IU graduate produces ‘worst album cover’

The band Germart didn’t set out to create one of the 50 worst album covers of all time.

It just intended to share its music, like the song “Ride that Booty,” with lyrics like “subtract that junk and add your funk and spread the finest jam.”

Dylan Germick, a 2007 IU graduate, and his brothers Nathan Germick and Ryan Germick formed the band Germart and are the masterminds behind the album cover “Planet Booty,” which was recently named as one of the “50 Worst Album Covers Of All Time” by the Chicago Tribune.

Dylan Germick is the shirtless man featured on the album cover wearing blue ski pants and looking up toward a blue skull. He majored in theater, and his theatrical past indirectly influenced his album cover and music.

“We were thinking theatrical-space-Hamlet thinking intensely,” Dylan Germick said.

As for the award, Dylan Germick could not be more pleased. Germart produces works that are fun, entertaining, theatrical and comical, he said.

“I’m happy to know we are the worst,” Dylan Germick said. “It’s like getting a zero on the SAT. You need to know the right answers to get the wrong answers. ... We’re also serious about not being serious. I think we hit the nail on the head.”

The title of worst album cover shows that people are paying attention to them, both Nathan and Ryan Germick said.

“I was proud to be part of something that got a reaction from strangers,” Ryan Germick said. “I think that signals success.”

The brothers work well together mostly.

“We collaborate pretty well except for when we don’t,” Nathan Germick said. “And then it gets ugly. Really ugly.”

Within the content of the album, there are several songs about butts, such as “Ride that Booty,” “Smelly Crack” and the title track “Planet Booty.”

The album’s content is intended to personify just how sexually charged the world is, especially for a young person, Dylan Germick said. He said his personal experiences and his experience at IU influenced the album.

“Young people like to have a good time,” he said. “When you are walking to class, people are looking you. You are checking each other out. You want meet that special someone.”

After two years, Dylan Germick said he was no longer “feeling the booty” at IU. He was also not “feeling” other aspects of college life. He said that he never really wanted to be a theater major, and he failed his first class at IU in directing. He also said he did not enjoy attending college in his home state of Indiana while his brothers were at out-of-state schools.

“I felt like since I stayed home in Indiana, I failed,” Dylan said. “I was feeling that I needed to leave to succeed.”

From 2004 to 2005, he went to New York and California and began work on “Planet Booty.” He teamed up with Ryan Germick in California and finished about half of the album. The entire album was recorded in the brothers’ backyard in Berkeley, Calif.

The album features “booty songs, techno songs, dirty sex club tracks. ... The organization is all over the place by nature,” Dylan Germick said.

He returned to IU in 2005 and came back to school with a new perspective.

“College, it’s a golden magical playland with so many departments at your fingertips,” he said. “Once you get out of Bloomington, the real world is a vast, big place, and it can weigh on you, respectively. Bloomington is a beautiful place.”

As for the band, Germart’s members have big plans for the future.

“I’d like to see global superstardom,” Ryan Germick said. “Failing that, a really interesting local cable access show.”