You have to admire the balls of a guy who steals AOL’s instant messenger mascot for his own twisted purposes, gives himself the same moniker as the world’s first AIDS patient, and merges Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” with “House of the Rising Sun.” But this twisted local roots-rocker has a method to his madness, as laid out most effectively (and, therefore, most offensively) on his manifesto “Go Ahead (Vote Like a Fag).” It’s not often you hear a four-chord roadhouse rocker with any ideas, much less ones like, “If you want our troops put of Iraq / vote like a soldier” and “If you can imagine a world with no niggers / vote like you’re black.” Strong stuff, but on the side of the angels, at least, for those who get the joke.

Of course, the danger in a project like this lies in letting gags overwhelm talent, and there are just too many moments on this debut when Zero sounds like he’s embarrassed by his own feelings. He mumbles through the last-call weeper “LOVE LIFE” (capitals his) as if he couldn’t bear to take the full brunt of lines like “You were married when I met you / And now you’re another man’s wife / Somehow in between we found time / for you to be the love of my life.” A sloppy but powerful number like the swamp-pop take on poet John Berryman’s “Dream Song 14” stings with lines like “To confess you’re bored reveals you have no inner resources.” But he quickly backs out of that sentiment and into a Spanish-language cover of John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane.” Clearly he’s got the inner resources to be funny AND meaningful at the same time; so the disturbing, fascinating, overriding question of Come and Maybe Get It becomes: what in the world happened to this guy to keep him from going for it?