Icky Boyfriends

San Francisco cult band the Icky Boyfriends echoed the musical and lyrical naiveté of artists like Jonathan Richman and Half Japanese, borrowing the lovelorn geekiness of the former and the amateurish, nearly avant-garde clatter of the latter. However, their collective persona notwithstanding, their crude abrasiveness had more in common with the noise rock underground, particularly that distinct streak of Bay Area weirdness that also informed other long-running scene staples like Caroliner. The Icky Boyfriends were formed circa 1989, featuring Jonathan Swift on vocals, Shea Bond on guitar, and Anthony Bedard on drums. Bedard had previously played with a garage-flavored band called the Leather Uppers under the stage name Tone EB. The Icky Boyfriends stuck around for more than a decade, performing on a mostly local basis. Despite their longevity, their music was documented very sporadically, with only the occasional vinyl single or EP on a tiny indie. Those releases included the Cuckoo and End of Lust EPs for Blackjack, and the "Frank's Mom" single for C&P. The Icky Boyfriends also starred as themselves in the 1996 pseudo-documentary film I'm Not Fascinating, directed by Super-8 filmmaker Danny Plotnick; an accompanying LP of the same name was released on Past It Records. In 2000, the Menlo Park label issued a limited-edition, career-wrapping compilation titled Talking to You Is Just Like Being Dead, which consisted mostly of previously unreleased studio cuts. Bedard continued on in a duo called the Resineators, with guitarist David Nudelman. In 2010 the band reunited and began working on new material. Longtime fan John Dwyer of garage darlings Thee Oh Sees recorded one of their first shows in 2013 and released the recordings on his Castle Face label the next year under the title Live in San Francisco.