This is the second part of my track by track review of Nirvana’s discography.  See the first here.

According to Kurt’s letter, he didn’t feel like writing or performing music, hated it, and thought that faking it was a disservice to the fans.  That’s interesting he felt any obligation to us at all.  We didn’t know him; he didn’t know us.  What does an artist owe to the people who consume their art?  How does that math change if the artist is toiling in obscurity like our FtB writing man William Brinkman, versus selling platinum records?

I don’t know.  Certainly no artist owes anybody their life.

–

Incesticide (1992)

When I reviewed the discography of The Dead Milkmen, I had to omit a dozen self-released tapes, to avoid spending a year on the subject.  Likewise, with Nirvana I chose to not even look at most singles and compilations.  Big exception made for this one.  I didn’t even know it was a compilation.  To me, this was the album in between Nevermind and In Utero.

It makes sense that Incesticide was a compilation.  It is, overall, weaker than the other albums, and has more cover songs.  Even so, I listened to this one a hell of a lot, way more than Unplugged.  When my oldest niece was somewhere between one and two years, she used to “dance” to this album by running in circles in my bedroom.  She called it “The Ducky Song” because we flipped the CD insert rubber ducky side out.

That young lady went through a lot of hell, and was a conservative christian last time I looked.  I hope she isn’t hurting anyone, and I hope she’s OK.

Classics

***** “Been A Son” returns to the unintentional trans undertones from “Negative Creep.”  This one could be read transmasc or transfemme, tho leans hard toward the former.  “She should have stood out in a crowd, she should have made her mother proud, she should have… been a son.”  Well, what if she turned out to be a son?  Wouldn’t that be just as shitty of an experience for the child in question?  In the transfemme version, the song isn’t misgendering our heroine.  She shouldn’t have become a daughter, she should have remained a son, right?  Neither of these interpretations was remotely intended.  It’s a basic early ’90s male feminist track, and that’s cool.  Thanks for trying to be a good boy, Kurt.  Still, if anybody wants to feel trans about this song, nobody’s going to stop you.

***** A Devo cover, in my grunge album?  It’s more likely than you think.  “Turnaround” somehow totally works with the Nirvana treatment.  I never would have guessed this was a Devo song in a million years, as much as I might have guessed it was a cover, eventually.  I never did guess -I found out- but it is unusual enough that I might have.

***** “Molly’s Lips” is the second of three cover songs in a row on this album, and they’re all bangers.  After Devo we get two songs written by The Vaselines, this and the next.  The Vaselines are like, how do I say this?, dark twee.  They are excellent songwriters.  Their original songs are brilliant, but like I always say about a well-written tune, they cover well.  Nirvana made these rock, and that rules.  Similar theme to “Sliver” (see Good Stuff below), but the druggy teenager version?  I don’t know if it’s romantic or infantile or diseased.  Cool.

***** “Son Of A Gun” is romantic with no trace of darkness in sight.  Nirvana deserved to have at least one song like that, even if it had to be a cover.  Again, The Vaselines low key improved by making it rock.

***** I have a feeling many of you have never heard “Aneurysm,” the last track on this album.  It is one of Nirvana’s best.  I wonder if I can find a good cover…  How about these very sweaty dudes?  I think they’re Indonesian.  The laziness fits the spirit of the song well, the way he just doesn’t bother with bits when he’s taking a breather.

Good Stuff

**** “Dive” ain’t the power kickoff of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Blew,” but it is a really good song, and sets the mood for this album.  It’s a compilation album, yes, but it hangs together extremely well.  This song kinda manages expectations.  You know it’s not going to be an album of big bops or aggressive speed, more of a fuzzy grind to soothe your grungely spirits.

**** “Sliver” is like my big poasts about childhood bullshit; it is an acknowledgement of the sickly confusion and social bondage that all human larva must experience.  It feels like Kurt’s take on a Vaselines song (see Classics).

**** I have no idea what “Stain” is about, but it rocks well.  “He never bleeds and he never fucks” reminds me of “I don’t piss I don’t shit” from a Dead Milkmen track, but has no relation, I’m sure.

*** “(New Wave) Polly” just speeds up “Polly” and amps the drums.  Like the original, I recognize this is a very good song, but don’t enjoy it as well as I could have.  Give me themes of self-destruction, not destruction of another.

***** “Downer” has some ingratitude toward god, which I always appreciate, and includes the lyric “don’t feel guilty masturbatin’,” which is also agreeable.  Cranky little teenage man of a song, but excellent.

***** “Hairspray Queen” don’t make a lick of sense and may well be even more diseased than “Mexican Seafood.”  I fucking love it.  A favorite.

**** I don’t know what “Big Long Now” is about, if anything, but it feels important, miserably soulful.  Well placed near the end of the album, and right before an epic rocker – “Aneurysm” (see Classics above).

Filler

***** “Beeswax” is pure nonsense, pukey delivery, good rock.  I like it a lot.

**** “Mexican Seafood” is probably a racist title by intent, pukey delivery, and a sicker flavor of rock than its fellows in mid-album ignominy.  “It only hurts when I pee, It only hurts when I sing.”  Mexican seafood is pretty cool actually.  Maybe Kurt always got his from the worst gagwagon in Tijuana.  Still, it’s a fun song.

*** “Aero Zeppelin” ain’t bad at all.  The album benefits from this trip downtempo, still I can’t help but rate it less than the rockity rock.

Garbage

Nothing!  No garbage.

–

In Utero (1993)

Part of what made Kurt’s death so shocking and disappointing was that this album was fucking amazing, and that was it.  No more.  That’s a venal thing.  Of course it was a terrible thing for the usual, human reasons.  One cannot help but wonder, as good as this was, what could Kurt have achieved with a full life?  I wonder that, but more I just feel bad that another victim of depression lost that fight.  It’s personal for me; lot of at-risk people in my vicinity.  Also, his death happened when I was seventeen, so I went through the stages, y’know.

Classics

***** “Scentless Apprentice” did not feature Kurt in a writing credit, but these lyrics really feel like his.  Maybe he just wanted his name off of it for some reason.  Had to be some sour experience with the process, or just that artist’s temperament.  The pounding drums, the ill lyrics.  This could also provoke trans feels of a non-biney nature, despite the he/him pronouns – “he was born senseless and sexless.”

***** If you had MTV at the last gasp of its withered worth, you remember the video for “Heart-Shaped Box.”  Epic song, strong visual art.  One of a number of songs on the album sharing the theme of human reproduction as corrupt and diseased, as a biological process that embodies exploitation and abuse.  Is that cool with you?  One could take it as misogynist, but that would be facile.

***** “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” introduced me to the story of that young actress who was railroaded into confinement and mistreatment in the psychiatric system.  I saw a small part of a biopic about her randomly on AMC one night, had to do some chore or go somewhere before it was over.  Anyway, “She’ll come back as fire to burn all the liars, leave a blanket of ash on the ground.”

***** “Dumb” is one of those alternative songs that refer to inhalant abuse as heavenly.  “My heart is broke, but I have some glue.  Help me inhale, mend it with you.  We’ll float around, hang out on clouds…”  Compare to The Dead Milkmen’s “Would you like to come and sniff some glue?  We’ll fly to where the skies are blue.”  This reminds me of an article I read in a Seattle weekly newspaper about gas huffing from a former huffer.  It reminds me there was a second-string alternative band in the 1990s called Gas Huffer.  It reminds me of how I heard street kids in the Philippines huff rubber cement, and how I heard there was a documentary about the plight of indigenous people in Canada that included a scene of reservation kids huffing and screaming about how they want to die.  It reminds me of selling a homeless dude a can of compressed air when I worked at walmart, and how I watched him take turns with his friend going into the bathroom to inhale.  My husband used to sit at the lunch table with boys who went from gas station to gas station huffing until they got kicked out, then going to the next down the block.  Reminds me of my old home boy Try-Anything-Once-Todd doing a game where you make yourself pass out, how he collapsed like death and his sinuses instantly drained.  I’ve never done these things, but I feel this song.  It’s beautiful, even if it’s up to no good.

***** “Very Ape” fucking rules.  It does have Kurt being snotty about fame, which is a bad look for rock stars, but the rocking is so good.

***** “Milk It” might be my favorite song by Nirvana.  I don’t know.  It again hits the theme of biological relations as corrupt and nightmarish.  But, y’know, “DOLL STEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAK, TEST MEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAT.  Look on the bright side is suicide, lost eyesight I’m on your side, Angel left wing right wing broken wing, Lack of iron and/or sleeping, Protector of the kennel, Ectoplasma ectoskeletal, Obituary birthday YOUR SCENT IS STILL IN MY PLACE OF RECOVERY!”

There is probably a beautiful and amazing cover of this song, but instead check out this sweaty freak.  He’s a really good dancer.  I recommend keeping a hand on the volume slider for when he starts singing.  In fairness, his vocals might be less yikes with good mixing.

***** “Tourette’s” opens with one of the dudes (Krist?) saying “moderate rock” in a pharmacy DJ kind of voice, before erupting into bargling pandemonium.  Great shit.  I don’t understand one word of it.

***** “All Apologies” is the last song of the last album, really.  You probably know the “MTV Unplugged” version better.  A gentle groan, an emotional crescendo, a goodbye vibe.  Completely classic.

Good Stuff

**** “Serve the Servants” is the opening track and it’s excellent, but this album’s strongest songs don’t do it any favors, in one to one comparison.  A lot of great lines, and you can actually understand them, so that’s cool.  One in particular could be the theme of the album: “Teenage angst has paid off well; now I’m bored and old.”  But, y’know, in a best-album-of-all-time kind of way.

*** I don’t love “Rape Me” because of the subject matter.  I know; I go in for other edgy content he sings, so why not this?  I don’t know.  I recognize it’s a strong song, just can’t rate it better.

*** “Pennyroyal Tea” is folk abortion medicine.  This is a first person song about giving yourself an abortion, and seems to be judgmental against our heroine.  Or is it?  I dunno.  Feels preachy in a way that is successfully uninteresting to me.  But I recognize it’s a very good tune; YMMV.

***** “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter” is a great fast-paced rocker from late in the album.  Really shows off Kurt’s mastery of using guitar like a necromancer.  “What is wrong with me?,” he asks.  In the middle of this hard rock, he makes me sad.

Filler & Garbage

Nothing.  No filler!  No garbage!  This album is too good.

–

MTV Unplugged in New York (1994)

I have never been any kind of fan of live music, so I avoided this one – except for the tracks you can’t get elsewhere, the covers.  I don’t mind the rest of the album at all.  Maybe it’s the motherfucking MTV branding that pushes me away.  I don’t like that shit, or the fact this was released a few months after Kurt died.  Feels scummy.  But it is essential listening.

Classics

***** “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam” is a Vaselines cover, bringing the Nirvana’s Vaselines cover total to three.  Big influence for Mr. Cobain, it seems.  The original of this song has bitter gay energy that lends it power Kurt doesn’t quite possess, but it’s still a very worthy cover of a great song.  It’s what it says on the package.  Jesus doesn’t like me.  Fuck him.

**** “Dumb” is a great song.  This version is alright, but I ding it a star.  Some people like the off-kilter fragility of live tracks like this.  It can work on me, in the right mood, but usually I prefer the original version.

***** “Plateau” is the first of three Meat Puppets covers in a row on this album, and they had a genuine Meat Puppet or two on hand for the performance.  None of these are better than the original songs, but if you want Kurt’s voice, accept no substitute.  The Meat Puppets were clearly a huge influence on him.  Check them out if you like Nirvana.  The bands have much more in common than Nirvana has with the other big grunge names.

***** “Oh Me” is my favorite of these three Meat Traxx.  Just desolate.  Perfect sadness.

***** “Lake of Fire” is the showiest of the three Meat Traxx, with fancy guitar licks and an edgy, ambling, witch-house spirit like a Fleischer cartoon about hell.  If the abrahamic faiths are right about the afterlife, the world is even shittier than it looks from our current and deeply shitty vantage point.

***** “All Apologies” is bringing up the end here like it did on In Utero.  Did they do the standard concert fakeout where they leave the stage then come back for one last song?  I don’t remember, not looking it up, just noting there’s one more song after this on the album, tho this one was played with a note of finality.  The frailty works well on this track.

***** “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” is what they call a standard – a song with no clear origin, tho the earliest known recording is likely by Lead Belly.  An essential Nirvana track, only available on this fuckin’ MTV branded album.  Get haunted tho.

Good Stuff

**** “About a Girl” leads off the album, which is cool, because more casuals got to become acquainted with the song.  You know Cibo Matto did a cover of this?  The Japanese accent is intense on it, haha.  Anyway, original Bleach version still the best.

**** “The Man Who Sold the World” is a David Bowie cover.  Kurt said, “I will fuck this up,” then he did, but it was alright.  It’s a good performance but worse than the original.  Still, if you prefer Nirvana to David Bowie, you win here.

*** I don’t like “Pennyroyal Tea.”  The arrangement on the live version works well for the song but still, it’s not for me.  I recognize the qualities others may appreciate more than I do, so it’s on Good Stuff list.

Filler

*** “Come as You Are” does nothing to improve the Nevermind version, feels like it’s just here because it’s one of their classics.

*** “Polly” likewise, and I didn’t love the original.

*** “On a Plain” likewise.

**** “Something in the Way” is a song about being broke down and sad as hell, so a live performance is a good way to communicate the feeling.  More than that, this gets props for not being any kind of hit, just being something they included because they wanted to.  Artists know what’s important in their material.  Still, I’m not sure it works for everyone.

Garbage

Nothing!  No garbage!  Everything I’ve ever heard from Nirvana was at least good, if not great.

–

I wonder why, in reviewing the works of Nirvana track by track, that I found less fault than I had with the worse tracks of The Dead Milkmen.  Perhaps it’s because the punk rock novelty act of the latter just opens them up to more failure – something ventured something lost, bravery is sometimes rewarded with booboos.  Nirvana, as out there as they may have seemed compared to mainstream rock circa 1991, were still making music that was about the music, not about the lyrics.  I rate the few Nirvana songs with shitty lyrics (that I could understand lol) more highly than DMm songs with the same weakness, because the music was the larger part of the experience.

Even adjusting for that, it’s interesting to be reminded that yeah, I really love this band.  Nirvana was great.  Kurt didn’t have to be a genius to have a beautiful voice and a beautiful guitar style.  Might not be the beauty most seek, but if it works for you, it really works for you.  You don’t have to say requiescat in pace because there’s no afterlife, but you feel the need to say something.  We loved you, dude.  Good night, again, from a million unthinkable ridiculous years in the future.

–

Herein I’m going to breeze through the discography of Nirvana.  I’m ashamed to admit that the first time I heard them, I didn’t get it.  I’d come out of conventional rock.  Nirvana is remembered as the first big grunge band, but they were easy for me to ignore for a minute – Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden were all successful by the time I first heard a Nirvana song (all had major albums drop in 1991!), and they all seemed like a straightforward evolutions of rockity roll.  Soundgarden was like Sabbath by way of more psychedelic rock; Pearl Jam was like a no-homo version of that romantic eighties UK post-punk, by way of a drug-affected bar band; Alice in Chains was the bar-bandiest of the big boys, but like, a bar band that discovered heroin and forgot sex and booze exist.  What the fuck was Nirvana then?

I still don’t know how I’d characterize them exactly.  Grunge was an artificial label for a range of styles that didn’t necessarily overlap.  Nirvana was more punk descended, with a big influence of some very underground eighties alternative bands, mostly from the UK or SST Records in the US.  Who were these people and what were they doing, and what did Nirvana do with that influence that set them apart?  I dunno.  I’m no expert.

Clearly they were not unprecedented, just unprecedented in popular consciousness.  They just hit the right balance of doing what other punk descendants around the world were doing, hit the right radio and TV stations at the right time to explode.  It wasn’t going to be The Meat Puppets or The Vaselines or The Violent Femmes, as beloved as those bands are to the people who know them.  Maybe it had to be Nirvana.

Back to my experience, of not getting it.  I didn’t know anything but the radio dial, and even then, not its darkest recesses.  That meant Nirvana was a radical realignment of my expectations of what music could be.  Once I started giving them a chance – I feel like that only took a few months – I found that they were murdering Pearl Jam in my esteem.  AiC and Soundgarden were unharmed by the realignment, but PJ could not survive.  They were too maudlin and conventional, and kept pushing in that direction.  I used to love Pearl Jam so much, what even happened there?

Nirvana is more real, speaks to the world as I know it.  Indignity, piss, shit, vomit, mold and moss.  Everybody is tainted, everybody fucked something up for somebody else, fucked something up for themselves.  Love and relationships are for guilt and humiliation.  Looking at humanity is looking a giant pile of mutant meat that thinks it’s a prom queen.

And it’s rock and roll, so that’s always nice.

–

Bleach (1989)

Nirvana’s debut album was from 1989?!  I didn’t remember that.  I’m with the literal millions of people who didn’t hear a single song off of Bleach until after Nevermind blew up, when we were wanting more.  It’s very recognizably Nirvana, but more punk rock, less experimental than Nevermind.  Since a major appeal of Nirvana is their reality, their primal energy, a more primal version of their sound has complete merit.  I wouldn’t want to be in a world without their evolution, without the way they sounded in the end, but I like that we have this as well.

Classics

***** “Blew” kicks off the album with hot grindy energy.  “If you wouldn’t mind I would like to breathe…”  Perfectly constructed, no part I dislike, and it ends strong.  I have no fuckin’ idea what he’s talking about.  It makes for a mood, but I’m not going to try to put that into words.  The band already has me struggling.

**** “Floyd the barber” is one of the few Nirvana songs with a narrative, a plot.  The cast of The Andy Griffith Show rapes and murders Kurt while he feels too humiliated to move.  Kinda graphic.  The death blow is the worst, some Marquis de Sade shit.  This has to be a dream, of course.  But what kind of life would cause one to have a dream like this?  It’s an edgelordly good ronk song, but it also provokes some sympathy in me.

***** Broadly considered one of their best, “About a Girl” feels romantic but abusively so, like a bad courtship.  As I’m going through these songs in order, it is their only song I can think of that comes at all close to expressing love.  Isn’t it?

***** No recess!  No receeeesss.  No recess!  “School” is another song dreamlike because it says “You’re in high school again,” which we do dream about, don’t we?  For those who hated high school, is there ever really an escape from that version of society?  Aside from hermitage.

Good Stuff

**** “Love Buzz” … Wait another song about courtship?  I forgot.  It features an orientalist riff, to no thematic end I could discern.  Stands out as different from the rest of the album… because it’s a cover song?  I didn’t know that until the cursory googlage just now.

**** “Papercuts” is the first trip downtempo.  Very dark vibe.  Not a clear meaning.  Main lyrics I can pick out are “They come with flashing lights and take my family away,” and “My whole existence is for your amusement.”  Feels like somewhere I’ve been.

**** “Negative creep” brings the tempo back up, and has a hammering repetitive refrain of “Daddy’s little girl ain’t a girl no more.”  Based on everything I know about Kurt and his scene, there is zero reason for a transgender interpretation of that.  It’s an old euphemism for losing virginity.  But if a trans dude wants to see himself in the grimly begrunged song?  I’m for it.

**** “Gimme back my alcohol,” Kurt demands in another chorus that repeats a mantra until it loses meaning.  “In your eyes, I’m not worth it…”  “Scoff” is essential Nirvana.

**** Skipping ahead, “Big Cheese” is about office politics.  Nirvana belongs under a bridge or in a firebombed flophouse huffing mold spores from a discarded papier-mâché Easter egg.  The juxtaposition of who they are with the subject matter is meaningful.  Kurt sounds a little like he’s about to vomit as he sings, “Mike says call the office.”

Filler

** “Swap Meet” doesn’t have a plot but does have characters, and it’s fine.  I just don’t care about these particular boomers.

*** “Mr. Moustache” rocks but I can see being annoyed by it.  I have no idea what it means.

**** “Sifting” was originally the last track on the album, but the version I’m most familiar with ends with “Big Cheese.”  “Wet your bed; wouldn’t it be fun?”  Again, no idea on meaning.  The music makes specific meanings or interpretations less important.  It’s a reasonable end of album vibe.  Retire to your bedchamber with a miserable defeated yowl, and fade away.

Garbage

No garbage!  This band was too fucking good.  I once had a cheesy friend who said, shame about Kurt, but if he hadn’t died, would we have the much better Foo Fighters?  Mademoiselle, that was deeply wrong.

–

Nevermind (1991)

1991 saw the release of Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger, Pearl Jam’s Ten, and then… This album, which erased my ability to love Pearl Jam’s Ten.  That’s still a trip to consider.  Anyway, Nevermind is broadly considered one of the best albums ever, and if you were ever in a position to know it, you know it.  These are just my extremely come-lately styled reactions to them.

Classics

***** “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a perfect lead off track, lead single, lead of a revolution in music.  I feel like I enjoyed it less for a few years after it came out, like I always used to skip it and a few other tracks that got excessive radio play.  But I’ve long since returned to listening to the whole album in sequence.  SLTS is rock and roll and it’s a joke at rock and roll’s expense.  I love it.

**** “In Bloom” has great music and ok lyrics.  Wait, wait… I’ve said a few times in this review so far, I don’t know what it means!  The song is a diss track aimed at my asshole!  Better than SLTS, they establish the band’s main themes on the album, and their oeuvre in general.  It just got a tiny bit overplayed for my taste.

*** “Come as You Are” takes it down a notch and has a real unusual style.  An excellent song, really, just not something I want to listen to very often.  “Memoria,” he says.  What’s it mean?

***** “Breed” is another romantic song, similar to “Fast Car” in that it’s about love as a dubious escape route, tho that is the end of similarity.  Is epic.

***** “Drain You” establishes another recurring theme which will get deeper on In Utero.  It’s interesting that someone who seems so disgusted with breeding A) bred, and B) had a sorta anti-abortion song on a later album.

***** “Stay Away” … One time my homeboy TryAnythingOnce Todd decided to yell edgy nonsense out the window of my shitty apartment, and opened with “I Am God.”  The punchline of this particular Nirvana track is “god is gaaaay” and it was on the mind, so we were like, say “god is gay” next.  He did, only clocking immediately after that he had called himself gay.  All in good fun, but the time in his life that I liked him the least, he was angrily protesting the idea.  I do think that he’s straighter than I ever would have been, good for him, but he bothered me with that shit at least once.

Joke rock novelty act Green Jellö put out a VHS tape of videos for their debut album, which was a fun time for edgy suburban white boys.  I have a dim memory of a few honest moments later on the tape.  There was a high angle shot of the cast and crew on set, burned out, laying on the ground, but banging their heads groggily to this song.  Green Jellö were the embodiment of fakery in rock, of the unreal, of Hollywood laughing at itself.  But they were musicians, and the opposite end of music from them – of reality, of catharsis – that was what moved them when they weren’t wearing papier-mâché titties and singing about Fred Flintstone.

***** “Something in the Way” is the one.  This is where Kurt lays down at the end of the night, at the end of time.  Underneath the bridge.  Big PNW homeless mentally ill teenager energy.  Black Hole.

Good Stuff

**** “Lithium” is a generic “im this crazzy guy” song, in that sense a cousin to “They’re Coming to Take Me Away.”  The music is hella good.

*** I recognize that “Polly” is an excellent song, but it’s a torture ballad like some songs be murder ballads, and I’m not into it.  Reportedly two shitty dudes raped a lady while singing this song at her, and Kurt took to the liner notes on the following album to tell those guys they’re a waste of life.

**** “Lounge Act” is about some kinda iffy relationships.  If we went hunting for a Kurt Cobain song that was about romance with no hints of a dark side, hm, that would have to be “Breed.”  Or would it?  Are they all miserable?  Whatever, this song is great too.

**** “On a Plain” is a good solid tune, decent penultimate track, winding down.  “I love myself better than you; I know it’s wrong, but what should I do?”

**** “Endless, Nameless” is a secret track, appearing after minutes of silence at the end of the album.  Nirvana was famous for intentionally making feedback happen before it was cool.  This is the noise art to make up for how listenable the rest of the album was.  Good job.

Filler

*** “Territorial Pissings” is real fun aggressive music, but the lyrics kinda suck ass.

Garbage

No garbage!

–

to be continued…

–

Dead Milkmen decloak!  The punks of auld were born again unto music makin’ this millennium, with new albums and tours.  RIP Dave but the show must go on.  The band’s revival is the only reason I was ever able to see them in concert, which I do not regret.  Check out the previous parts of this series and others to come (when they come) on my Discolology tag.  I continue now, briefly reviewing every album and song in their discography.

–

The King In Yellow (2011)

They’re back, baby!  This time they were indie, self-releasing.  I love to see it.  And promoting this album was the reason for the tour where I finally saw them live.  This album feels a lot more uneven to me than earlier ones, which is funny because it doesn’t have the radical swings in production quality from Big Lizard.  The worse songs on it have a quality that’s hard to put a finger on, in some way worse than the stinkers on older albums?  Lyrically.  Sometimes the vocals are a bit harder to understand than they used to be, which one could attribute to aging voices, but there’s an album after this that does not have the same problem?  Nonetheless, there are some classics on this album, some good times to be had…

Classics

***** “Meaningless Upbeat Happy Song” is ableist as hell.  Says Rodney, “I you didn’t check the box next to ‘I am always sad’ there is something seriously wrong with you, because it’s a terrible world, filled to the rafters with cretins and morons.”  This is very gratifying ableism, especially in times like these.  Now put it next to that punk eugenics track from Big Lizard and see illustrated a possible problem of focusing on the stupidity of your political opposites.  These inclinations come from the same place, whether we want them to or not.  Still, I love the song.

***** How did a total anthem come so late on the album?  It’s the third to last track.  “I Can’t Relax” rules.  Thanks, Joe Jack.

Good Stuff

*** “Caitlin Childs” is riffing on the fact that blando christian lifestyle lady Caitlin Childs was once surveilled by the feds for animal rights activism, the idea here that she really is a righteous and dangerous revolutionary.  It paints a picture of her slouching in the ghetto with a buzzcut and quoting Voltaire, fomenting overthrow of the government.  Kinda funny, decent music, though Rodney sounds more strained than other songs on here, out of breath.

**** Is that musical saw or theremin?  “Hangman” is funky action cool.  Joe’s turn to sound vocally beat, but he does fine.

*** Jeezis, “Some Young Guy” is weird.  Joe Jack assumes the role of gay stalker / serial killer.  Congrats on running with a disturbing premise.  I rather like the music on this album, but the prevalence of murder themes has me knocking off stars.  This song, upon reflection, feels like an answer song to “Skulls” by The Misfits.  That track is about serial killing little girls, this one is about serial killing the demographic that is statistically most likely to serial kill little girls.  However, “Skulls” is just a massively better tune.  I do think that even at this point in their lives, the Milkmen could write a tune as good as baby Danzig, but this is far from it.  It’s good, but “Skulls” is great, and given this is the less problematic of the two, that’s a shame.

*** “Buried In The Sky” has cool music, an atheistic and pessimistic message, with a word about “love the one you’re with” tossed off near the end.  Soul Rotation-ish, pretty good.

Filler

** I don’t care for the lead-off track “William Bloat.”  It does establish that punk rock murder balladry is going to be a thing from now on.  I don’t love the theme or lyrics.  Music is pretty tight.  It welcomes you back to their style, if you hadn’t heard them in more than a decade, which was possible at that point.

** I just don’t get “Fauxhemia,” which is about how Rodney just doesn’t get Nora Jones.  All I know about Nora Jones is she does, like, jazz-affected art pop?  Art pop-affected jazz?  Or am I mixing that up with somebody else?  And also that she’s Ravi Shankar’s love child.  This is alternated with Rodney yelling about a psychic baby that knows when you’re going to die, reminiscent of the alternating lyrics on “When I Get to Heaven” from Stoney’s Extra Stout Pig.  On the other hand, maybe it’s a reference to Jones’s music that I wouldn’t know.  I never realized before reviewing all of their songs just how many cultural and literary references I might be missing.  I knew I was getting a lot, but I’m realizing I may have missed a lot more.

** She’s Affected.  has a cool fuzzy synth refrain and propulsive beat, but the lyrics feel kinda ehh.  Complaining about a mature lady being pretentious.  Consider “She Thinks She’s Edith Head” by They Might Be Giants as a corollary with better lyrics and weaker music.

*** I recognize the musical quality of “Cold Hard Ground,” which is a bouncy country song about going on a killing spree.  The subject matter puts me off rating it higher.

** Why does Rodney hate my husband so much?  “Or Maybe It Is” complains about people reading about sensitive vampires.  More goth hate!  Sir, isn’t the band you share with your wife about witchy bullshit?  Isn’t it?  This is the least inspired song on the album.  Xylophone tho.  It’s alright.

** “Passport To Depravity” is a Roman history lesson – not a strong entry to their canon, but not bad.

** “Quality Of Death” inverts hoary advice to be portents of doom.  Not terrible.  Filler.

* “13th Century Boy,” musically, has me feeling very ungenerous to filler tracks.  Political, decent idea, but eh.  Surprising similarity to the song its title references, tho not full-on parody.

** “Melora Says” it’s time to dust off the pipe you played in “Woman Who is Also a Mongoose” and sing about that wacky steampunk broad from Rasputina.  I do like me some ‘sputina.  Oddball idea, average music, doesn’t overstay its welcome.

** “Solvents (For Home And Industry)” is classic Milkmen, reminiscent of the themes of “Watching Scotty Die.”  Not as pushy as that song, but hits a lot less hard.  Too long, but it’s alright.  Some musical similarity to “Belafonte’s Inferno.”  Not the worst way to end the album.

Garbage

* “Commodify Your Dissent” is more of an overbearing defeatist lament than a song.  Obvious idea boringly executed.

–

Pretty Music For Pretty People (2014)

While this album is more experimental than The King in Yellow, and while it’s partially composed of random singles from between the two albums, it feels like they were getting into the groove of working together again, growing as artists.  Noteworthy for having more synth throughout.  Lots of good stuff here.  Some of their most interesting work, without sacrificing listenability – except insofar as an abrasive novelty-punk band is always going to be kinda sketchy on listenability.  Seriously tho, as I went through rating the tracks, I realized I like this album a lot.  By the time I got to the end, this stood as my latter day fave.

Classics

***** The title and lead-off track “Pretty Music For Pretty People” has Rodney in good vocal form, starting to skew more Jello Biafra than he used to.  Sadly, the song accidentally presses an obscure social justice warrior button.  It’s brutally mocking a (hypothetical) lady pop star who strives to be apolitical and commercial, and one of the points it makes against her is that she slept with journalists to get good reviews.  Remember gamergate‘s central outrage / accusation against Zoë Quinn?  Ethics in games journalism?  They don’t gender this pop star so one could read it as being about a dude, but eh, it feels pretty obvious.  I certainly don’t think they would have gone there if they’d been aware of those insect boys and what they were about, but it happened, and that says something.  These guys are defenders of abortion and generally good on feminist subjects, but those cultural biases still loom large.  Still, if you feel nostalgic for punk rock carny music or are feeling snotty about the music industry, this is your dog.  It is really fun.

***** “Now I Wanna Hold Your Dog” refers to the classic Stooges song of course, but is a zany high-speed punk rock romp.  It might bother one if it puts them in mind of weirdos bothering ladies at the supermarket.  Seriously tho, this song fucking rocks out.

***** “The Sun Turns Our Patio Into A Lifeless Hell” is a high point for me.  It’s reminiscent of Black Sabbath, with Joe Jack actually doing some low key Jimi Hendrix type shit on the guitar.  It jumps out from the album, it goes hard, it’s just excellent.  Correct and appropriate they did a music video for it.

Good Stuff

**** “Big Words Make The Baby Jesus Cry” brings what the title promises and not much more, but it didn’t have to, did it?  We like to mock the people who worked tirelessly to bring back the Dark Ages.  I am especially fond of the last verse.

**** “Welcome To Undertown” is a cool trip into a musical genre I never learned the name for.  That 1960s James Bond shit by way of beatniks, um…  I dunno.  Amusing Rodney performance, tho the lyrics on the verses are uninspired.  Still a very fun song.  I’m into it.

*** “Mary Ann Cotton (The Poisoner’s Song)” is classic Joe Jack Talcum folk punk run thru the Not Richard but Dick easy listening filter, and it’s good.  I imagine the titular character is a historical person I should be aware of, but am less interested in that than just digging the vibes, yo.

***** “I’ve Got To Get My Numbers Up” again spells out its premise well.  It’s an aggressively paced and anxious song to fit the theme, but it rocks well.  You know, as I rate this track highly, I have to wonder if I’m just easily fooled by people making music fast and angry.

*** “Anthropology Days” might be the most overtly political song they’ve ever done, listing historic crimes as a way to get you angry about contemporary outrages.  It specifically spells out that intent in the refrain, which is kinda hilarious.  Nothing innovative going on here, and the overtly didactic message could be off-putting to some, but it’s another way they’re treading into Dead Kennedys territory, and I find that pretty cool.  Again with strongly ableist language on the chorus, which is the cost of putting these guys on and letting the album run.

**** You ever hear of the song “Warm Leatherette” by The Normal, referencing J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash in the most obvious possible way?  “Dark Clouds Gather Over Middlemarch” mentions that song, as well as making its own zany reference to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” on the chorus.  This is one of their songs that tells the story of a character, this one in third person.  It’s a lady who thought the cool music scene of late ’70s – early ’80s London would bring her fulfillment in life, but met an ignominious fate.  Arguably low key misogynist again, but less so than some other tracks in that vein.  Pretty damn good, might be too earwormish for me to listen often.

**** “The Great Boston Molasses Flood” belongs to that genre of songs that musically evoke the situation the lyrics describe.  It’s clarifying for me some of the differences between their older sound and what’s going on with this album.  The drumming is heavy-handed, there’s just a harder sound all-around, and there are more songs that lean into music over novelty.  Solid.

**** The album ends with “Sanitary Times,” which is Joe Jack advertising the service of electroplating your dead loved ones.  Mellow, disturbed, a nice listen.  Good choice to close things out.  The music matches the mood of the lyrics perfectly, a sickly groan lurching through a world of utter indignity, looking for solutions in the absurd.

Filler

** I’m not sure about “Make it Witchy,” like, what it’s even about.  It doesn’t sound interesting enough to make me find out.  Is it about murdering celebrities Manson family style?

*** “Somewhere Over Antarctica” is a surprisingly straightforward HP Lovecraft retelling, referring to the same story as “Shoggoths Away” by Darkest of the Hillside Thickets.  Remember those guys?  Remember when all you’d have to do to make dorks drool is flash a little tentacle?  That all seems so played out to me, personally, but this one gets a little credit for not spelling it out that explicitly, and it’s a nice listenable track.  Mellow.

*** “Streetlamps – Walking To Work” is a mostly instrumental track, transforms into a little song at the end.  It’s a whole-ass mood, but not very noteworthy.  ‘S’alright.

*** “All You Need Is Nothing” might be the first song I’ve ever heard refer to breatharianism, tho they didn’t mention the name.  It’s not remarkable in this company, but for a filler track it’s pretty good.  This album occasionally reminds me of Soul Rotation, which might have been their least loved ’90s disc, but hey, Soul Rotation wasn’t bad at all.

*** “Ronald Reagan Killed The Black Dahlia” proposes that a few years into his term as head of the Screen Actors’ Guild, Ronald Reagan used that position to get away with gruesomely murdering a young lady who wanted to be an actress.  I believe it.  Next!

** “Hipster Beard” is an old school Milkmen filler song, if on the good side, and featuring more synth throughout.

Garbage

Nothing!  No garbage!

–

Welcome To The End Of The World (2017 EP)

From the first track it seems like they’re keeping up the ideas from the previous album, of adding more electronics to their sound, of making it rock.  Disappointing to see the vocal mixing weak again.  Surprised to hear more swears on the album.  Makes sense for a release in the first year shitler was inaugurated.  Overall my impression is that this was musically creative, guys leaning into their instruments more, but they didn’t have a lot to say.  Funny, because that’s a moment in history when a lot of people had a lot to say.

Maybe it came out in the four or five months of shock when everybody was recalibrating their sense of reality.  We didn’t have that this time around, did we?  These nazis are a known quantity now, to people who were paying any fucking attention at all the first time around.  This time they hit the ground running for fascism, and the people on the street resisted immediately.  I like that about us.

Classics

***** At the very last track, Rodney turned in the most meaningful lyrics on the album.  “Tomorrow Should’ve Been Here Years Ago” feels like it might be a first person song about gay marriage in a time of bitter and dispiriting political strife.  Rodney is straight married, right?  I think that’s cool when heteros bring real empathy for us.  Honestly, as short as this song is, I’d call it the only essential track on this EP.  To be clear, the song doesn’t say anything about gayness, but “we should have been married a long time ago” sounds like the characters in the song were not legally allowed to.

Good Stuff

*** “The Brutalist Beat” opens with a reference to Throbbing Gristle.  I feel like I should be recognizing the samples.  Vocals mixed better, lyrics ain’t saying much.  Creative music, better than the lead track (see Filler below) in most respects.

*** “The Coast Is Not Clear” has Joe Jack step to the mic for the first and only time on the album and he also doesn’t have much to say.  Very cool music.  What the fuck is this genre?  This they have in common with They Might Be Giants, the other major band that careens between novelty act and serious musicians on all of their albums.

Filler

** The album starts with “Only The Dead Get Off At Kymlinge,” about transporting people in an irresponsible and possibly lethal fashion… Hey, that’s what their worst song ever was about.  Wotta coincidence.  The raw idea here ain’t bad but Rodney gave up on writing lyrics so hard.  Bad job.

*** “Battery Powered Rat” is a cool instrumental track, the soundtrack to a nonexistent cartoon of the same name.

** “Welcome To The End Of The World” violates my doomerism policy lol.  Weakly mixed vocals again, lyrics not saying much.  Makes sense for the first year Shitler was inaugurated.

Garbage

Nothing on here is all that bad.

–

(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang / A Complicated Faith (2020)

***/** Heaven 17’s response to Cowboy Ronnie’s election in 1980 charted in the UK despite a lot of censorship.  The Dead Milkmen turned in a pretty faithful cover as a single in 2020, with an original on the B side.  How was “A Complicated Faith”?  Eh.  ‘S’alright, doesn’t inspire me.  Complements the cover song well enough.

–

Depends On the Horse​.​.​.​ (2020)

Their wikipedia discography doesn’t even mention this one and I’m certain the dudes prefer it like that.  This isn’t an album per se; it’s a compilation of musical challenges they played with on a yewchoob show.  They are mostly very low effort, just fucking around.  Something really great about this is that they all have music videos.  Electric Six tried to do videos for everything on their Switzerland, less successfully.

Classics

***** I expected “Let’s Go To Sleep” to reference “Jorge Regula” by The Moldy Peaches, but it did not.  OK tho, this one fucking rules ass.  I’m into it.  Random Andalusian Dog reference in the video so ware thee.

Good Stuff

**** “Cooking On Acid” is the lead track.  I wish the Rodney vocals on this were more clear.  They’re run through crackly distortion like a pine cone full of glass shards.  It’s a zany irresponsible drug romp and sounds real fun, I like the lyrics and he’s singing fine, but the recorded sound…  I’d appreciate a proper album version of this in the future.  Doesn’t seem likely to happen.

*** “Bigfoot and the Mob” should be fun for depressed skeptics whose movement leaders enthusiastically supported the Aeternal Reich, a chance to enjoy feeling superior to conspiracy people for a minute.  Light fun.

*** “Caitlin Childs Redux” has Rodney basically one-man-banding the entire song from TKiY, with samples from that HUAC bullshit.  It’s a good performance.  The song probably is better with analog instruments in the mix tho.

*** “Little Man In My Head” has Joe Jack one-man-banding a more percussion-heavy cover of an old Milkman track, originally sung by Rodney.  I wonder if he actually wrote the lyrics and Rodney just sang them the first time around.  ‘S’alright, nonessential.

*** “Before Using This Appliance” is an original track again, and the video has Rodney singing along with a hand puppet of the Church of Satan’s Anton LaVey.  One of a few songs the guys submitted for a “read the manual” challenge.  Fun experiment, a few good yuks, nonessential.

*** “Oui Oui On The Steppes” has Mongolian throat singing, but just for sustained notes at the beginning and end, while Rodney plays the character of a French goth out of place – afraid the world will end before he can take his intended to the Lebanon Hanover show.  Bonus points for mentioning Lebanon Hanover.

Filler

** “Why Do People Lie?” is a lil synth-heavy ditty on a well-trod theme.  Light fun.

** “Opposite Day” is kind of interesting, as musical experimentation should be.  Like much of the album, nonessential, but it caught my attention more than the two tracks before it.

** “Sri Lanka Sex Hotel Redux” has a video reminiscent of the motion graphics in Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario.”  The electronic instrumentation has some cool bits, but overall it’s … nonessential.  Funny to hear one of the pop culture references updated.

** “I Tripped Over The Ottoman” has one of the non-vocalist milkmen one-man-band an old track.  Amusing, well done, but not something I see myself coming back to.

** “Now I Wanna Hold Your Dog” has a different non-vocalist milkman one-man-banding one of their newer tracks, with added German.  Amusing but is exhibit A in why he isn’t a singer.  That’s not the reason I’m not coming back to it.  Most of these tracks just aren’t entertaining enough for repeat listens.

** “Butterflies Are Pretty” was surely for the manual challenge, different participant.  Without one of their usual lyricists or most of their usual instruments, this feels particularly like it has nothing to do with who the band are.

** “Electric Chainsaw” has Joe on vocals reading another manual.  Music was kinda groovy but… what’s that word I keep saying?

* “The Pleasure Of Sharp Knives (Every Day)” is the last manual, at least.  The gimmick wore thin.

* “The Trancelvania Polka Parts I & II” is that “Pennsylvania Polka” guff from Groundhog Day (and i dunt know where before that), house remix.  Alright then.  Next.

* “Cat Hair In My Snare” is an instrumental track written to the challenge of blending reggae and goth/industrial music.  OK.

** “Big Questions Theme Music” is the theme for a vlog they done.  Kinda 70s educational film flavored.  OK.

Garbage

Nothing here is noteworthy enough to be garbage.

–

Quaker City Quiet Pills (2023)

Extremely uneven production and vocal mixing, which is still a disappointment after Pretty Music for Pretty People.  Some of the political content feels like it dates from Shitler’s first rodeo, but it was released at peak Biden.  Not that the fash went away, and as we know now, they were about to come roaring back.  It still feels like poison running through my blood, reflecting on it for even a moment – a people so consumed by hate and fear and greed, all around me with their nasty little hearts and shitty little minds.  Fuck ameriKKKa a lot.

Classics

*** “We Are (Clearly Not) The Master Race” is the song you expect it to be, parodying a shitty young neo-nazi who lives with his parents.  It’s obvious but entertaining enough.  There is one thing that boosts it a lot for me – Joe and Rodney doing a skit, like they did on “Bitchin’ Camaro.”  Joe plays the nazi’s mom.  I was cryin’.

**** “Hen’s Teeth And Goofa Dust” …ok, you’re just The Cramps now.  This is a great song, but the way Rodney sings the chorus is a little weak.  I love the way he sings the verses tho.  I also think it’s funny they couldn’t resist breaking character to drop a pop culture reference you would not hear from self-respecting psychobillies.

Good Stuff

*** “Grandpa’s Not A Racist (He Just Voted For One)” is just what you think it would be, but there are a few good yuks in there.

**** “Philadelphia Femdom” is a bouncy upbeat rock song in the vein of “Back in the USSR,” singing about how this dominatrix is putting the spurs to conservative politicians and priests and such.  The chorus feels weak, a recurring issue on this album.  Kinda fun anyway.

*** “Musical Chairs” is a metaphor for how society is too competitive, nobody satisfied with winning unless victory came at somebody else’s expense.  Joe Jack.  Is decent, tho at only three minutes, it’s longer than I needed it to be.

**** “How Do You Even Manage To Exist?” is a never-made-it standup comedian’s rant about people who hold up the line at the restaurant.  Literally that’s how it starts.  I like the intense music, the lyrics eh.  People who liked Stuart may dig it a lot.  The music is strong and the comic delivery is good, if the comedy is played out.

**** “Melt Into The Night” is a dark new wave song.  Coldwave?  The lyrics have Joe Jack as a renegade scientist at odds with his employers.  Mysterious.  Sinister.  I am impressed these guys keep doing new shit.  Kinda cool.

Filler

** “The King Of Sick” is a Cramps concept being rendered in a different style, but is that style stock Milkmen?  Not exactly.  I don’t know how I’d characterize it.  Reminds me of psychobilly, but not quite there.  What else is in this mix?  Bob Seger?  I can’t tell.  I didn’t go to school for this shit.  ‘S’alright.

* “Albert Square” has Joe Jack singing about a fictional jerk again.  Is filler.

** “Astral Dad” has Joe Jack singing about a guy who can’t communicate with his family – locked in? catatonic? persistent vegetative state?  He’s astral projecting to save the world, or maybe not.  Getting back to the spirit of folk, this is storytelling more than music, and says something about something.  I recognize the worth but don’t feel like I’ll be listening to it again.

** “We Have Always Lived In The Compound” references a Shirley Jackson story I’ve never read, and tells the story of being isolated in a cult with surprising pathos.  But it’s not music I want to listen to again.

*** “God Wrote Cum Junkie” proposes that “Cum Junkie” was merely performed by The Genitorturers, following divine inspiration.  Like the way people say god wrote the bible, while acknowledging there were human hands on it.  It’s growing on me.

Garbage

– “The New York Guide To Art” ends the album with a f’art, Rodney complaining about art scene people being pretentious, dishonest nepo babies, whatever whatever.  I don’t know, maybe it’s true.  I never more than touched the outer periphery of an art scene myself.  I do know a lot of people who hate postmodern art are coming from a nazi-flavored point of view, so I look askance on it.  Askance, I tell you.

–

Quaker City Quiet Pills was from last year!  The Dead Milkmen don’t have the discipline of building to a studio producer’s vision anymore, and maybe the albums are a little weaker for it.  Certainly the production isn’t always great.  But are they creatively vital, as little old men?  Hell yes.  I dig it.

So at the end of it all, what do I have to say?  Punk rock was often a good time, but the fundamental punk trait is the Sneer.  It’s disgust, which is also the underlying emotion driving fascism.  The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.  But was that ever the aim?  Punk is speaking to the shituation, not doing anything to change it, because it fundamentally does not believe that change is possible.  (I think the people who coined “solarpunk” were getting pretty far afield of what The Sex Pistols created.)  Resistance is vandalism, not something that can ever achieve an end beyond idle destruction.  That’s what the punk in cyberpunk truly means, and we are living the cyberpunk era of human history now – hence all the illegal street racing and deaths of despair.

That is to say The Dead Milkmen are not here to change the world, just to have a bitter laugh at the flaming descent.  Despite that, they have a streak of genuine affection for humanity, for outsiders and losers.  It’s a bad party, enjoy what you can – especially the company of those you love.  Sometimes they were, and perhaps still are, colossal assholes.  I’ll just deal with it.  Like feeling inspired by the political fury and righteous jams of vicious wife-beating PCP freak James Brown, one should take the good with the bad, within their own tolerances, or just lose out on an awful lot, in this deeply flawed world.

–

My rip-roaring revue of the entire catalogue of The Dead Milkmen proceeds according to plan, now entering the last era when I paid any real attention to their new releases.

–

Not Richard, But Dick (1993)

This one came out when I was in high school, and I even remember my first girlfriendesque situationship acknowledging its existence, tho I don’t remember her opinion, which is another point illustrating I did not yet know how to fully regard women as human.  No bueno.  Back on topic, the only single from this that I was aware of getting any radio play – and only on college stations – was “I Dream of Jesus.”  There are songs on this album that are so much better than that.  A real shame.

Overall it’s kind of an interesting album.  I think the previous albums were a lot more unified musically, but this one has some more successful genre experimentation – especially in “easy listening” territory, which it shares with parts of They Might Be Giants’ excellent album Factory Showroom.  As I tried to categorize these tracks, I realized I feel a lot more conflicted about most of this album than the others.  Few songs get an unequivocal rating.

Classics

***** “Jason’s Head” is an unequivocal classic.  What is this song even about?  Seems like some weird guy was feeling jealous of his easy-going girlfriend who had to kill him in self defense, and the narrator is joining a group of friends on their way to see the body?  This song is so musically good.  I can’t say why.  One of their best, and my husband agrees.  It’s one of his two faves by the band.  He says it has more of a post-punk vibe than anything else they’ve done.

***** I love “The Infant of Prague Customized My Van” an awful lot, but was very conflicted as to if it should be Classic or just Good Stuff.  Musically, this is very old school DMM, by this album’s standards, seeming like it could be sung by the redneck storytime guy on Metaphysical Graffiti.  And yet?  It’s so clever and funny, it is way better than most of their older songs.  Short and sweet too.  But here’s the question – would other people regard this as well as I do?  By the way, I always misremembered the title as “The Infant of Prague Customized My Minivan” for some reason.  The title is a reference to The Butthole Surfers’s “Some Dispute Over T-Shirt Sales.”  Wait.  Ministry’s “Jesus Built My Hotrod.”  That’s the one.

***** “The Woman Who Was Also a Mongoose” is also an unequivocal classic.  So great.  They played it at the concert I went to and the band kinda forgot to play the last verse, which the audience felt bad about.  We had to suck eggs on that deal.  At least we could go home afterward and listen to our CDs.  One of their songs that mentions brothers, so bonus points from me, a brother-haver.  My husband rates it as his second favorite DMM song and says it is the ultimate furry ally song.  “Chasin’ after field mice running thru the high grass, that’s what she loves to do, And if she’s happy as a mongoose, it shouldn’t bother me or you.”

Good Stuff

*** I almost rated “I Dream of Jesus” as Filler, but I admit it has a sort of iconic quality and isn’t as obnoxious as their worst stuff.  Pretty good.

*** Again, I almost rated “I’m Not Crazy” as Filler, this time because it’s just another of the “imma crazzy guy lol” songs that are nearly as common as paranoia songs in their oeuvre, and it’s more mellow than I prefer.  But I like the music, and the yuks amused me.

**** “Let’s Get the Baby High” has me more conflicted than most of the album.  It’s tasteless and gross and musically obnoxious, so I’m tempted to rate it as Garbage, but I do find it very amusing.  On a bad day I will skip it tho.  The obnoxion is sans pareil.

*** “Nobody Falls Like” I almost rated as filler for the same reason as “I’m Not Crazy.”  It’s their four hundredth song about being paranoid.  But I’m amused and don’t hate the music and it’s short.

*** “I Started to Hate You” is very repetitive, as a basic concept, but I do like the lyrics.

Filler

** I almost rated “Leggo My Ego” as Good Stuff but the title is too obvious and some of the lyrics are too annoying.  Good music, generally.  You might like it a lot.

Garbage

– I almost rated “Little Volcano” a bit higher, as Filler, but it feels twee in a way that does not work for me.  Yeah, “Woman Who is Also a Mongoose” is more twee than that, but the music on it is way better, the story as well.  Something about this feels more repetitive than it is.  I just don’t like it at all.  The music isn’t as bad as my personal rating suggests.

–

Chaos Rules: Live at the Trocadero (1994)

This album could be a greatest hits album.  Decent recording quality, great track list.  At the show Rodney was cranky about anti-abortion protesters including a guy named Steven Friend (Stephen? it’s a very common name actually), working references to the dude into a few songs, some talky bits between songs.  It’s alright.

–

Stoney’s Extra Stout Pig (1995)

This was right about the time the band first called it quits, over a combination of industry frustration and the severe tendinitis of their bassist Dave Blood.  The three non-tendinitis-having members of the band played in other musical projects in the interim.  This would have been their last album.  Later, when I’ve listened properly to all their reboot tracks, I’ll be asking myself the question – Should they have quit at Pig?  SESP was less musically experimental than NRBD, but carried forward that album’s glossier production – just applying it to a more old school Milkmen style.  There’s paranoia, crazy™ narrators, and songs ranging from dope to highly obnoxious.  Welcome back Kotters.

Classics

**** “When I Get to Heaven” is about the afterlife or lack thereof, alternately about how The Shags were underrated and you should really go out and buy “My Pal Foot Foot” at your earliest convenience.  I dinged it a star for that, but it’s pretty iconic.

***** “Chaos Theory.”  Hey, I’ve talked about this song before.  I don’t like working.  That makes this song my jam.  Y tu?

Good Stuff

*** “Peter Bazooka” is the main conspiracy song here, and leads off the album with a bang.  Kind of a hoot.  Velvet Underground reference on the refrain.

***** “Train I Ride” is a pretty excellent song about the crappy crap we’re living with every day.  Within the context this train is literally that, but also metaphorical for the runaway nature of shit, the inexorable progress of evil.  Darkly hilarious.

*** “I’m Flying Away” is a twee song about flying to see your lover, with woodwind like that on “Woman Who is Also a Mongoose.”  Might be too much sugar for the average mood.

*** “The Blues Song” is just a cynical fake blues song with a lot of rude jokes about the subject.  Pretty funny ones tho.

** I think my brother liked “The Man Who Rides the Bus” better than I do.  Another Joe Jack Talcum theory about god.

*** “Don’t Deny Your Inner Child” is a paranoia / crazy™ song, but not a bad one.

**** In a way “Big Deal” is a reprise of “Life is Shit,” but less doomed.  Like the narrator of “Life is Shit” turned forty while dating a very nice sad sack and feels resigned to being alive now in a way they hadn’t before, but still not loving it one bit.  Good way to end the album and could have been the last song we ever heard from them.  Could have been.

Filler

* “The Girl With the Strong Arm” and “Helicopter Interiors” are random Rodney psychedelia and not especially entertaining, nor redeemed by great music.

** “I Can’t Stay Awake” is a song about a maddening circumstance that is well done, but in a way that can itself be maddening.

** “Like to Be Alone” can be kind of decent if you’re moving the right speed, or it can be as charming as “I Like Traffic Lights” by Monty Python.

Garbage

* “Crystalline” and “Khrissy” are musically fine, I don’t usually skip them if I’m letting the album run, but why do they sound like back to back songs about crystal meth?  Did we need this?  Was this expressing your heart’s condition circa 1995, Joe Jack?

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Death Rides a Pale Cow (The Ultimate Collection) (1997)

With the band broken up, the label had to get a few more bucks.  Pretty good compilation, but the selection might say some things.  Why not a single track from Soul Rotation?  And what the hell is “The Brown Nose” doing here?

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Cream of the Crop (1998)

This compilation is shorter and sweeter, more fan faves by fraction of the whole, but a few headscratchers.

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Now We are 20 (2003)

Wait.  This is just that earlier compilation with the R-slur song, and a few bonus tracks?  MotherFUCKER.

–

To be continued…

–

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!

–

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!

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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