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.