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The Greatest Band in the World |
| The Dead Milkmen have a greatest hits CD called Death Rides A Pale Cow. An ideal gift for first-time Milkers de Morte. Available in Australia at most questionable CD bars. It contains two previously unreleased tracks 'Milkmen Stomp' (dreadful) and 'Labor Day' (a superb ode to France's favourite - Jerry Lewis). However coz it is a Restless release - it omits tracks from Not Dick, But Richard and the groovy Soul Rotation. |
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This page provides a brief glimpse into the wonder that was The Dead Milkmen. From the mid-80s to 1995, the four milkmen of the post-modernist apocalypse pricked all bubbles of pretention they came across and provided the sort of sounding board a smattering of Gen X weirdos found deeply satisfying and most definitely amusing.
Scientists proved it long ago, the Dead Milkmen were much better than the Beatles.
Like their heroes, The Shaggs, the Dead Milkmen have received high praise from selected quarters and are destined to remain beacons in the musical underworld for decades to come. Before their time, unquestionably - discordant, sure - subtle, never!
Although ignored in their day, the Dead Milkmen are now recognised as the true geniuses that they were.
Over the course of eight full length albums the Dead Milkmen poked fun at topics as widely ranged as; toxic waste storage, the commercialisation of blues, gun rights, racism, commercial radio, the placement of government fundings, dance music, unemployment and the basics of life, death and the various international conspiracies surrounding everything we do.
Oh, don't tell me, you've never heard of the Dead Milkmen?
A decade before the X-Files and darkskies fired the public's fascination with conspiracies, the Dead Milkmen were musing over alien abductions, government listening devices, why coffee doesn't taste the way it should, the infotainment industries ties to the State, why the soil around Des Moines, Iowa is crap and the plot behind surplus cheese for the needy. Dont look at the screen that way! Have you ever really stopped to consider what all that crap They're pouring into the water is doing to us?
Hey, the Dead Milkmen were right about Them owning the narcs and the drugs - just look at the crack pouring into LA from the Contras, huh!
You know, if you really wanted to, you could run out and buy a Dead Milkmen record right now.
The music developed rapidly from (self-admittedly) Buttholesurferesque in the first two or three albums - raw, crude Milkmen - to the plateau of Beelzebubba, Metaphysical Graffiti and Soul Rotation where the quality of playing necessitated additional sarcastic guitar-strangling to re-create the earlier sound and echo the Shaggs' own cacophanous stylistics. These three albums produced the majority of their singles: Punk Rock Girl, Smokin' Banana Peels, The Conspiracy Song and If I Had a Gun.
A Dead Milkmen record would be a sound investment.
Leaving Restless after Metaphysical Graffiti, the band went to Hollywood Records for the successful Soul Rotation and alright Not Richard, But Dick. Their final studio album, Stoney's Extra Stout (Pig) was released through their original distributor - Restless and is surely the pinnacle of the Dead Milkmen's music. Stoney's confirms everything that was loveable about the Dead Milkmen: the crazy songs of sexual perversion, government conspiracy and ironic musings on heaven and god as looney bus passenger; straight out caustic rock on the state of the blues and the rising unemployment of the Western world. Final track, album eight: 'Big Deal' - fitting conclusion to the career of the Dead Milkmen.
The fat people want what the skinny people's got, skinny people want what the fat people's got, but all I ever wanted was what the Shaggs got, Dat Ding and My Pal Foot Foot.
Rodney Anonymous (Rodney Linderman) was lead singer of Burn, Witch, Burn til it broke up. He is webmaster for The Secret Cinema.
Joe Jack Talcum (Joe Genaro) guitarist and co-vocalist is working in programming and plays in various bands: Touch Me Zoo, Butterfly Joe and Low Budgets.
Dave Blood (Dave Schulthise) briefly lived in Serbia and put himself high where we can't climb in March 2004. We only miss him all the time.
Dean Clean (Dean Sabatino) is a web site developer (website) and plays in Butterfly Joe with Joe.
E-Mail: RoD
