river, to simply accept what is thrown at him and lead a passive life - or, possibly worse, to grasp onto any appealing flotsam ideology and be carried away faster thanbefore. As soon as he has lost his penis he takes himself to an operating room to be fitted for a “synthetic penis”, actively engaging himself in the future of his private parts rather than going on dickless and dejected. After navigating through empty and unproductive ideologies, Max makes a major breakthrough, refusing to dwell on the past as he had before, and proving that he is capable of changing himself, and, possibly, the world around him.

This new sense of responsibility is immediately tested by the commencement of The Temptations of Max Zimmerman, heralded by the entrance of the Dick Mutant (voiced by Tom), who comes from Planet X/Planet Sex “to tell dick jokes / and then say ‘that’s what she said’ every time anybody says something like that”. In one of the most baffling lyrical journeys ever recorded, the Dick Mutant transforms himself into the Dick Martian, signaling the planetary invasion of the 420 Martians. We are then greeted by a character, inexplicably voiced by Chris, who describes himself as, “Drew Travis… the 420 Master”. Drew's arrival initiates a long jam based around the concept of 420, which culminates in the standout, lethargic groove, So Fucking Chill, instigated in turn by the new character Nick Boots, also voiced by Chris. After listening to this section of the album, one might say, "Wow, that was stupid", or "These guys are really annoying". Sure, that's a fair assessment.

The 420 Martians Take Over

But overall, this lengthy movement, spanning from the sixth through eighth tracks, serves as a general critique of “chillness”, embodied in the mythology of the number 420, and in the ritualistic taking of employment at Jamba Juice so that one may enjoy the “hot chicks” present there while exercising one’s right to “blaze in the freezer”. As first propounded in The Lost Whale Sessions, “chillness” is a mindset and lifestyle characterized by conformity, complacency, consumerist masculinity, cannabis club cards, and an irrepressible affinity for board sports. The hella dank, homoerotic hub around which this semi-retardedness rotates is 420, a number imbued with the power to make any “chill” individual immediately bounce their head drowsily while drawling the words, “fuck”, “shit”, “dude”, or “nice”.

In Forty Dicks, the idea of 420 plays an extremely important but subtle role. For instance, at not-so-close inspection on an Itunes playlist, one might notice that every track on the album is cut to four minutes and twenty seconds. Considering that the movements within the album often transcend or rise and fall within the 4:20 boundary, Forty Dicks can be interpreted – apart from the various idiotic ways in which it’s already being interpreted – as a rejection of 4:20 and the shallow fucking nonsense that surrounds it.

The simultaneous appearance of the yuck-yucking Dick Mutant and invasion of the 420 Martians, who force everyone to “smoke a lot of pot”, and are “really fucking gay”, represents the first of Max’s challenges in that it confronts his new, responsible self with an easy escape from the complexities of life – an invitation to forever indulge in the simple, brainless pleasures of life: crass double entendre jokes made ironically popular by ‘The Office’ (the subtle gist of which the 420 Martians never quite grasp), smoking pot day and night to avoid any and all complex thought processes, and constructing a “chill” personality that prohibits holding any opinions at conflict with the status quo.

So Fucking Chill

Instead of giving in to this shimmering ideal of humanity, Max counters the 420 Martians (note that they are not from Earth, and are therefore presented as intrinsically strange to the Artists’ world) and the pot-powered power of Nick Boots by imitating the universally reviled and blatantly not-very-chill character, Larry the Cable Guy. Growling “Git R Dun”, and then, for some reason, barking a lengthy soliloquy about incest - or, at least, shrieking “incest” a lot - Max uses the more horrific aspects of red-state culture to assault the agents of 420 that surround him. It must be noted here that Nick Boots, exhibited as the prodigal student of the 420 Martians, expresses his disdain for "words with more than one definition" with an anti-intellectualism central to the Conservative agenda in the United States and, indeed, to the humor of Larry the Cable Guy. In this crushing blow to "chillness" idealogy, the Artists deftfully demonstrate the inherent idiocy of both redneckery and chillitude, undermining the pretentious moral high ground assumed by those pseduo-liberals who consider themselves "chill". Faced with such a vicious assault, the aura of the 420 Martians slowly dissipates, and the chill mastery of Nick Boots withers, but these are soon transforms itself into another temptation Max must face: statutory rape.

As the chillness of So Fucking Chill unchills itself, Tom announces, “I like to pick up preteen girls / on the Internet!” Chris soon joins in, and the saga of the Internet Predator begins. At this point in our tale, Max has taken command of the keyboard, noted earlier in the song by Tom saying, “Max J. Zimmerman on the keys, everybody!” Despite the forceful arguments put forth by the Internet Predator, who simply yells his own name a lot, Max is able to use his piano skills to refrain from joining in with the pervert’s activities. The Predator is shocked, and his malevolent mantra collapses into the nonsensical chant of “Give it up for Skeletor!” Max has triumphed again!

The Internet Predator and America

Max’s next ideological contest, after a minute-long refrain of Chris and Tom shouting “Dick dick / Balls dick / Asshole dick / Fuck you Max”, is with the warm, all-encompassing embrace of patriotism. As Chris and Tom harmonize, “America! / Fuck you in the ass!” and “America! / Love it or go home!”, Max bravely maintains his piano playing, marching to the same beat, refusing to buckle under the pressure of jingoistic sloganeering. In spite of its assertiveness and offerings of a coherent, if simplistic, ideological framework, the spirits of xenophobia and nationalistic chauvinism – banes of the modern world – soon fold before him. His success is one we can all learn from, especially in this era of globalization and permeable national borders and identities, and it also marks the end of the challenges Max must face. In the end, he has chosen to live a more authentic, complicated existence by forgoing 420ness and everything it entails, he has avoided the pitfalls of being an internet predator, and he has navigated around the treacherous waters of over-patriotic mindsets. He has conquered the three primary philosophical problems of our time, and he has done it with an enviable panache, and a powerful yet dulcet singing voice. He is truly ready to begin mending the Artists’ world.

But any celebration is cut short by the beginning of a new chapter in our tale – the introduction of the supernatural element into Forty Dicks proclaimed by the unexpected manifestation of The Penis Banshee. This nefarious character takes on all of the Artists, rather than simply Max, and then takes – or “vanishes”, as the thesaurus-informed Artists say - their cocks. Ultimately this subplot serves only as a red herring, a cheap narrative tool used to reunite all of the Artists, for their genitals are soon returned to them by the wisecracking Dick Genie, who grants them three wishes, but only follows through on one.

The Artists’ mark their reunion by a brief but joyous Festival of Dickery, singing an impromptu dick-filled version of “Smoke on the Water”, and announcing to themselves and to you, the listener, that they have now been singing about dicks for 45 minutes. Once assembled, they realize where their faults lie, and set the scene for the final momentous climax of the album.

Steve/Ashley, until this time playing horribly on guitar or shouting out inaudible things in the background, tells the artists that, after all they have witnessed – in their own troubles and in The Temptations of Max Zimmerman – they must go back to the beginning, forget all their assumptions and prejudices, and find “the essence of a dick” in order to truly understand their place in the universe. In acknowledging their historically and spatially situated position, the Artists choose to create their own mythology and their own gods, in the words of Nietzsche, and give meaning to the world according to their own specific, subjective realities. This undertaking guides the rest of the album.

The Formation of a Dick

In the awe-inspiring Formation of a Dick, Chris and Tom narrate the origins of The Dick, a personified entity, tracing his development from being a “little boy” who “played with toy cars and sheep”, to being a “full grown motherfuckin’ man” who currently resides “in your ass”. Tom divulges the name of The Dick to be “Kevin Olsson”, the name of the Co-Op’s drummer. This is entirely logical, given that The Dick, described as both innocent and “gay”, inhabiting both a child’s play world and the dark depths of your anus, balances the extremes of human existence, just as Kevin balances the entire album through his trusty drum playing. Kevin, an understated character in the Artists’ Universe, nevertheless gives form to everything that takes place within said realm, even as he is maligned by Tom, who implores him to “learn how to play the drums / you are gay / you are really fucking gay”.

These subtle paradoxes about Kevin – both the real Kevin and his Dick persona – form the basis of what constitutes the new reality of Dickness according to the Artists. They build upon this Taoist idea of duality, using Max as an example, in that he is both “a bitch / but he’s gonna kick your ass”, a reflection of the more nuanced view of the world they have attained through their struggles.

Beyond newfound understandings of ambiguity, the real crux of this section is growth – primarily emotional. Tom, speaking about his chapped lips in Chapped Lips on a Dick, for the first time in the entire album displays a sense of vulnerability, in contrast to his normally boisterous and haughty attitude. Despite his admission of weakness he is confident as ever, and thus we are meant to infer that this is a positive transition for him, like the construction of a loving, flowery, faggy God in the New Testament who can still fuck things up. Indeed, after this touching moment Tom rarely attacks his fellow Artists, who find themselves united in awaiting the arrival of The Great Penis, a messianic character whose purpose is, and shall remain, largely unclear.

The changes undergone by the Artists allow the music to develop and evolve, building momentum with an upbeat, bluesy riff over which Max speaks to a disembodied dick about its impending erection. This riff mutates into a swinging, extremely clever version of The Champs’ surf rock classic, “Tequila”, in which every note of the song is converted into the word “dick” (hence the song’s title, Movement 13: Dickquela). The Artists have taken their earlier realization - of the innate connection of all things with Dicks – and used it to create something accessible and enjoyable. This productiveness, contrasted with their previous attempts at conceptually concentrating on Dicks, has been brought about thanks to their new understanding of the subtle paradoxes that make up their world.

Dickquela

As the clock brings us closer to the coming of The Great Penis, crudely prophesized throughout Dickquela by Steve’s nasally yelps, Tom rhythmically informs the Artists that for the majority of the album they’ve been singing into the wrong microphone. In doing so he offers one last piece of wisdom before their Scrotal Savior appears – even though they had been misguided the entire time, they still propelled themselves wholeheartedly into the fray and can thus be proud of their accomplishments. In other, more High School Yearbook-esque words, they shot for the moon, and even though they missed they still landed amongst the stars. The Dick Stars, to be precise.

In his closing statement, right before the Great Penis touches down, Max tells us “you must choose what kind of penis you have”. And though Max himself is still on that journey, as he readily admits, he is blessed for he now has a foolproof phallic philosophy to guide him on the path to enlightenment.

Thankfully The Great Penis violently and abruptly ends these artsy-fartsy musings, riding his searing chariot into the scene with a great fury of noise that inevitably becomes a feedback-heavy rendition of “Auld Lang Syne”, a song used traditionally to signify the beginning of a new era. This new era, hinted at in the bass solo that makes up the final movement, will be nothing like anything that came before… (pff… “came”! Sick!)

In effect, The Great Penis has wiped clean the slate of the Artists’ Universe, leaving no trace of the Dick Mutants, 420 Martians, Penis Banshees, or Dick Genies whom we encountered previously (the Internet Predator cannot be accounted for). It is now up to us to make sense of what happened, and to continue the adventures of the Artists in our daily life. Within legal limits of course.

THE IMPACT

Artist Co-Op never released a follow-up to Forty Dicks. Their second official appearance in the studio involved heavy drug us – specifically the application of analgesic heat rubs to the Artists’ tender regions – yielding the disastrous, quickly forgotten Bengay Session. Many plans for Co-Op reunions and projects have been made since the initial recording, but so far the only outcome of these ideas has been a scratchy 2009 mixtape – composed mostly of song covers and tawdry tirades about pizza – entitled, Shorts But We Know How to Use ‘Em: Take 1: The Westwood Sessions, snippets of which you can hear below:

Pizza Time


Big Brown Shit

Nine Point Dunk

Put That Dick in My Ass

Your Butt Is My Destiny

System of a Down Cover

Little is known about this mysterious record, but it offers us a visceral glimpse into the evolving, ever inane mindset of the Artists. Armed only with a guitar, a 40 oz bottle, and their beautiful voices, the Artists are still capable of creating magnificent odes to such familiar topics as anal sex and NBA Jam. The tapes also reveal a more experimental, non-musical side of the Co-Op, as demonstrated on the B-side in which three of the Artists read the titles of porn movies in the style of 1930’s-1950’s newsreel narrators.

The Old Time Porn Announcers

Despite their lack of prolificacy, ability, or coherence, The Artists made a lasting impression on the Dickcore movement. The boundaries of what would be acceptable on all future Dickcore albums had been obliterated in the maelstrom of perversion that was the Who Let the Dicks Out? session. Also, despite the tastelessness and pure absurdity of the album, it still retained a sense of structure, and an almost-recognizable narrative. Furthermore, it proved to the members of the Dickcore movement, once and for all, that dicks – the idea, the symbol, the spirit of dicks – are very silly things to sing about. This new awareness of dicks as subject-matter, and the possibilities of musical narratives, inspired future works such as Dickatron 5000, the Dirty Old Man EP, and Summer Fun Summer Sun (both the movie and the soundtrack). Such a preoccupation would prove both beneficial and detrimental to the movement, as it both nurtured productivity while inhibiting the true creativity that defined the genre’s earlier pieces. To sum up the problem of Forty Dicks: Once you’ve recorded Max Zimmerman singing about putting dicks in his nose and fucking his cousin, what else can you really do?

In the next installment, we’re going to take a brief step backwards to examine the “Boys Rule” movement, an important cultural phenomenon whose developed in a sense presaged the growth of Dickcore. We will analyze the underlying processes common to both entities, and the give-and-take relationship that allowed both to flourish from 2005-2007. I can’t promise when it will be ready, but I can tell you right now it’ll be pretty goddamn silly.

Part III-1: The Descent Cum-Tinues Unimpeen-ded

Sometime in the sweltering summer of 2006, the chardonnay-fueled, platinum-locked trophy wives, and thick-rim spectacled, emasculated Whole Food-frequenting Suburbohemians in charge of the Blackhawk Museum of Danville, CA decided to hold a reception for their latest exhibit. A few miles down the road, five angsty, significant other-less young males languished in the Weeks Family Studio, in desperate need of an unwilling audience to abuse for no reason. Somehow these two groups came together, and the serendipitous combination of self-indulgent middle-aged elitist hacks and self-indulgent 16-19 year old shitheads set off a cyclone of silliness, out of which would emerge some of the most convoluted and terrifying music that the world has never known. Until now, unfortunately.

My subject today, the work of the Artist’s Co-Op, fits snugly into the Dickcore genre, but it is without a doubt the most wretched, malformed, unwanted and incestuous member of that family; it is in this sense the purest essence of Dickcore, a reminder of all the things that Dickcore refuses to acknowledge about itself. While it only took all of seventy-five minutes to record, the damage it left – psychological, social, and musical– will take a lifetime to repair.

Arriving at the Blackhawk reception in flamboyant attire and fake facial hair, armed with silly pseudonyms and complex character backgrounds, the members of Intergalactic Prophylactic>, along with Max J. Zimmerman and Steve Kaye, immediately set themselves upon the gathered artistes with unsurpassed obnoxiousness. Hoping to give the local art establishment a taste of its own medicine, they stroked their chins while loudly blurting out mindless critiques of the art pieces on the walls, the floor and ceiling tiles, and the layout of the catering table. They pressured the owners of the museum to display the artwork they had brought in – a collage of colored pencil drawings on printer paper depicting very inspirational and artistic images: black hands shaking white hands underneath a rainbow, a man with big lips labeled “fag”, and a few phalluses – and promptly priced it at $420. It sat next to the back room of the gallery for several weeks before being purchased by an Armenian Mercedes Benz dealer. Actually, they probably took it down as soon as the Artists left.

When questioned, they informed the vanguard of the Blackhawk Renaissance that the objectionable assemblage of dickheads gathered before them was an entity known as the Artist’s Co-Op, a creative powerhouse made up of members Todd Z, Slippery Thomas, Dmitri, Reginald the Commissioner, and Ashley Sampson – all of whom were groundbreaking artists… who inexplicably shared the same bed and were not afraid to tell everyone about it. Then, after 10 minutes of this, they left.

Celebrating their apparent victory over something, the young men returned to Weeks’ house and intuitively commenced a jam session to give documented life to the Artist’s Co-Op. This session spawned the fifteen minute track, “The First Dick is Always Free”, and the hour long LP, “Forty Dicks”, taking Dickcore to its furthest logical extension and forever mangling the face of the movement.

The freeform nature of the sessions and the general lack of talent amongst the Artists are manifested in the overall atrocious sound of the albums. Melodies, coordination, timing, lyrical coherence and accessibility are not a strong suit of the record. Rather, the musicians embrace an almost absolute nihilism, and in doing so mine the depths of Dickcore’s soul, shedding light unto areas of the human experience that few humans have hopefully ever actually experienced. Inarguably, the anchor that pulls us into the abyss is the lyrical improvisation of Max Zimmerman.

The primary vocalist on both Artist Co-Op productions, Max single-handedly transformed the Dickcore genre by boldly exposing every crevice of his subconscious, taking the listener to a place beyond time and space. While Intergalactic Prophylactic had flirted with fantasy before - reimagining the Revolutionary War in Tribute to 1776, having sex with a centaur in Centaur Loving, and alternately abusing or having sex with a whale-boy hybrid on the Whale Talk Sessions – they were always based in some semblance of reality, a reality which was then skewed for comedic effect. Zimmerman jettisons all realism in his ad libbing, taking us into an alternate universe where it is entirely permissible and logical to say the things he says. Bewildering, beguiling, and be-nauseating, our journey into Zimmerman’s head leaves us all complicit in his crimes.

His lyrics transition fluidly, and without any apparent shred of self awareness, from grandiose speeches about body hair to admissions of incest, from patriotic sloganeering to the economic possibilities of using one’s own testicles as a form of currency. Creating constant juxtapositions between the thick murky recesses of the mind and the lofty ideals of mankind, Max’s lyrics cover all aspects of human consciousness. Throughout, the band rarely, if ever, responds to or question Max’s vocals, which gives his words an absurd sense of legitimacy.

It makes you very, very uncomfortable.

In any event, I am now including the first part of my unfinished 2006 analysis of the Artist Co-Op recordings (originally called, “Who Let the Dicks Out?” in their entirety) because, as Ben Franklin once said, “why write something about dicks today when you’ve already written something about dicks three years ago?”

The First Dick Is Always Free (Excerpts)

“Purpose: As any listener knows, this album is absolute shit. It’s a bloated, noxious, chaotic brainfuck of poor musicianship and overwhelming homoeroticism, sadism, masochism, and pre-pre-adolescent toilet humor. In short, listening to it in its entirety numbs one’s soul. In spite of this, I’ve recently come to recognize the genius and beauty hidden several layers beneath this heinous, vicious musical tumor. The gay lyrics and juvenile tunes mask the fact that “Who Let The Dicks Out?” is really a brilliant narrative that both parallels and parodies the ancient mythologies that have influenced modern society, creating its own philosophical and moral universe. I hope my analysis may serve as a knife for the reader to cut through the tender white fat of Artist Co-Op’s vile puerility and behold the sweet succulence of its pure and righteous innards.

“First Dick” begins in the chaos preceding Creation. Slowly, the Universe begins to take shape, swirling and fluttering from the abyss. The Artists’ Instruments fight for control of the stage like Greek Titans. Suddenly, from nothing, comes a clear message: “Got a snake in my pants / [It’s] Gonna come eat you”. This absurd statement serves as the guiding force in The Artists’ universe. How would a snake get into someone’s pants? Is this a phallic euphemism? More importantly, how would a snake, once trapped inside someone’s pants, manage to eat another human being? In doing so, wouldn’t it have to leave the pants and thus negate the first half of the statement? It is clear that there are no answers to these questions, and one must not try to search for them, for the force that holds together this universe, the Artist Co-Op’s universe, is absurdity.

Following this, there is silence, and then, again from nothingness, a new character emerges. With a childish, high-schoolie-live-with-my-parents voice, it cries out from the void,

“Chris, you suck my dick. Suck my dick. Suck my dick. Chris – Chris sucks my dick, Chris sucks, sucks my dick. Sucks my dick. Chris, suck my dick… Dick. Chris, suck my dick. Chris sucks my dick. Dick, dick, dick. Chris sucks my dick, Dick dick dick dick, dick balls…I’m gonna fuck you in the ass…you are gay, you are really fucking gay”

The voice of Slippery Thomas is in this Creation tale the voice of God. While superficially a childish taunt of Chris Crowe (Todd Z), these lines are in reality the first steps in Creation. By “calling out” Chris, Tom gives him life, for Tom is a dark, aggressive Creator, bringing forth his subjects with violence and spite. Chris responds in turn with aggression, demanding that Tom “Eat [his] asshole”. Tom and Chris spar one another gleefully, and then as a team turn on Max Zimmerman, which, in bittersweet irony, is the catalyst for their downfall. Max explodes into being with a barely-coherent speech about the hygienic problems involved in eating assholes, his words, tone, and blatant disregard for rhythm creating a sharp divide between himself and the other Artists. This divide is made most lucid in Max’s revolutionary line,

“Come in your face? Come in my face you bitch!”

Provoked by Chris’ taunt, “Max J. Zimmerman, come and lick my taint”, Max hurls forth this odd pseudo-insult and permanently alters Artist Co-Op’s existence. Prior to Max, the gayness in “First Dick” was directed outward, in the form of Tom inviting other people to degrade themselves and pleasure him sexually. Chris followed this trend. But Max, the foul-mouthed enigma that he is, had a trick up his sleeve. Taking the established gay spirit of the Artists’ Universe, Max manipulated it, and directed it inward, turning that Universe on its head, or more appropriately, on its face. Instead of degrading his fellow Artists, Max chooses to degrade himself. He thus establishes a basic moral law for the Artists’ world – It is better to give than to receive. His “semenical insurrection”, as I shall call it, blows Chris and Tom away, for the structure of his radical proclamation mimics the aggressive taunts of his predecessors, and by calling Chris a “bitch”, he thoroughly destroys the machine from within. Listen to the track – it is clear see that everyone involved in the jam is literally stunned. Their inaction gives Max the chance to seize power, and he drives forward his principles of selflessness and the virtue of receiving semen on one’s face.

He creates a new world, full of magic and wonder and hope – he is the sculptor of a golden age. The musical breakdown and shouting of “DICK!” at 8:27 signal the arrival of the Pax Bonera, a time of peace and simple penile pleasures. Slippery Thomas’ saxophone reveals the glory of this time, but it cannot hide a Universal Truth that extends even into the Artist’ universe – that all that is made can be unmade. The glory of Pax Bonera is dismantled, evidenced by Slippery Thomas returning from exile with “this blows, this blows, this really fucking blows”. Chris and Max trade off reciting each other’s names as Ashley Samson, the Harbinger of Doom, repeats “Nuts” over and over again in the background. The monotony and repetition here is the dull rhythm of everyday life that frustrates us and saps our strength. In the Artist Co-Op Universe, chaos and gay absurdity are always present, but the Pax Bonera could not find a balance between peace, harmony, and chaotic gay absurdity, and as a result it fell apart. “First Dick” slips out of organic noise into turntable scratching and snippets of The Thompson Twins – the repetition and monotony of Pax Bonera thus jaded the Artists until the world itself became synthetic. Chris closes this chapter by telling Max, “Max, I’m going to need you to lick my balls, ASAP”, an indication of his and the other Artists’ disappointment. He puts it to Max to try again and create a better, more balanced universe. It is this challenge that Max attempts to meet in “Forty Dicks”. ”

Now that’s how you write a Dickcore review.

Please accept my apologies for not immediately following up with my analysis of Forty Dicks. The blog, as a whole, would be too girthsome and unreasonable to take in one sitting, and thus I have broken it up into two parts. Please check back soon for the second installment of this installment.

Part II: The Renaissance

As stated previously, through very eloquent and forceful expository writing, the work of Intergalactic Prophylactic, on their album EP Freely, marked the beginning of the Danville-based excavation into the subconscious realms of Dickcore. Like a phallic symbol-fueled freight train, when Dickcore was roused from its slumber it refused to be stopped, and as its momentum built the disciples of the genre steered it as best they could, taking the art form to new, startling realms of unabashed tomdickery.
In this installment, we attempt to interpret the indecent intellectual intentions of Intergalactic’s The Lost Whale Sessions, and the no-nonsense nonsense that was NYPD: New York Penis Department.



The Lost Whale Talk Sessions
On EP Freely, Chris Crowe, Kevin Olsson, and Tom Weeks had climbed to the top of Mount Sinai (or, to stay the course thematically, Mount Si-nuts) and received the revelations of Dickcore – now, what were they to do with them? The Lost Whale Sessions answers this questions, for where the EP laid down the laws of Dickcore in a complex, scattershot fashion, providing a vague conceptual framework for future Dickcore projects, LWS represents the first attempt to direct the ideology of Dickcore towards something meaningful. In this case, that something was an English grade.

Drummer Olsson was charged by his English teacher to connect a book assigned in class to a piece of artwork. For dramatic purposes of this essay, the project was worth ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF HIS GRADE!!!! but in reality was probably just some bullshit busy work. The novel Olsson chose was Whale Talk, one of several swim-team based tales of auteur and therapist Chris Crutcher.

According to Amazon.com, Whale Talk is the tale of a half black, half Japanese, all funny and wise-beyond-his-years high schooler named T.J. who with the help of English teacher Mr. Simet assembles a swim team full of misfits in order to somehow get back at a bully. While forming deep bonds with each of his diverse team mates, he also finds time to befriend a bi-racial girl from an abusive family, securing Whale Talk’s place in that ever-expanding canon of modern "coming of age" novels aimed at suburban teens.

The key to understanding The Lost Whale Sessions is to recognize that Olsson never intended on reading this derivative piece of shit. In order to relate the book to a work of art, he enlisted the members of Intergalactic Prophylactic to write an entire album ABOUT 'Whale Talk', or, in reality, what he believed the book to be about based on his understanding of its Amazon.com synopsis, which he barely bothered to read. He would then write an essay showing the many connections between Whale Talk the book and Whale Talk the album.

My God… it was… it was just crazy enough to work.

There exist many inconsistencies between the book and the album, such as the fact that the book's protagonist, T.J., appears only on the album as a vague character named "Whale Boy" who is half human and half whale, an obvious misrepresentation of T.J.’s multiracial background. On track 6, Troubled Past, Whale Boy reveals that he is the son of a "very loving mother" and a "vengeful ghost" who cursed him by turning him into half a whale. This information has absolutely no tangible connection to the novel, and was clearly made up on the spot by the musicians. Furthermore, while the swim team does play a central role on the album, its meaning and symbolism are entirely confused and plainly based on conjecture, and the character Mr. Simet – a positive character in the novel – is reimagined by vocalist Crowe as a seething psychopath prone to calling Whale Boy a “son of a bitch”. There are multiple other characters portrayed on the album, all of whom either violently berate Whale Boy or sexually proposition him; none of whom have any precedent in Crutcher’s book.

The aesthetics of LWS show a unique shift from the polished, if somewhat grubby production of EP Freely. The tracks of LWS make no attempt to hide the improvised nature of the album, with the number of takes enunciated before songs, studio chatter audible in the background, and profuse giggling on the part of Weeks every time Crowe starts cursing. Spontaneity, therefore, is embraced and centralized on this album, a motif that would drive later, more baffling Dickcore projects. Concurrently, the album also marks the first of several expansions of the Dickcore community, with the addition of All Star Jam Band guitarist Mike “Mountain Mike” S, who mans the strings on several tracks, and other All Star Jam Band guitarist Alex "Al-Dicks" Brown, who hovered around and drooled on things. Finally, it takes the narrative concept of Tribute to 1776 and extends it over the course of an entire LP, a feat that would be unsuccessfully reattempted numerous times by a variety of Intergalactic Prophylactic incarnations.



The Songs

Whale Talk


The album launches into its pseudo-narrative with Whale Talk, an impromptu version of Louie Louie, marked by guitarist Weeks shouting the lyrics "Whale Talk! / Whale Talk!" for a minute or so, hoping for someone else to chime in, before abandoning the vocals entirely. After thirty seconds of Olsson and Crowe aimlessly providing rhythm, Weeks steps in with some preposterous shredding and puts the song to sleep. This track, complete in its inanity, intimates that though this album is indeed more focused than its predecessor, it is irrevocably infused with absurdity.

Join The Team


We abruptly learn of Whale Boy’s conflict in the forceful Join the Team, in which he is presented, by a furious, anonymous narrator, with the decision of "join[ing] the swim team / or not", and then promptly told, "either way you are a cocksucker". An expansion upon earlier existential themes found in works such as Why Am I Michael Bluth?, the utilization of an extremely biased and vulgar narrator serves as an acknowledgment of the subjectivity of storytelling, and the track speaks worlds of the ambiguity and often stultifying nature of choice. For no matter how we choose, aren’t we in the end, just "cocksuckers"? In the world of Whale Boy, we most certainly are.

I'll Do It


Whale Boy suddenly becomes the narrator in I'll Do It, a compelling composition in which the protagonist declares his intentions of joining the swim team and overcoming his past by embracing his identity, "You know, I might have been a cocksucker in the past / But I’ve changed my ways! / I’m a new boy / A whale boy!" We are also introduced to the belligerent Mr. Simet, who immediately puts down his dreams with a curt, "You’re not gonna get anywhere boy, / You’re a son of a bitch! / You’re a motherfucking son of a bitch!" For about three months in 2005 this was the most played song on my Itunes.

Building a Team


This central conflict is interpreted as a militaristic endeavor in Building a Team, a simple, hammering march that defines Whale Boy’s mission “to build the best / swim team in the land”. Upon embarking on this task, Whale Boy receives briskly disparaging and overenthusiastically encouraging responses from two unnamed characters, launching him into the ambiguous second act of his journey, as enunciated most candidly in Romantic Interest.

Romantic Interest


This cryptic track, the longest on LWS, is very much in touch with vagaries and ideologies of the Dickcore zeitgeist. On the surface it is a very "chill" track, in which Whale Boy entirely embraces his sensuality, having an interest in an unknown character, which could possibly be his “dad”, his “sister”, or “three different guys”. He also, for reasons that are left unexplained, smokes “a fat bong”.

This track can be interpreted as the first of many Dickcore commentaries on the concept of “chillness”, a self-indulgent contemporary male ideal that propels men to embrace a macho personality and be prolific in their sexual conquests, while remaining perpetually passive and neutral through the regular gratuitous use of marijuana. The socialized nature of this ideal is made apparent in the use of 2nd person narration, suggesting that Whale Boy would not arrive at this ideal a priori, but rather had to have it explained to him. Furthermore, connecting "chillness" to Whale Boy’s primal urges as symbolized by his innocent, wanton sexuality, suggests that "chillness" as a cultural idiom is imagined in such a way that it is assumed to be an inherent, fundamental aspect of a person. One who is not "chill" is perceived and classified as abnormal, lacking something fundamental to the chill majority.

The Dickcore movement stands in contrast to the Chill ideal by reveling in the filthy, violent subconscious whimsies of man, discarding all social ideals and norms. Romantic Interest serves to satirically unravel this constricting, frivolous contrivance through the blatantly vapid "chillness" of its lyrics, persuading the listener, and Whale Boy, to critically examine their lives and motivations, and arrive at more complex, authentic modes of being.

Or it could just be a song about Whale Boy fucking people and getting high, which of course never takes place in the novel.


Troubled Past


From this song we move into the musical skit, Troubled Past, an imagined interaction between Whale Boy and his therapist. The pivotal moment of Troubled Past comes at song’s finale, in which the psychiatrist character suddenly invites Whale Boy to join him in the men’s room. While Intergalactic Prophylactic songs had flirted with subtle, humorous notions of homosexuality on previous endeavors, this track embraces it and exploits Western fears of gay sex for comic effect. The abrupt turn towards gayness, or at least, very caricatured gayness that has little connection to reality, gets to the roots of Dickcore as expressed in Intergalactic precursor, the All Star Jam Band, that is, the inducing of discomfort in the listener.

No Turning Back


Righteously Misunderstood


We Did It



On the rest of the album, Whale Boy explores the nature of his identity, assumes a moral stance on his alienation from society (Righteously Misunderstood), and takes “a fat shit” on the chests of his detractors, while I.P. engage in a memorable, incoherent rendition of “Two Princes” by the Spin Doctors. The journey of Whale Boy ends, without explanation, on a high note in the revelry of We Did It. Never one to forego absurdity, Crowe seals the album, in its final seconds, by bluntly stating, “Whale Boy sucks my asshole”.

While LWS can be understood as a continuation and expansion upon existing Dickcore models through a narrative structure, to only focus on its meaning within the Dickcore movement is to neglect the true reason for its existence: the Super Big English Class Essay Project!!!! In a dramatic race against time, Kevin took the album he had just completed, and wrote an essay – presumably a very self-referential one – that connected it to 'Whale Talk', the album’s inspiration. Along with his essay, Kevin turned in the Lost Whale Sessions in their entirety. The game was set.

While the bureaucratic intricacies of San Ramon Valley High School’s English department are steeped in mystery, what we do know, for purposes of explicating the Lost Whale Sessions, is that upon receiving Kevin’s project, reading his essay and listening to the album, his instructor was so moved (either by disgust or awe) that she played it for an assemblage of faculty members from the English department. The following image, to me, is the ultimate triumph of the Lost Whale Sessions: A group of college-educated adults… teachers… sitting in their break room between classes, listening to an album on which Chris Crowe, in an extremely silly voice, calls an imaginary whale/man hybrid a “filthy cocksucking son of a bitch”. Dickcore had officially hit the big time.




NYPD: New York Penis Department
The NYPD EP, easily the most accessible, straightforward Intergalactic Prophylactic emission, represents the pinnacle of Dickcore production values, and the first conscious examination of Dickcore values through the stylistic approaches of mainstream music, i.e. funk, blues, and rock. While little is added to the conceptual canon of Dickcore in this EP, precedents from earlier works – buggery, bestiality, patriotism, and gratuitous genital imagery – are expounded upon and given archetypal forms that would influence subsequent recordings. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, one thousand years from now, Dickcore scholars may look back at NYPD: New York Penis Department and still say, “This was Dickcore’s finest hour”. Or maybe they’ll be more partial to the I.P. work, Dickatron 5000 as it will resonate with their world of phallic spaceships and pedophilic robots (this album will be explained in Part IV of the Dickcore series). Or maybe they’ll just think we were a bunch of fags.

1776 Revisited...


The EP sets off from familiar territory with a revamped, more succinct version of Tribute to 1776 from the first I.P. production, EP Freely. Like the album’s titular homage to the heroes of 9/11, the choice of refurbishing such a patriotic song reflects the deep commitment of the Dickcore community to American values, and brazen nationalism. Such machismo and bravado is quickly scuttled by the second song.

Centaur Loving


Centaur Loving takes us, quite vigorously, into a funk-founded mythical world of salacious inter-species romance. Similar in form and philosophy to the earlier works Space Condom and Romantic Interest, it too beseeches its audience to look beneath the music and, through its idiotic lyrics, achieve a sense of personal growth. Whereas the earlier funk tracks force the listener to contemplate their place in the universe and society - by speaking of metaphorical phalluses and restrictive ideologies, respectively - Centaur Loving demands the listener to question themselves – specifically with the question, “Could I get it on with a centaur?” This reflects the running theme of disembodied sexuality in the Dickcore movement, where all forms of sex, gender, and love are presented as humorous ideas and constructions rather than as real entities or possibilities. This theme, and the horrendously unsubtle homoeroticism of the song’s lyrics – at one point needlessly highlighting the penile size of the eponymous Centaur – foreshadow the following tracks on the album, and literally every future work of the band.

Nothin' Like My Dick In Your Ass


As soon as Weeks’ saxophone sails off into the darkness at the end of Centaur Loving, we are savaged every which way by the jewel in the NYPD crown, Nothin’ Like My Dick In Your Ass, a blistering track unrivaled in its indifference to intrusive intercourse, its irrepressible rhythmic irreverence, and its insurmountable ickiness. A throwback to the principal movement in An Evening on Swan Lake, the paucity of its lyrics (only three verses stretched out over three minutes) and endless repetition of the song’s title both charm and frustrate the listener, getting their toes tapping and gag reflex gurgling, just in time for Mike S, the album’s guest guitarist, to ride roughshod over their sensibilities.

Foreskin Blues


S’s epic endeavor, Foreskin Blues, the final cut on NYPD, is a drowsy yet passionate, guitar-driven yet lyrically dense voyage that meanders through conceptual areas and realms of diction rarely exploited by the Blues genre. The song structure of Foreskin Blues is strictly traditional, but the direction in which Mike S manhandles the song are revolutionary – not only for its vulgarity, but for its commitment to abandoning any semblance of subtlety in favor of ostentatious offensiveness. Songs in the Dickcore genre would forever follow the path first traveled on tracks such as Foreskin Blues and Nothin’ Like My Dick In Your Ass.

NYPD: New York Penis Department cannot be overlooked. The catchiness and simplicity of the songs, when juxtaposed with their subject matter, shows that this is indeed a very radical piece of material. An effort on the part of Intergalactic Prophylactic to destabilize the musical world, it is truly an example of 21st century suburban agitprop (take that, Art majors!). NYPD takes the traditional forms of popular music and twists them in a distinctly Dickish manner. It is a masterpiece in senseless subversion, fighting the forces of popular music on behalf of a cause that nobody could ever bring themselves to support.

Yet alongside the many successes of the album, there were failures. Bassist Crowe, after penning the verses for Nothin’ Like My Dick..., left the band during the sessions to pursue video games and not spending his afternoons singing about dicks. Also, the notorious track Chinatown was lost after the NYPD sessions and never recovered. An extremely brief, reputedly “jazzy” piano piece, its only lyrics, “Going to Chinatown / With a dick in my butt”, this track surely would’ve become extremely influential in the movement, and would’ve been all sorts of fun to write an asinine analysis of.

In the next chapter of Dickcore: The Essential Essay Series, we will plunge into the murky, experimental depths of the second major Dickcore group: the alarming auditory awfulness of The Artists’ Co-Op and their sole contributions to the movement, The First Dick is Always Free, and Forty Dicks.