I was thinkin’ of callin’ this series “Musicular Disctrophy” but that’s in bad taste and I half feel like I’m ripping it off from somewhere.  Discolology will join Dreamposting and Life List in the alternating day slots at random, with my other content being on the alternating– whatever, it makes sense to me.  I’m gonna comment on all the noteworthy things about the discographies of a few artists.  I won’t have an endless supply of these either, like the birds, but each band or artist can generate multiple posts.  I’m not going to break it down by one album per post, will do some lumping.  Depends on how much I feel like saying about them.

The Dead Milkmen!  Because I’m a motherfucking gen X dorkwad.  Most people who remember thing one about them remember “Punk Rock Girl.”  Well.  If that’s you, you don’t know much.  They have a reasonably long discography with a lot of excellent songs.  And a few horrible indefensible ones.  And a lot of ho-hum filler, bad in the ways that novelty music often is.  One joke, quirky lyrics at the expense of tunesmithing.  I don’t think I’m spoiling things to say there were a few early albums that ruled, followed by some OK stuff, and then I lost track of them for a long long time.  This is the path of most bands, which supports the idea creative vitality is for the young.  Being middle-aged, I hope that isn’t true…  Is their newest stuff any good?  I’ll find out before this series is done.

The Dead Milkmen self-released their first tape when I was three years old. I saw them in concert at El Corazon in Seattle back in May 2012, making my husband the youngest person in the audience, making them like how old at the time?  Rodney was forty-nine?  One year older than I am now?  Rodney was just sixteen years old when they released their first tape?  I guess that lines up with the punks I knew in high school.  Ambitious lil’ guys.

Point tho, I am not familiar with any of the music from before they got college radio famous in 1984-ish, and am not ambitious enough to listen to it all.  I skimmed it, and as one might predict, the closer they got to being properly produced, the more familiar the songs became.

Before I get into talking about their discography, I want to offer an escape hatch.  Of course, if you aren’t interested in folk/surf/country-influenced punk rock, or my longer writing in general, I’d be surprised if you’re still reading this sentence.  But for the rest of you, a word of caution.  When I say these guys wrote some horrible indefensible songs, I mean it’s the kind of stuff that might put you off paying any attention to them whatsoever.  Cancellation-worthy, for those of you who participate in that culture.

Punk rock is not about being progressive or leftist at all.  Anti-authority maybe, but there is a fascist sub-genre, and who’s to say they aren’t real punks?  If the music sounds the same and that’s the definition, nazi punks can fuck off, but still be punks.  In the song “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” Jello Biafra said “punk means thinking for yourself.”  That’s some no true scotsman biz.  I’ve heard it said that the main driver of the original punk was causing offense.  If so, congrats, I’m offended.  Must be punk.

The Dead Milkmen have a very hateful little song called “Taking R(slur)s to the Zoo,” about finding cognitively disabled people disgusting and wanting them to die.  But in a funny way, haha!  Don’t think in any way that it’s taking the stance of a person they disagree with, like they’re playing the character of a horrible nazi in the song.  It’s just the ableism prevalent in our society turned up to eleven.  Why would I give this band the time of day, the cost of admission to their concert?

It’s one song, not the underpinning of the entire oeuvre.  It’s crap and I’d understand anybody wanting to kick this band into the garbage for it.  But as far as I know they don’t usually play this one?  Certainly didn’t at the concert I went to.  Is that kinda shit in the past for them?  The other thing is that this ableism is a crime I’ve been guilty of as well, in my less public and less overtly offensive way, and for me it is in the past.  I’ll reevaluate where I am on them if I find out they still play this at shows or include it on compilations.  What I get out of their best music is strong enough for me to ignore something that can be ignored – by me, not saying anybody should draw those lines in the same places.

There are other instances of ableism and (internalized?) classism, fatphobia, misogyny, and the usual snot-nosed punk fare.  There’s a jeering regard for low-brow culture that can seem by parts condescending and perversely loving, like the works of John Waters.  But I think for most of you, the worst recurring theme of their music is hating life, not caring if you die.  Do they live that philosophy?  One of their members committed suicide in 2004 and they were appropriately sad about it, raising some money for mental health charities and for a church that guy supported.  Alright then, it’s attitude and a show – an exultation in the concept of death as a blasphemy against the sometimes oppressive idea we should be enjoying life.  I’ve mentioned before that’s something I’m into, and probably something that kept me coming back to the band over the years.

Last word, before I get into looking at the music, on the subject of their offensiveness: they are politically left, feminist, everything you might expect for counter-cultural figures in this country.  Like so many others, in expressing their spleen lyrically, they are prone to the same biases that inform their political opposites.  Foolish, disappointing.  I don’t even keep their most offensive songs in my mp3s.  Still on CDs in a cardboard box somewhere tho…

Probably off local success of their self-released cassette Somebody Shot Sunshine, they were signed to Restless Records and began the studio album part of their career.  This is where I start getting into the albums…

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Big Lizard in My Backyard (1985)

This was basically a re-recording of Somebody Shot Sunshine with additional tracks.  While most of it benefits from a modicum of production lacking in all their self-released tapes, there are some intentionally low fi tracks, that sound like they were performed in a bathtub or barn.  When The Dead Milkmen were established, it was with the idea of being a folk-punk band.  By the time they were being recorded in the studio, that had worked out to something more like standard punk rock, with influences of surf and country, and other genre dabbling.

This should be familiar, right?  A lot of American punk draws on surf guitar influence, and via psychobilly veers into country.  I just can’t think of anybody doing anything quite like this, like how they expressed that math.  You wouldn’t mistake them for The Cramps.  Back when I was a kid, I’d listen to all of these albums front to back.  I like the album experience, am frustrated by choosing what I’ll listen to next with singles.  By now tho, I’m a lil more choosy.  Judgmental.  Observe.

Good Stuff

*** The album leads off with “Tiny Town,” which is badly ableist in the usual way when making fun of rednecks (incest, chromosomal abnormality), but it does rip shit up.  They play the character of small town villains out to persecute nonconformists and minorities, but, y’know, funny.  Yee-haw.  This is a type of song they return to many times in years to come.  If you’re wondering what my husband thinks of the band, he finds this and most of the rest of the album annoyingly repetitive, earwormish, and says the rhymes have a nauseating quality.

**** Next comes “Beach Song” which includes a low key fatphobic joke and the usual snide antisocial punk attitude, but the music is very fun and the punchline might be the one of the best in their discography.  Simple but effective.  My husband says this song sounds like the perspective of a five-year-old.

*** “Plum Dumb.”  Perv drives around the highway seducing women with the ecstasy-like power of plums?  It’s all about the sound of the music and the words, which makes it one of the tracks that saves them from just being a novelty band.  This is the one my husband finds the most nauseating tho.  There are certain rhymes such as “Leggo my Eggo™” that he thinks of when he’s throwing up.  I haven’t thrown up often enough to have jams for it, but my queasy mood go-to is “Going to a Go-go” by The Miracles.

** “Swordfish.”  Similar quality to “Plum Dumb,” which is that it feels much more about the music than the lyrics.  The lyrics are more meaningful however, this being the first of many many songs in their catalogue about conspiracy, religious, and quasi-religious belief.  My favorite line, “Up from the ghetto with the help of my stiletto, every day I’d hear the people groan, why should we buy postage stamps? we can make our own.”

*** “Lucky” is about how there are interesting ways to die, and then there’s whatever’s going to happen to you and I.  Almost a punk rock anthem.  Not quite.

**** “Spit Sink” is about ingesting dubious chemicals because the world is disgusting, another recurring theme for them.  My husband hates this one, but it’s a big mood for me.  A few lines from it pop unbidden into my head at least a few times a month for the last thirty years, but I don’t resent it, so it must be decent.

*** “Violent School” comes closer to being a punk rock anthem than “Lucky,” but still not quite that great.  “Violence rules, guns are cool, and we’ve got guns in our schools!”  One of the most aggressive songs on the album.  Get thee to the mosh pit.  My husband thinks it’s too repetitive.

**** They’re just some “Right Wing Pigeons” from outer space, sent here to destroy the human race.  In one of the lines he says, “A lady in Detroit owns a can of mace, got pissed at my brother so she sprayed it in his face.”  I used to listen to these albums all the time with my brother, and for some reason the songs that mention the existence of brothers get a bonus point.  Just this and “The Woman Who is Also a Mongoose” from a much later album, but that’s two.

***** “Dean’s Dream” is very nearly in Classics range for me, but not quite there.  The music is too generic, as goes the sound of the album.  But this is a song about dreams, which as you know do interest me.  It successfully evokes that romantic feeling one can have for a figment of their imagination, plus other compelling aspects of those experiences.  This one is all about the lyrics, which in fairness to the Milkmen, is true of 99% of folk music.  My husband says this song suggests a possible influence of Jonathan Richman’s Modern Lovers.

Classics

**** “V.F.W. (Veterans of a Fucked Up World).”  There’s a line in here that will absolutely remind you of incels, but this is a classic punk rock anthem, no doubt.  For those of you unfamiliar with USian crap, VFW normally stands for “Veterans of Foreign Wars,” which I think is a prestige club for people in the armed forces who saw combat?  I know they have a meeting hall near the small airport in north Auburn.  Of the standout tracks, this is my least favorite musically, but the attitude is hard to deny.  Extremely teenage white boy, but I’ve been there.

***** “Serrated Edge.”  Another one about religion.  “Up on the hilltop where the vultures perch, that’s where I’m gonna build my church.  Ain’t gonna be a priest, ain’t gonna be no boss, just Charles Nelson Reilly nailed to a cross.  I don’t piss I don’t shit I’m getting no relief, people shake their heads in disbelief.”  My favorite on the album, the music more than the words.  But I do like the lyrics.

***** “Big Lizard in My Backyard” pulls its weight as a title track.  One of the best songs on the album.  Melancholy but it has enough tempo to not depress, neatly illustrates the world of their whole catalogue.  It’s got recognizable real life absurdities, escalated to an unreal level.  Guy has a big pet lizard.  The army decides to use it as a weapon to fight in dubious wars.  Goodbye, lizard.  My husband says it pairs well with “Concrete Animals” by Shonen Knife.

**** “Bitchin’ Camaro” is the most well remembered song on the album, not for the song proper, but for the punk rock vaudeville act at the beginning.  Legendary.

***** “Nutrition” is a strong contender for best song on the album, a true punk rock anthem, covered by other bands years after this came out.  “My folks say I gotta get myself a job, or they ain’t gonna support me.  Well if all I am to them is just some lazy slob, why didn’t they abort me?  I guess I’ll just hang out on Broad and South living by my intuition.  At least I give a shit what I put into my mouth, yeah I care about nutrition.”

Filler

**** “Rastabilly” puts on the redneck joke style again, in a less offensive way.  I think rednecks would love it, honestly.  But why “rasta?”  I don’t hear it.  I actually like it a lot but I have to admit it’s a filler track, because it’s just a one-note joke and is very very short.

**** “Gorilla Girl” is another one I have to admit is a filler track because it’s short and has one basic joke to it.  The song title is probably(?) a reference to the feminist art movement that formed the year the album was released, but in practice it’s about having a girlfriend who is a weird hairy monster that amuses little girls and eats golfers.  The most reggae influenced track on the album.  Again, I like it a lot.

** “Tugena” is just a musical outro with some goofy samples that may annoy you badly, or may not.  I’m neutral to it, my husband deleted it.

Garbage

* “Filet of Sole,” your mileage may vary.  My brother likes it, I find it mildly annoying.  There’s a recurring musical motif on this album, this bouncy guitar rhythm, which to an uncharitable ear could make most of the songs sound the same.  This one is the epitomy of that, and the lyrics aren’t all that amusing.

– “Takin’ R(slur)s to the Zoo”  The beat and rhythm are aggressive in a way that is more punk rock, more moshable than most of the album.  But why agree so comfortably with Henry Ford and Josef Mengele, even as a joke?  Fuck this one a lot.

* “Junkie” makes my husband say “shut the fuck up, kid.”  Repetitive, misogynistic, nihilistic, and repetitive.  Rhythm is a little interesting.

– “Laundromat Song” is generic for this album, and lyrically having sleazy daydreams about a kid at the laundromat.  Yeck.

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Eat Your Paisley! (1986)

The first album conceived in the studio era, less of a grab bag than Big Lizard.  Might still have featured a lot of recycled material, for all I know.  This one had more of the two singers, Rodney Anonymous and Joe Jack Talcum, playing off each other.  They went off the rails sometimes, like they were divas of snotty punk singing.  I feel that harmed some songs that were otherwise excellent.  I do like them singing together, just not when the last part of the song is them bellowing the chorus enough to blow out your eardrums.  These two first albums were less rangey with genre, more conventionally punk rock.  That made them less likely to resort to novelty songs.

Novelty Songs

I kid, I kid.  These could all be in the category of “Good Stuff.”  I just think they’re gimmicky enough in concept that they would fit too well on The Dr. Demento Show.

*** “Air Crash Museum” is about finding all the celebs that died in plane crashes and making them into a taxidermy museum.

**** “Beach Party Vietnam” is about Frankie Avalon being drafted.  Sample lyric, “Hey Frankie, aren’t you gonna give me your class ring?”  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Annette.”  “Why not?”  “Because I don’t have any arms.  AAAAUGH!”

*** “The Thing That Only Eats Hippies” is Exhibit A for the idea punk rockers hate hippies.  It was the single for this album.  Kinda fun, but I don’t feel the thesis much.

Good Stuff

**** “Where the Tarantula Lives” is the lead-off track, almost a novelty song, but I cut it some slack in that regard because it’s an exemplar of their personal genre.  Conspiracy foolery, low brow culture, country-influenced punk, emphasis on good music over lyrical wit.  Other fans might rank it a Classic, I don’t quite.

**** “Happy Is” a song about hating the nonconformist.  This has to be a “villain” point-of-view song, right?  But the laid back delivery makes it feel more relatable than it probably should be.  Anyway, it’s a fun little song.

***** I fucking love “Six Days” but can’t quite rate it a Classic.  That category is a rough amalgam of my personal bestiests plus the ones I’m pretty sure fans regard the most highly, emphasis on the latter.  This is a shout-out song, like the country standard “I’ve Been Everywhere,” Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Jump On It,” or Old Dirty Bastard’s “I Can’t Wait.”  I just think it’s fun, puts a punk attitude on that genre.

**** “Take Me Apart” is just a good solid song.  I don’t have much to say about it.  Relatable feelings presented, and when they reach their most maudlin, delivered like a self-effacing joke.  Good humor, and the two singers don’t wear out their welcome on this one.

Classics

***** “Fifty Things” is one of my faves on the album, painting the picture of a bunch of punk youths sharing a flophouse.  Frenzied, relatable, very amusing.

**** I like “Swampland of Desire” a lot.  Just really good music, a funny theme.  Love as a mucky slime situation.

***** “Earwig” is my favorite track on the album.  Not musically, tho it’s cool.  The lyrics are the best on the album.  I think the reason I like The Dead Milkmen so much is that the world they describe is a mockery of the one I live in, the world I know, that is seldom depicted in TV and movies.  This ain’t Friends or Leave it to Beaver.  This is Black Hole or Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, but funny.

Filler

** “KKSuck2” is just a random instrumental bit.

*** “I Hear Your Name” is alright, but if you don’t like the band?  You will find it maddening as hell.  The pace, the monotone singing, combines with the sentimental words to make something a little queasy and dull.  I listen to it when I’m listening to the album, but not the best.

** “The Fez” is a slow instrumental jam, psychedelic noodling with a menacing vibe.  The slow pace basically lets them do improv lyrics.  This is a song where I could legit freestyle to it, and maybe that’s what they did?  I wouldn’t know.  I just know it is non-essential.  There’s a “haha men got raped” joke, like, wotta wacky reversal.  There’s an interesting confession: “There’s a time for takin’ and a time for givin’, but rippin’ off The Butthole Surfers is how we make our livin’.”  Do they?  I think BHS basically ripped off Frank Zappa while high on inhalants and PCP.  Snotty as the Milkmen were, they seemed a lot less willing to make unremittingly officious music.  It’s punk, it’s funny, but it ain’t the same as The Butthole Surfers.

** “Vince Lombardi Service Center” is an instrumental outro that is fine.

Garbage

** I rate the Garbage on this album more highly than the first because I think they’re better musically and less offensive.  However, this song is just about ruined by the last part, where the singers are fucking shit up.  “Two Feet Off the Ground” also does not offer much in the lyrics, just a kind of banal pyschedelia.  Less LSD than kids asphyxiating themselves with the choking game.  I saw my home boy Try-Anything-Once Todd do that once.  Cleared out his sinuses.

** “Moron” is ableist of course, and has some uninspired rhymes and very unpleasant singing.  Weird pathos granted to the unlovable Depeche Mode fan with day-glow gloves in this song.  I like the music, I don’t usually skip it, but again, if you don’t like the band you will hate this one.

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Bucky Fellini (1987)

One album a year at this point, Bucky Fellini goes farther into genre experimentation on a few tracks, and much farther into country than the previous albums.  Is the ill-tempered redneck character of their albums actually meant to be a malign figure, or somebody to be related to?  While the style is getting more bizarre, the recurring themes of their catalogue are taking over on this album. They were closer now to achieving their final form…

Rednecklery

** “Watching Scotty Die” is a country song that wobbles along like a wheezy old dog, lamenting the pollution caused by corporate greed.  I could imagine a serious version of this song working, but it’s in the uncanny valley between zany and maudlin.  I usually don’t skip it?

*** “Big Time Operator” isn’t very musically creative, but it’s alright, kinda funny. Story of a troubadour who is very full of himself.

** “Tacoland” is about a grotty restaurant in San Antonio which the twangy narrator regards as some kind of elysium.

Good Stuff

*** “Take Me to the Specialist” is a foolhardy depiction of mental illness, but the music is fun and it’s worth a chuckle.

**** “City of Mud” displays the strange line these guys ride between mocking ignorant rednecks and suburban bums, and just expressing their shared point of view.  While it does sound like Rodney is doing a character here, it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t feel at least a little like the dude he’s playing.  “We’re gonna drag Bruce Springsteen by his ankles through the streets.  By the time we’re done the Boss will look like a side of Beef.”  Indeed.

**** I had no damn idea “Rocketship” was a Daniel Johnston cover.  These dudes were too hip for the year “Never Gonna Give You Up” charted.  It’s a nice song, for punk rock.  If you don’t like them you’ll hate it, if you’re me you’ll be quite fond.

*** “(Theme from) Blood Orgy of the Atomic Fern” is what it says on the box.  Repetitive and a thin joke, but hey, it’s a blood orgy of an atomic fern, so it gets a point back.

**** “Jellyfish Heaven” is probably racist and probably uses a song you like for a joke lyric.  But it’s one of the better tracks on this album, I feel.

Classics

***** “The Pit” is the opening track and it’s so fucking fun.  I love it.  Also big relate because I’ve lived in fucked up slimy circumstances too many times, and not caring about it, while far from a solution, is a way to adapt.  The beginning is a reference to Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz.”

Wow, I only rated one song on the album this highly and it was very short, the first track.  Bad sign.

Filler

** “I Am the Walrus” is a cousin to the redneck from their other tracks, a boomer and a bircher.  Probably the same dude from the more well-regarded track “Stuart,” on their later album Beelzebubba.  He’s angry, he’s intoxicated, he’s suburban, and he’s hung up on pop culture.  It just seems kinda obvious for these guys.  Got old for me.

** “Going to Graceland” isn’t very good, but it isn’t very bad, and I don’t bother to skip it.  I’ll say that it feels so much like this is what the guys are like in real life.  I can imagine the whole band going on the tour at Graceland and acting like jokers while trying not to get kicked out.

*** “Nitro Burning Funny Cars” is just here, doing its thing.  Doesn’t have a point.  Is very Dead Milkmen.  It’s alright.

*** “Surfin’ Cow” brings back their surf influence for a mostly instrumental track, still unmistakably theirs.  I’m getting the impression as I look at all of these, however, that I did not like this album as much as I thought I did.

** “(Untitled Instrumental)” is a hidden track / reprise of the album’s musical motifs.  It’s non-essential.

Garbage

* “Instant Club Hit (You’ll Dance to Anything)” is pure novelty song, ditches their musical chops to just make punk rock complaints about more successful musicians.  Prejudiced against bisexual goths.  Unforgivable.  I used to think this was funny when I was a child, but it actually figured into a moment when I was unintentionally homophobic at somebody who was very important to me, might have fucked up that relationship forever.  Not Milkmen fault, but they were being a bad influence on an impressionable young asshole.  Like, literally I’ve always been attracted to goths and been slow roll discovering my pants sectionality.  I’m the one this song hates.  But it is a joke, why so serious batman?  I played myself.

* “The Badger Song.”  Did I say something like “They aren’t as committed to making officious music as The Butthole Surfers”?  This album has some obnoxious ones.

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To be continued!

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