The Friday Morning Listen - The Dead Milkmen
Published June 23, 2006
Or....how to get from "One Man Wrecking Machine" to "Bitchin' Camero" in three easy steps. Actually, the conversation wasn't that linear, since Barenaked Ladies and Paris Hilton were involved too.
OK, here's the deal. Me and DJ Radiohead were yakkin' up a storm the other night on the phone, mostly about the stupendous greatness of the latest Guster record Ganging Up On The Sun (A double review will be cooked up soon). The DJ mentions that he saw Guster as warmup to a Barenaked Ladies show he and TheWifeToWhomHeIsMarried attended. This moved into a discussion of Barenaked Ladies and how I never got what was so special about them. Maybe it was the "jokiness" of some of their tunes. I dunno. Despite the very nice melodies they employ (a trait they share with Guster), when I hear the talking vocal on "One Week"... it just makes me cringe. Sort of like when I hear your average They Might Be Giants tune.
What they hey? Is it that I don't like havin' some funny in my music? Does humor not belong there? Gawd, of course not! I'm more than a little susceptible to the big gag, owning records by Skid Roper & Mojo Nixon ("Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant"), Hayseed Dixie (bluegrass covers of AC/DC), and Dread Zeppelin (reggae covers of Led Zeppelin).
So then we move on to a short discussion of one of my favorite funny bands, The Dead Milkmen. Pop with very punk roots, they mow over all sorts of musical and cultural issues with a fine and snotty eye toward detail. You may remember their one hit, "Punk Rock Girl". That was from their fine Beelzebubba CD. (Come on, you laughed at that title, didn't you?!!) Anyhow, if you're in the mood for short dissertations on hatred of beachgoers, stupid people, right wing pigeons, burrow owls, or sex hotels in Sri Lanka then The Dead Milkmen are for you. As funny/gimmicky as the songs are, the actual music displays more than a little serious muscle. The bass playing blasts through some lower melodies and the guitar slashes away with all sorts of off-kilter rhythms.
Big Lizard In My Backyard's finest three minutes (plus one second if you need to be picky) is "Bitchin' Camero." After an absurd spoken word introductory conversation, the band launches into one minute of blistering punk squall. The music reminds me of when Christian Slater's character in Pump Up The Volume hurled himself around the basement to the anarchy of The Descendents' "Der Wienerschnitzel." They also get extra points for rhyming "Donuts on your lawn" with "Tony Orlando and Dawn." Heh.
Ah, Paris Hilton? Both me and the DJ have review copies of her single "Stars Are Blind." Do not look for a joint review there.
Mark Saleski is a writer and music obsessive based out of the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. On his best day, he hopes to channel the ghosts of Lester Bangs and Jack Kerouac. He spends the hours of 9:32PM to 1:37AM carving out music reviews and essays for Jazz.com, Blogcritics.org and other publications.
- The Friday Morning Listen - The Dead Milkmen
- Published: June 23, 2006
- Type: Review
- Section: Music
- Part of a feature: Friday Morning Listen
- Writer: Mark Saleski
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As good as The Dead Milkmen were on record, they were even better in concert. One night they were covering "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, and greeted the audience with this couplet:
"Lookin' for adventure
And CHARLES NELSON REILLY"
Unfortunately, their bass player committed suicide a few years ago.
As far as musicians or performers that came out of Philadelphia, I have to say that they're in the top 3, mixed in there somewhere with Todd Rundgren and Bill Haley & The Comets.
tom: haven't listened to the paris song yet. i suppose i will just out of curiosity. i could just swear i saw her on a late night show where either letterman or leno asked her if she wrote her own music and she said "yes". there ain't no "hilton" on the writing credits to this thing.
j.p.: that charles nelson reilly namecheck was sweet!
love the mojo nixon...haven't heard anything from him in a while.
is he still out and about and kicking?
i have an interview with barenaked ladies that is posted on you tube. they discuss some really funny topics. maybe a canadian thing.
jack jett
queer edge with jack e. jett
Marvellous, Sir Saleski, i must track me down some of these chancers right here. Re: The Paris Debacle, her tune is, as Tom says, just kinda there. It does, however, steal the eyes out Kingstown Town by UB40's head. I think it was the fine folks at Pop Bitch who said we're still no closer to knowing what Paris actually sounds like, since the vocals are doctored to within an inch of the last octave. But it is altogether alarmingly tolerable.
mojo does a political talk show on Sirius radio and recently did a short tour in support of kinky friedman's run for governor in texas.
Duke, you totally need to pick up both this record and Beelzebubba.
trust me.
"there ain't no 'hilton' on the writing credits to this thing."
She might be using a psuedonym for writing like Dylan using Jack Frost, Young using Bernard Shakey, and W.C. Fields using Mahatma Kane Jeeves. Now before I get jumped on for the comparison, I admit she's not as funny as Fields.
FYI, Mojo Nixon has a show on Sirius Satellite Radio currently. You'll have to check the website for details.
I used to have a girlfriend who loved the dead milkmen. Can't remember if I ever heard a note though.
Thanks Mark!
I loved the Milkmen back in the day - they were one of those groups who sort of got worse as they got better, or I should say, more proficient, although they were still quite entertaining live as recently as the later '90s.
"Punk Rock Girl" is the all-time killer, but I got the most radio requests for the bizarre unnamed spoken word number about fishing at the end of Metaphysical Graffiti, which came out on Enigma in 1990.
The spoken word intro to "Bitchin' Camaro" has one in-joke for people who probably their summers at the Jersey shore. Other than that song, I did not care for the Dead Milkmen much. Now, the Pop 'o' Pies covers of "Truckin'" deserve imortality, as does anything off the first couple of Mojo Nixon records. Any who can give me a better example of consonance than "figure-four facelock" speak now.
I'd have to pick anything performed by the Barenaked Ladies than subject myself to Paris Hilton.
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Apropos of only the last line, that Paris Hilton song is disappointing in that it's remarkably unremarkable. It's neither particularly good nor particularly bad, so it doesn't even warrant much ire either way, yet it will likely storm the charts like it's one or the other based solely on her name, and probably because people pass it on to others saying "Hey, it's actually not awful." And then it will deserve my hatred, because if anything is an annoying trend in music, it's extremely mediocre music succeeding. If it's really horribly bad music, I find it amusing that so many people like it, and if it's good, well, I think that's obvious. But Paris, and this song? It would be a travesty for this song to do anything but just hang around for the summer as anything other than something that encourages exchanges between people next year like this:
"That song that Paris Hilton released, remember that?"
"She sings?"