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Foreskin 500 |
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Give You All My Love In Gasoline Listen, I’ll be honest – 1994 wasn’t one of my
better years. In fact, just about the only thing I even remember about it is
Foreskin 500. And even my memories of them are kinda fucked up and hazy.
Sure, from the quiet comfort of my office a decade later, it has become clear
that they really did exist – unlike many of the numbing aftershocks of that year- but
it all seemed kinda iffy back then. When you are coming unglued, see, Foreskin
500 is pretty much exactly what would come crawling into your mind’s eye. They
were Satanic panic electro-sex rockers smeared in greasepaint and their own
filthy fluids. They sang songs about ass-fucking and about digging shallow
graves, and they sounded like broken motorcycles and TV’s programmed by the
devil. They breathed fire and promised redemption down a hard, ugly road of
perversion and insanity. If I was lucky, they were just a rock n’ roll band. If I
wasn’t, then they were stone cold madness, coming to drown me in a sea of blood
and whiskey. Either way, we were going down the same road.Jesus Paved a Road Called Highway 69 I don’t even think Cobalt Stargazer himself could concoct a sky-cracking Super-riff like the one Mark the 3 Kord Scissor King so effortlessly tosses off in the Flash Metal Juggernaut “Highway 69”. Half Indian sitar, half motorcycle motherfucker gut-punch, H69’s riff is more like a demonic mantra than a guitar line, an incessant, battering thing of terrible beauty that literally propels you through the song like a vicious, whipping wind. It fucks you before you can possibly fuck it back, dig. I first heard it one haggard 3 AM in 1994, while strung out on a bad-crazy combo of anti-depressants, caffeine pills, and malt liquor, sitting on a ratty couch in a cathode haze, waiting for the world to end. Foreskin 500 had a video, see, and it was rolling on some underground cable access punk-junk show. In the video, there was this cat in devil horns and Kabuki make-up, looking like a slinky, sleazy cross between King Diamond and Jesse the Body Ventura. His voice was like every bad guy in every cheap-jack Hanna Barbara superhero cartoon from the 60’s. He was dancing on the table in some dive bar, possibly in hell. I forget if the rest of the band was there, or if there even was a band. All I know is that I heard this unholy fuckin’ riff, and there was this mad bastard in sequins and whiteface, and he was TELLING me stuff. Important stuff. The direction home, in fact. “I’ll drive over this whole damn world Looking for the heavenly side of hell I looked up and saw the sign…" "Highway 69" was quite unlike anything you or I had ever heard before. Sure, it was a little like the industro-junk shop carnival ride of Foetus, and a little like the electric-head murder metal of White Zombie. It had the same kinda evil sex-beat as Drug Free America, the same gut-bucket shock rock intensity as Gwar, and the same vibe of cold-sweat fire cult madness as Crash Worship. Except…except it was all those things at once, and a hundred more. Foreskin 500, quite possibly by accident, had somehow stumbled upon THEE sound, that nagging, un-scratchable itch in the back of your brain that says, at the most inopportune moments, “Hey, why don’t we just burn this motherfucker down?” I had no idea if Foreskin sounded like this before, or whether they ever would again, but for the 4 minutes and 18 seconds worth of “Highway 69”, they WERE the voice of rock and roll – sleazy, self-aggrandizing, a little crazy, and completely unreasonable. This was kinda sound you want to adopt as a lifestyle, you know? Especially if you weren’t planning on living all that long. I Got Lost On a One Way World  Foreskin 500’s roots stretched back to the late 80’s, when one
Diggie Diamond, a
teenage dirtbag and semi-pro provocateur from Boulder, Colorado, formed the
Letches, a self-described “lounge band from hell” with some like-minded local
freaks. They wore outlandish outfits, they threw raw meat at the crowd and each
other, they sang songs about Traci Lords and Mr Rogers, they made an unholy
racket, and they amused themselves almost as much as they panicked their bewildered
audiences. Somewhere along the line, beatbox wizard and sonic sculptor Mark the
3 Kord Scissor King entered the picture, and the Letches morphed into Foreskin
500. I’m not sure how it happened. Nobody is, really. I think San Francisco was
involved. Anyway, in 1993, F500 released their first album, “Mustache Ride” (Kaustik),
which mixed bare-bones drum machine beats with rock guitars and sex-maniac
lyrics to create a sort of novelty-industrial-pop sound. “King Candy Cane”,
“Brassiere Attack”, that kinda thing. Live, they carried on in Diggie tradition,
with face-paint and fire, shock and schlock, and built a following of freaks,
noise-niks, and naked people. They were like a new mutant strain of narcotic
power-flower in the gray, weed-strewn
sound-garden of the grunge-hippy ‘alternative nation’, a horny, druggy, slavering
sleazebeast among the sensitive flannel kittens. Cock rockers with drum
machines. Warpainted throwbacks armed with weapons from the future. Sensing a
wild new sensation, Basura records, a subsidiary of indie-major Priority (once
home to Foreigner) signed ‘em and rushed them into the studio. Less then a year
later, they emerged with the instant flash metal classic, “Manpussy”. Yeah,
that’s right Jack, MANPUSSY._________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| Let Me Be Your Dirty Neighbor | |
| “Manpussy” is either the most overtly macho flash metal record ever made, or the gayest. For the sake of the argument, I’m goin’ with the former, but it really doesn’t matter. I mean, the most suggestive song on the record is called “Dirty Mucket”, which Diggie threatens to take away, and fuck. “I could give you cotton candy, like your daddy”, he growls, over a lurching, biker-flick beat. “I could take away what makes you happy…like your daddy”. If you knew what a “mucket” was, then I suppose you’d unlock F500’s dirty secrets, but they ain’t talking, so let’s just assume he’s got his sights on some dirty schoolgirl. Or boy, whatever. It’s white-line, full-tilt sleaze, baby, it doesn’t even need any gender roles. Of course, it mighta been this refusal to play by flash metal’s chest-thumping rules of rocking-the-Manly-way that threw potential Foreskin freaks off, but fuck it, man. I was enlightened, I could roll with it. |
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What “Manpussy” represented was a welcome, and much needed, return to the
pure, shameless debauchery of the 80’s. Nirvana and Hole and Janes Addiction and the
Chile Peppers and that whole major label “Alternative Rock” hoodwink had set
deep into the culture. Lollapalooza was big. Kids were smart, and sensitive, and
‘politically correct’. Rock had become so washed-out and sexless that fuckin’ PJ
Harvey seemed ‘edgy’ and provocative to these pussies. It was something fucking
else, man. Foreskin 500, by stark contrast, only wanted to get their dicks
sucked, take lots of free drugs, and start fires. Which, after all, is what rock
and rollers are SUPPOSED to want.
Had Enough of Your Empty Lust Foreskin themselves had no idea they writing a manifesto for the New Barbarian. They didn’t even know they were making a flash metal record – they were, after all, an industrial prank-rock band. They were also pressured by Basura to churn out the record in double-time, so the songs on Manpussy was largely the result of panic and mania. Still, in spite of all that, not only is it the slinkiest, dirtiest flash metal record of the 90’s, but it’s one of the best rock albums of the decade, period. If you’re nasty, that is. Everything about this record just stinks of degeneracy. There is no moral center to the songs on Manpussy, which is perfect, because in 1994, there was SO MUCH moral center, you could choke on it. Kids were finding God in Pearl Jam songs back then, so it’s only fair that the devil had a house band, too. Manpussy opens with a revving motorcycle, a surge of crowd screams, and a pointed question: “Are you ready to rock and roll?” Before you can answer, “Ticket To Hell” skids in on squealing tires. Seamlessly merging gangly hip-hop beats with Judas Priest riffs and Sam Kinison and Cheech and Chong samples, “Ticket” is a loud, funky, ass-shaking pop culture scream-dream, a topsy-turvy world where the Geto Boys and Alice Cooper have exactly the same amount of relevance. It sounds like fucking, and smells like trouble. Kinda how a song called “Ticket to Hell” should. “Permatortise” is an electro-metal thunder chucker, like Rob Zombie writing the chase scene music for a Scooby Doo cartoon with Jim Thirwell. “Kill me, you set me up”, Diggie growls, as Mark’s guitar explodes like a bottle rocket hitting a plate glass window. “You told me lies, but not enough!” Dunno what a “Permatortise” is, but on the strength of this venomous track, I’d keep my distance, if you see one. “Dig a Hole” is slow, swampy, and mean. It’s got a haunted, chicken-shack organ lick, and vague, troubling lyrics: “I’ve baked a cake full of revelations/and put the oven on hold”. It’s weird, cold, and wet, like a premature burial in the woods upstate. “You make me…dig a hole.” Yikes. “Gasoline” is full of chugging flash metal riffs and what sounds like a crashing helicopter. It’s one of those serial killer love songs, you know, “You lit a fire inside me/Now you can’t deny me”. It’s the perfect soundtrack for stalking nurses, or whatever you’re into stalking. “Sugar Fever” is a disorienting disco song that sounds like it’s running backwards the whole time. If you’ve ever held on to both sides of the wall while stumbling down a narrow hallway, trying to reach the bathroom to puke yr guts up, then you know what this sounds like. It’s also got tender lyrics, like “Don’t need forgiveness, or truth/ To put a bullet in you”. Love songs mean something entirely different to Foreskin 500, baby. “Highway 69” and “Dirty Mucket” are the twin titans of sleaze and sin on this record. 69 is Flash Metal at it’s most dangerously messianic, and “Mucket” is cock rock swimming in a puddle of it’s own sweat and man-gravy. Simply monstrous, the both of ‘em. “Kiss Me” is the a straight-ahead sleaze metal number. Over a riff copped from either Zodiac Mindwarp or whoever Zodiac copped the same riff from, Diggie rolls his R’s while speaking in tongues like a spastic black leather Dracula. Bad ass. Manpussy ends with a strange, dreamy song called “Baby Crush” that amounts to a looping guitar lick and what sounds like a car alarm blaring away in the background, as Diggie croons like the lounge singer he once was. “I guess it’s all fucked up”, he sings. And I guess it probably was. Cue the Flash Metal Suicide. __________________________________________________________________________________ I’ll Poke You With My Pitchfork, I’ll Light Your Insides Out In a sane world, the razzle dazzle, sex-on-wheels rock n’ roll juggernaut of Manpussy should have chewed a nasty, ragged hole right through the musical suckscape of 1994, but it did not. Foreskin toured the album, mostly on bills with local punk bands, mostly to indifferent, and sometimes hostile, teenage punk rock crowds. I saw them on this tour at the now defunct and much-lamented Rat here in Boston. Like I said before, I don’t remember too much about ’94,but one thing I will never forget is Foreskin’s drum riser. It looked like the grill of an 18 wheeler, with glaring lights and smoke and terror. I thought the drummer was gonna drive his fuckin’ kit right off the stage and flatten us all. And there were tiki torches and there was smoke and sex and searing, industro-devil fuckmusic. Believe me when I tell you, brothers and sisters, Foreskin 500 BROUGHT THE ROCK on that tour.  But, apparently, the world was not ready for their rock. So they stopped playing
it. A year later, they released a single, a beatbox-heavy cover of Boston’s
arena rocker “More than a Feeling”, and recorded a new album, the almost
straight disco “Starbent but Superfreaked”. Promo copies of the album went out
in 1996, but the label dropped the band, and the record, before it was
officially released. The band went their separate ways, and little was heard
from the once-and-future cock rock kingpins until just a couple years ago, when
Diggie Diamond emerged on the scene in New York City, fronting the crazed
electro-disco sex robot band,
The International Male. Which makes so much fuckin’
sense, really. These days, it’s easy to play up polymorphous perversity, or to mix up cock rock and disco. Just ask Turbonegro or the Electric Six. But ten years ago, it took pioneers. It took Foreskin 500. They did not hang around long enough to crack rock n’ roll open and spill it’s guts all over the floor, but they could have, and one listen to the still vital Manpussy, and you’ll see what I mean. Foreskin took everything GOOD about sleaze metal- that’d be the sleaze – and turned it into evil dance music for crazy girls, and freaks, and all the disenfranchised negative creeps that were left out of the loop by the faux-bohemian alterna-kids. The truly enlightened aren’t afraid to admit they are wretches with dark desires, you see. A classic, this one. Highway 69 awaits you, baby. I suggest you hop on now, cuz it’s gonna be a long ride. |
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-Sleazegrinder 500 |
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