Foxycock - An Album Review.
Hi. Rick Frongenson here...
I'm a writer for the New Yorker. I review bands and write articles for several music magazines on a freelance basis and two weeks ago my assistant handed me this crazy CD from her best friends brothers band with the most ridiculous name I've heard of in along time.... the CD was entitled "Black music for White People" and it was the debut album from a comedy duo from both Santa Cruz and Hollywood California that are known throughout the land as Foxycock. The first thing I noticed was dead center on the front cover a picture of Joshua Murphy, lead singer of foxycock, and Doug Smolens, guitarist, mastermind, engineer, and writer as well, being raped by cartoon aliens with sweat dripping down their faces as their bodies gyrate...or I assume they were gyrating because of the double lines surrounding the contours of the alien bodies as they furiously raped away at the comedic duo. Funnier than the image of the band being victimized (by their own design) and raped by evil aliens...is the fact that they would go so far as to introduce themselves to the world...the masses...in a visual medium that suggests that outright whoreishness and full necessitity of embracing pure whoredom to excel (and or get ahead) in the music business...or in business in general. Or at least that’s what I got out of it.
While being victimized...Doug protests to the aliens almost nonchalantly...as if this shit has happened any times before and it is more of a nuisance than a real lasting trauma. Pan over to Josh getting raped alongside Doug and we see Josh with an initial protest for the raping... but then he gets sidetracked and notices a shiny green planet below with crystals on it and says ..."Hey, Doug...look at that planet. It's all green and crystally. There has got to be weed on that planet!" I love how the prospect of potential space weed takes precedence over the humiliating, violent, painful trauma of an unwanted, forced alien raping...or "probing" as they call it. I continue laughing. But there's more....
A full 5 page comic book inlay shows a story of the star crossed band as they travel through the deep reaches of space hitch hiking with hostile aliens in search of the mythical lost powerchord... the absence of the lost powerchord is resulting in all the fucked up shit that is happening to the earth.... global warming, false profiteering, oil wars, bad marijuana legislation, AIDS, Britney Spears, (bad music and television) SUV proliferation, starvation, etc....
Sounds crazy. The themes and songs on the album go all over the place. One song is about reptilian illuminati government leaders choking on the devils cock and the next an Irish dirge about a whoreish homosexual Irish father who shames his family with his desperate and lewd, alcoholic, beggarly, illegal sex
trade antics...such as chugging cock for free beer and bar snacks . . . . the next song is about office slavery and making love to a fax machine masked in a sparse, underdeveloped techno mockery of a song....after a band fight, we go right into a heart thumping, metal grinding song about cocaine high life in the 80's fast lane appropriately titled ‘80’s Songs’... the song after that is a beautiful bossa nova ode to high speed DSL and internet porn...with beautiful, gut wrenching melodies...and catchy hooks like..."Click on the link of the lesbians licking their pussies pink..." So irregular, asymmetric and beautiful...
There are songs about robots fucking in the skies raining down robot lubricants and oils of ecstasy threatening the earth below with a robot sex flood.
Almost a schizophrenic journey through music.... without the discord or bad vibes associated with schizophrenia.... and without exhausting every musical genre...only taking the best.... blending sweet harmonies with jazz candy coatings and ethnic instrumental delicacies over songs about Asian pussy...or internet porn or tantric anal sex... Subjects somewhat offputting in their very nature...hidden away from society...unspoken...foxycock makes these taboo themes palatable... even enjoyable.....if your not focusing on the brutal graphic imagery of..."I saw fat man with a clit. . . . I saw an old man eat his shit ...and it blew my mind" ...
your listening to the surprising jazzy space chords...Donald Fagen-esque funk keyboards....mixed with Doobie Brothers/Michael McDonald soul.... melodies from god and aliens from a land far superior to ours...
all these crazy, eclectic elements come together in a furious culmination of..to quote the band..." extreme alien influenced pop/rock satire/political bossa nova space rainbow jazz filtered through the robotic asshole of a (gay) unicorn (floating above the event horizon of an inverted black hole) in a galaxy on the brink of destruction." Wow!
. . . . These albeit raw and contemptuous topics, by many standards become less obvious... they become subversive... toe tapping...almost buttery.....I was in the kitchen washing dishes when I caught myself singing "chokin on the devils cock" .....The hook to Laura bushes eyes...a song that ...to quote the band... "Is a metaphor for the hostage situation we have here in America where reptilian illuminati government leaders have seized control of our very lives, media, medicine, energy supply. . . . the very fabric of America".... but as serious as the singing is...its jazzy and sweet sounding...soulful... and catchy as hell...with awesome bass lines...jazzy guitar solos...all so tasty....
The ironic wrapping of their brutal, raw, offensive and inciteful music in a clever, jazzy package takes the focus away from something normally seen as ugly or brash... the graphic odassity of "although your mother fucks for bread your father is the whore... he spends his money on the cock and not on food and clothes... not your mothers loving but its hard cock he done chose"...is transformed into an easy listening, but not "eazy listenig" experience... the songs are good.... sure their offensive as hell.... derogetory... rude...... but smooth..... Well crafted... different...
Unusual phrasings and odd musical harmonies make each song come out from nowhere and end up where you'd least expect the song to go . . . . in ‘Laura Bush’s Eyes’ they sing,
"How can she live in her skin?
Everyone knows that she's not human
Trying hard not to shape shift back into a reptilian... into a reptilian.
Ridiculous...beautiful...funny... odd … and truthful...yet somehow the songs are real...They fit...
foxycock speaks what should not be soken..They dare to say what you want to hear and say yourselves....Do you dare listen????
