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The following is an article about the Supreme Dicks. It was written in Italian, but here is an English version, using Google's translation feature. Hopefully, it makes more sense in Italian.
SUPREME DICKS
With a similar name it must indeed have been difficult to pass unnoticed, also in Indian the circumscribed universe of music American; difficult at least not to provoke some morbosa curiosity. Instead, just that one was desire of Dan Oxemberg, Jon Shere and Steve Shafel: to cross notes secretly, sventrar them in mute being useful for the dusk, to give back then decomposed them, in one structure of ludica melancholy and euforica ubriacatura, from the expanded perspective and deprives of whichever outline, remaining in the shadow. Features that number them, a posteriori, sure between the standard-bearers of the so-called ones slackers-band, even if the concept remains limitativo.
Assets in nata the Boston since 1982, attractive fulcrum of the Hampshire College, Supreme the Dicks (all chitarristi and singers, with the added one of a drummer) show oneself to the discografia after ten years of torment and frustrations (all will come but recovered and given to the press) with a single one on Funky Mushroom ( Sky Puddle - Country Of Nuns ) seguto, at a distance of some month, from the first album, The Unexamined Life ( Homestead ) stralunato and ipnotico, than it since characterizes them endured like one band voted to the sound more than to the writing, sfilacciato and imploso holder of a songwriting in one psichedelia nearly involuntary, lacking in canoni form them, but with debits in the so-called tradition of folk-rock the oblique one and to dark inks (to which Supreme the Dicks they confer but an effect of acute svogliatezza), that he was born and was asserted together to cross-sectional personages like J Mascis, Will Oldham and Bill Callahan and band like the Neutral Milk Hotel, i Dead C, the Idaho and the Sebadoh.
The formal hallucination did not stop to music, continuing just the delirium in the lyric ones and the existential philosophy of the combo: they were just the witnesses, explicit and barrettiani, if we want, to neglect the group regarding the rest of the scene but, at the same time, to create they round a aura of mystic and atypical atheist religiosit ("For being Supreme Cazzo one must have made celibato ballot of, not eat meat and to have one not egocentrica mentality... " they raved Dan and its).
Published the first disc, under the push of the enthusiastic critic, the boys gave bottom to arch to you, that Workingman' s Dick (Freek Records), one risen of concept album "on the generis" with many indecipherable brani saw the light in 1994 with the title it and deprive of the sung part, and in the successive one more fragmented EP This Is Not To Dick (Runt), for sure backs inascoltabile, beyond to one split in parallel in company of the One Small Good Thing. They give to you for deals to you and lost mentally, in it tries of new roads of development of the reichiana philosophy ("to create a positive fluid of the Orgone"), Supreme the Dicks place instead the historical zampata one with The Emotional Plague , always published from the Homestead, album that scrolla of back some cumbersome comparison (Lou Reed, Tim Buckley), in order to penetrate itself with conviction in a deformation, always of psichedelico stamp, the sound and the melodia, constructing cumuli of dissonances alternated to fragments of song, where it is always the same sound and its idea to constitute the barycentre, with the introduction of instruments intruders and the meticulous cancellation of whichever flow ritmico. Surrealistic, conflicting but sublime fascinating a job how much, pregnant one of autoironia, how much suffocating on being born from a mood plumbeo and loaded with left omens.
Someone has defined them an orchestra from room of straccioni, qualcun other has pulled in dance vanguard music: all agree in extolling some the praises. I often imagine their faces intente to read those entusiastiche and tortuose critics, and I cannot sorridere: not Supreme creed that the Dicks never has been taken artistic too much seriously. It talks nonsense to you from the circulation definitively, musically speaking, seems as a result of a chaotic concert in which they were caught up on the theater box (continuing but to play) from a fan stirred violently (Dan Kapelovitz) that autoproclam new leader of band (the active Dan is itself hour in hundred of artistic plans, between which most fortunate is serial the television psichedelico Threee Geniuses, moreover shared with the former "member" of the Dicks, Jon Shere, beyond that in the decorative art of onirico-surrealistic derivation), what to more it hits is to feel or to read (me periodically me is capitato personally with Pall Jenkins of the Black Heart Procession) declarations of authoritative Indian musicians of the scene that they remember with devozione and Supreme affection the Dicks and the artistic sharings, is in study that on the theater box (where the group has always expressed amazing things): J Mascis, Azalia Snail, Lou Barlow, Alan Sparahwk, are many to hold alive the memory of the Dicks. In order to end, I thought that the discografia of Supreme the Dicks had been swallowed from the oblo but I mistook myself: Amazon and CDNow of it even have some copy in warehouse. It would not be a useless effort, that one of giving to the way to one personal hunting to the CD, best if in some stall or between the shelves of second hand storees, at least of Emotional Plague that, rightly or wrongly, remains one of fundamental discs of the last decade.
of Pier Cant Angel, drawn from the review Late For The Sky , n.61, November 2002
Here's the original article:
Supreme Dicks
Here's an article from The Stranger that has a bunch of factual errors, but is amusing nonetheless:
PRANK #3: FAN VS. BAND VENGEANCE
A Fan Takes over the Supreme Dicks
THE SUPREME DICKS are no strangers to controversy. In fact, a number of years ago they were embroiled in a strange incident involving a Massachusetts youth who, on a live cable-access broadcast, announced he was going to kill himself. He downed what he claimed was cyanide, and promptly perished. Thinking it was a prank, the band and other attendant performers did not bother him, and hence only discovered at the show's conclusion that the youth in question had, in fact, committed suicide. TV Guide called it "the worst moment of TV" for 1989.
Five years later, a young musician and admirer of the Supreme Dicks, Dan Kapelovitz (Brothers of the Apocalypse, The Partridge Family Temple) petitioned to be included in part of their lineup. He was rejected. Undeterred, Kapelovitz went to their show at Spaceland (in L.A.) and simply took over, storming the stage and grabbing the nearest microphone. He proceeded .to perform for the rest of the show, despite protests from the band. Following the show, he asked if the band accepted his role or not. "Definitely not," he was gruffly told.
Infuriated, Kapelovitz promptly retaliated by launching the "Official Supreme Dicks Website" (www.kapelovitz.com/dicks.htm), and offering himself to various music magazines and periodicals for "interviews with the lead singer." Pushed to their limits, the true Supreme Dicks reacted by promptly disbanding.
Go to Original article.
Puncture, number 37, late 1996
Starry Plough, Berkeley
The Supreme Dicks were two guitarists and a drummer sputtering lethargic,
atonal jams while a fourth guy warbled, howled, and shook his booty.
A band member, or a drunken frat boy? the two guitarists first appeared embarrassed,
yet their own vocals amounted to shouting and squealing
cutesy, meaningless babble over dragging music. I felt like the clueless emperor
of Austria in one of my favorite scenes in Amadeus wanting
to accost audience members to ask, " Is this ... modern? Do you like this?"
Neutral Milk Hotel did their share of farting around too, but rather than coming off
like a lazy joke for a clique of smug white boys, they got to work....
Everyone on stage was moved by pure, ecstatic, unjaded love for sound, as opposed
to the dig-us-we're-so-obnoxiaous attitude of the Supreme Dicks. Tonight was an
eloquent lesson in how to do it vs. how not.-J Neo Marvin
Guitar Player Magazine
Supreme Dicks, The Emotional Plague, Homestead/Dutch East iNdia (Box 738, Syosset, NY 11791):
The Muppets go Manson--truly hallucinogenic ghost rock that's way scarier than anything in
industrial or metal. Chuckie, the demonic death-doll from Child's Play, would love
these eerie tremolos and haunting refrains.
Magnet, Number 24 August/September 1996
Supreme Dicks, The Emotional Plaugue
Hovering on the cusp of the ambien, lurking somewhere in the nebulous borderland betwee lo-fi, DIY fare and Syd Barrett-style lysergic dementia, Massachusetts' Supreme
Dicks are pretty much in a class bu themselves. The Emotional Plague, their third
and most polished album to date, invokes Lou Barlow (in his Sentridoh mode), Gram Parsons and the Bevis Frond as its primary touchstones and, perversly, winds up being on the best
prog albums since Genesis recorded Selling England By the Pound If
that sounds like a back-handed compliment, it's not: much-maligned though prog may be, it's the only genre a record this diverse could possible ever fit into.
Murky voclas and edgy guitar lines give songs like
"Columnated Ruins/Seeign Distand Chimeys" an atmospher of tension and
paranoia that's rare in music this quiet.
It's a temting rocrd to put on before you go to sleep, but
I wouldn't want to experience some of the nightmares that could very well result
from doing so. Both beautiful and freightening, The Emotional Plague is as
fascinating and confusing as any record you'll come across this year.
-Andre Johnston
The Bob, Fall, 1996
The Supreme Dicks, The Emotional Plague, Homstead Records
It's sad to hear a thing that could be righ go very wrong, but somthihg's awary
with this disc. The Dicks probably WANT it to sound wrong, but it's not
wrong the way they want it to be. They use a sonic palette of disturved sound
that draws from prod-to-be-fucked ensembels like the Dead C's firt album, early
Sebadoh, and ealier Nico. But those performers sounded genuilnely distburing;
the Suprem Dicks merely sound like they want to be weird, and that's just not enough.
The Emotional Plague earns the summation first used by that famous rock criyic
Gertrude Stien: "There's no there there."
-Bill Meyer
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