Icky Boyfriends

A Love Obscene

Comments (0) By Justin F. Farrar Wednesday, May 18 2005

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San Jose State University

The battered boombox-quality recordings of the Icky Boyfriends' harshly atonal, sorta-punk poetry have always engendered the following debate: Is this two-CD collection of music (recorded by these long-gone San Franfreaks between '89 and '95) intentionally bad or unintentionally good? The answer is: Who cares? Arguing such metaphysical twaddle as quality and intentionality misses the mark. The Icky Boyfriends are like frogs falling from the sky. Both are anomalous events existing far outside most current reality tunnels and must be appreciated as such (i.e., as jaw-droppingly strange phenomena). A panic-stricken drummer pushes too hard and crumbles during superbombastic fills. The axeman, switching between guitar and bass, produces this strangled buzz of rhythmically challenged riffage fed through dying amps. They rarely jell, creating an elastic, free-rock backdrop for the petulant and often violent ululations of this crank with a monolithic Afro and an aptitude for butchering melody. He screams about seeing "flying monkeys all around," Frank's mom's dental dam, his little brother who "killed 27 economics students at San Jose State," "Industrial Melanism," and killing pigs while taking PCP. And just think -- this mess goes on and on for 56 tracks!?!