I’m reviewing the whole discography of The Dead Milkmen.  I know, I know.  You’re not interested.  Tough titty!  This is my happening, baby, and it freaks me out!

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Beelzebubba (1988)

I don’t know whether I’d seen the video for “Punk Rock Girl” on MTV first, or heard my Tech Support Guy play this on tape when I was hanging out at his house.  “Punk Rock Girl” is immortal, beloved, but we must look at the album as a whole.  This would be the high point of their career, as far as record sales were concerned, but I also feel it captured the essence of who they had become as artists.  They had achieved their true form.

What is that form?  Punk rockers, they just threw a bunch of short snot-nosed songs at the wall to see if anything stuck.  Unlike 99% of other punk bands, they had a unique style combining elements of folk music, ethnic folk music, surf guitar, and country – with a lot of genre dabbling besides.  They were low brow poets, the two singers also having their own personal writing styles that helped build a world of suburban decay, of lumpen-ass proletariat believing strange things and swimming in strange events.  Everything is a bad joke.  Doesn’t matter if you live or die, it’ll probably be sad and weird.  Maybe violent too.

I review tracks, this time putting classics at the top, because they deserve first place.

Classics

*** “You know what Stuart?  I like you.  You’re not like the other people, here at the trailer park.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re fine people, good Americans, but they don’t know What The Queers Are Doing to The Soil…”  “Stuart” is not very musical because the lyrics are overpowering and spoken word, not sung, but both the instrumentation and the Rodney-flavored poetry are considered by fans to be essential listening.  They probably play it at most concerts.  I don’t remember if they played it at the one I went to.  I do remember them covering Gary Numan’s “Cars.”

***** “Punk Rock Girl” absolutely deserves its place as their most well-known song.  Great music, great lyrics.  Love it, as I have always loved counter-cultural girls and boys, be they punk or goth or grunge etc…  I remember when belly button rings and nose rings blew up at my high school.  So cool.  Take that, society stiffs!  Anyway, now I live up to the line, “We’ll dress like Minnie Pearl,” so everything is hunkydory.

***** “Bleach Boys” is a very strong contender for best song on the album.  It’s the only Dead Milkmen song where you can hear them smiling as they sing it, hear them trying to stifle laughter.  It’s black humor, for sure, but it’s pretty fuckin’ funny.  The music is very fun, and the song doesn’t overstay its welcome.  I’d say it’s about 10% novelty song tho, more about the jokey lyrics than the musical whole.  Potentially offensive to welders and people of short stature.  “I’ve got some buddies and we all drink bleach; you know we practice what we preach…”

**** I used to dislike “Life is Shit,” back when I was new to the world, and death and suicidal ideation were more disturbing and hateful to me.  I gotta admit tho, it is an absolute anthem.  I know most fans love it, but not sure if they play it in concerts as much as the other big tracks.

Good Stuff

**** “Brat in the Frat” has this high speed Eastern folk music thing, maybe Greek is the main influence?  Short and sweet, or short and snotty at least.  Expresses some weaksauce political moderate stance and a high disdain for being alive, but well done, I’ll take it.

***** “Sri Lanka Sex Hotel” is one of their edgiest songs.  Are there even sex hotels in Sri Lanka, or are they mixing it up in their imagination with Thailand?  I don’t know much.  The titular sex hotel isn’t the point of the song though.  It’s about fucking up and dying on purpose, and it rocks.  But yes, don’t do anything the song talks about.

**** “The Guitar Song,” if you don’t particularly like the band’s sound, is an instrument of torture.  I think it’s cute, but I think my brother likes it more.

**** This album has more songs about conspiracies and paranoia than any before it, cementing that as a central theme of their art.  “I Against Osbourne,” by merit of aggressive tempo and short length, is the least worst of the ones on display here.

Filler

** “I Walk the Thinnest Line” is too repetitive and has some pretty dubious lyrics, like the title that references Charlie Manson.  Decades after I first heard this song, I randomly found out what My Little Fish is, which gets referenced here, and … don’t look it up.  It’s nightmare fuel.  Song is about being a crazy™ guy.  Musically kinda alright, not too long.

*** “Bad Party” is about going to a bad party and giving the partygoers punk attitude.  Tasteless reference to eccentric real-life murderer Ricky Kasso.

*** Personally I’m kinda amused by “My Many Smells,” which is about possessing abominable effluvia.  “Sometimes smell just like death itself, a sickening sweet smell, I could really make you ill.  Smell meee…”

*** “Smokin’ Banana Peels” is alright.  More funk-punk, with jokey surreal imagery for your inner acid fiend.  “Take Elvis for a walk and shut up.”

** “Everybody’s Got Nice Stuff But Me” is kinda funny but not very musically satisfying, and too repetitive.

** “Howard Beware” is another song about a paranoid guy.

* “Ringo Buys a Rifle” is another song about a paranoid guy, this one Beatle-themed.

Garbage

– “RC’s Mom” is a James Brown style parody about doing domestic violence, and got a lil too offensive for my ass, especially the last few seconds, which feel like Charlie Hebdo humor – that is to say, like it wouldn’t be out of place in the propaganda of neo-nazis.  Punk rock, ladies and germtlemen.

– You know what sucks?  When people give money to scholarly pursuits they find interesting, instead of giving everything to charities making up for the half-assed nature of america’s social safety net.  Let’s make a very repetitive and maudlin song about it called “Born to Love Volcanos.”  Shit literally has violins in it.  That’ll show ’em.

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Smokin’ Banana Peels EP (1989)

“Smokin’ Banana Peels” was alright, but I don’t know if it needed a maxi-single with multiple remixes.  Nonetheless, the B sides on this are so fucking good I consider it a must-have.  YMMV.  My husband mostly hates them.

Classics

***** “Depression Day Dinner” is about being poor enough to eat your dog, and ironically exulting in it.  The devoured dog has the same name as one in the saccharine jesus-friendly comic strip The Family Circus.  This is funny as balls.  Works in a reference to the Stones’s “Brown Sugar.”

***** I like “The Puking Song” even more than “Depression Day Dinner.”  Maybe I’d like it less if, like my sickly Victorian husband, I’d had more occasion to vomit in the course of my life.  At this point, I’d rate this as their funniest song.  Joe Jack sings lead, music has a brief reggae / dub interlude.

Good Stuff

**** “I Hate Myself” is a rather obvious entrant to a certain genre of punk rock song, but in their own style.  These songs seemed apiece with the musical motifs of Beelzebubba and it would have been a better album with them on it.  Suicidal ideation for laffs, u kno.

*** “Girl Hunt” is a “personal ad” song, like “Float On.”  It feels like the writing of an asshole who knows he’s an asshole but isn’t trying to improve.  Kinda fun tho.

***** Another fave of mine is “Death’s Alright With Me,” which is alright with me, but I recognize not as good as the Classics on this album.  Also slight ding for being more terrible cheerleading for suicide.

Filler/Garbage

**? “Smokin’ Banana Peels” has five fuckin’ remixes on this album.  Even for this review, I have not worked up the gumption to listen to them.

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Metaphysical Graffiti (1990)

It’s weird rating albums track by track.  I didn’t realize I regarded this album as well as I did.  A lot of tracks made “Good Stuff” and I liked the “Filler” well.  Only complaint is that the worst tracks were pretty bad and I felt like I was reaching to pick a “Classic.”  A very moderate experience, but on the positive side of that.

Classics

**** “Methodist Coloring Book” is an atheist anthem.  It’s a lil obnoxious tho.

Good Stuff

**** “Beige Sunshine” is the lead off track, which kicks ass, but loses points for opening with an obnoxious kiddie chorus.  Instrumentally, it has more influence of church music I don’t quite have the terms for.  Maybe it’s an instrument where I’ve never connected the sound to the name.  Lyrically, it’s more Milkmen psychedelia, with a sort of mental health framing device.

**** “Part 3 (I Saw You Naked)” uses CSA for yuks, but might not be as bad as that sounds.  Kinkshaming.  I could see associating this source of humor with homophobia or transphobia, but I’m feeling generous.  I like uptempo music and zany nonsense.

*** “I Tripped Over The Ottoman” features Dick Van Dyke going crazy™.  “Maury Amsterdam can make a sane man crazy, Maury Amsterdam can make a nice guy kill.”  The music works real well with the joke.  Dr. Demento surely played this one.  Surely.

*** “The Big Sleazy” is a fun tune about hating your local radio station.  Quality haterade.

*** “If You Love Somebody, Set Them On Fire” is a doors joke gone too far.  “I went to your house last night, your dad called me the Human Torch, got a little pissed at him, so I burned down your front porch.  Now I’m feelin’ a little better, and throwin’ gas on your dad, but you know it’s hard to quit, and besides he started it.”

** “Dollar Signs In Her Eyes” is not my kinda jam.  Like I said, I prefer uptempo.  But I recognize the quality, and I imagine some of you might like it more than most of their songs.  Mellow song about how crapitalism makes one live in a dream.

**** I almost rated “I Hate You, I Love You” a classic because I like it a lot.  Might be a little long for how obnoxious it is tho.

*** “Now Everybody’s Me” reiterates the theme of “City of Mud.”  The world is become a slovenly curmudgeon’s paradise through a conformity of nonconformists.

*** “Little Man In My Head” is another reggae / dub influenced track, about having funny little ideas one does not believe are native to one’s domepiece, like leading cults or doing terrorisms and such.  Not bad.

Filler

*** Recurring Redneck Storytime tracks have some low key Milkmen musicking while Rodney talks, playing the character of a gossiping redneck on his porch.  There’s one about how Billy Bohiggus got caught in some perverse chicanery and subsequently lynched, one about how his sister is dating a guy named Professor Griff, one about how Sarah Jane is a left-handed lesbian eskimo midget albino, and lastly the tale of Cousin Earl’s egregious family of mutants who live on a maggot farm.  This stuff is the very definition of filler, like comedy skits on a rap album.

* “Epic Tales Of Adventure” is a stock Milkmen jam about paranoia and poor people problems.  One of at least three songs that mention laundromats, I think.  I’m more likely to skip it these days.  Doesn’t hold up to repeat listens, past a point.

*** I almost rated musical outro “Anderson, Walkman, Buttholes And How!” as Good Stuff.  It features Gibby Hanes of The Butthole Surfers, and after they once joked about ripping those guys off.  It’s a pretty decent time, but yeah, it’s filler.

Garbage

* “Do The Brown Nose” is … what would you call this, lounge funk? weirdly reiterating some musical elements from Beige Sunshine.  y’know, i think it’s electric organ.  that’s the sound.  It’s a yuk, but I can’t help but feel like a song about brown-nosing is a little boring for these guys.

* “In Praise Of Sha Na Na” again has some yuks, but extremely repetitive, kind of obnoxious, and the negatives definitively outweigh the positives.

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Soul Rotation (1992)

As much as Metaphysical Graffiti (yes i got the zepp ref) led off with a few songs about religion and spiritual vibez, this album was very focused on those themes.  Again, I was surprised how much I liked this album on relisten, though overall I never vibed with it in the past.  Still, and also like Metaphysical Graffiti, I didn’t think the standout tracks really rose to the level of being Classics, mostly.  But amazingly, nothing I rated as garbage!  I can’t believe it.

Classics

***** “If I Had a Gun” is fuckin’ perfect.  If you want a song that reflects the mentally tortured USian white man experience, this is your dog.  It gets me on the level of actually relating to it, while preferring I didnt?, but still loving it.  “Would I wear it in a holster, would I keep it concealed?  Would I put it on the table every time that I’m misdealed?  When I hear a nearby gunshot when I’m up at night alone, would I feel a little safer, here in my urban home?”  I don’t know how well it fits the album.  I guess thematically I can see it existing in the same world as “Big Scary Place” and “Here Comes Mr. X.”

Good Stuff

**** “At The Moment” leadoff track, pretty dope.  I like it a lot, but it’s low key.

*** “The Secret Of Life” is less annoying than I remembered and it’s 4:20 long so maybe that’s the actual secret.

**** “Big Scary Place” is about feeling overwhelmed, of course.  Might be a good track to represent the album as a whole, the feeling here is of having an expanded awareness of the world and that awareness scaring you back into the Platonic cave.

*** “The Conspiracy Song” – motherfucking which one, amirite?  If you’re gonna go with one Dead Milkmen song about conspiracies, this one sure beats “Epic Tales of Adventure,” “Howard Beware,” and “Peter Bazooka.”  I like ’em fast.

*** “Wonderfully Colored Plastic War Toys” is a throbbing word salad that bounces up and down hitting top and bottom of your skull in rapid succession.  Pretty good.

**** “God’s Kid Brother” is a straightforwardly presented theory of Creation.  AiG take note.  I’d call it a novelty song because it’s more about the lyrics and idea than the music, but in generosity to its quality, I’ll call it a folk song instead.

*** “Here Comes Mr. X” is an aggressive track about a right-wing shithead fucking up one’s neighborhood.  It has some really funny lines.

Filler

** “Belafonte’s Inferno” is one of those tracks that just gets too mellow for me, which may be the essence of why I didn’t vibe with this album before.  Still not working for me on this one.

** “How It’s Gonna Be” might be their funkiest funk song, but why so many funk songs?  Leave that to the experts.  This is a reflection on the aggressive banality of life, which in its negative way, points to the theme of spirituality on this album.  Just kind of obnoxious tho.

** “All Around the World” is not an RHCP cover (somehow the first state mentioned in that is PA where the Milkmen are from, and not California).  It’s a mellow tune about… wait for it… a conspiracy guy!  I like the musicality of the phrase “I know some things I know I shouldn’t know,” but there’s not much here.

*** “Silly Dreams” I almost rated as Good Stuff.  The tune is mild-mannered good times, there are some yuks, it’s kind of a mood.  But maybe too mellow.

** It’s far from their main genre influence, but the Dead Milkmen sure like returning to the well of funk, as they did for “Shaft in Greenland.”  There’s still probably more of reggae in the rhythm.  Or ska.  Shit, I don’t know jack about Afro-Caribbea.  White punks sure seem to know it well, lol.  Anyway, kinda chuckleworthy, but very novelty.  Also the second song where they rhyme ghetto and stiletto.

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If I Had a Gun EP (1992)

Nothing of note here, but recognition of that song’s greatness, I suppose.

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Now We Are 10 (1993)

Remember when I said if I found out they put the R-slur song on compilations I’d reevaluate my opinion of them?  By the track list I thought this was a standard collection of repackaged stuff plus bonus material, but it was more like concert recordings and other terribly lo-fi versions.  Unremarkable, and the bonus tracks were nothing to write home about.  “Don’t Abort That Baby” was alright, if barely discernible through the recording quality.  It’s more anti-anti-abortion than pro-abortion, which is the weaksauce position, but it’s aggressively rude and terrible about it, which gets some points back.

Then again, that irredeemable slur song is on the album.  The re-evaluation:  This is 1993 and even as a seventeen year old I wasn’t as ableist as this song.  But I was close, and I was using variations on that slur for conservatives in the comments on Pharyngula during the Sci blogs era well past the time I should’ve known better.  The Deep Rifts and feminist / social justice conversation of the time around 2010 really changed how I feel about ableism a lot.

Still, the song isn’t ableist because of insensitive language.  It’s literally nazi shit.  “I hate cognitively impaired people and want them to die” the funny fun song.  Again, who am I to stand in judgment, when our atheo-skeptic movement is also not ableist just because of the language we use.  We fundamentally hate “stupid” people.  Personally, I think that’s a problem, but I’m still hanging out in the building.

Even in 1993 I’d have thought this sucked, but from thirty-two years in the future, loving as much as I do love of the band’s catalogue, I’m going to give 1993 DMM a pass.  For now.  We’ll see the next time it comes up.

Incidentally, if I really wanted to know how shitty Rodney Anonymous and Joe Jack Talcum are to this very day, I understand they’re vlogging a lot on yewchoob now.  I don’t wanna find out.  Not right now.

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To be continued!