Track Listing: 1. Leggo My Ego 2. I Dream of Jesus 3. Jason's Head 4. Not Crazy 5. Let's Get the Baby High 6. Little Volcano 7. Nobody Falls Like 8. I Started to Hate You 9. The Infant of Prague Customized My Van 10. The Woman Who Was Also a Mongoose
"Thar she blows! Lady lumps like a snow hill! Not Richard, But Dick!"
This album was my white whale for the longest time...All music collectors have a mental list of elusive albums that they're constantly seeking...Every time I went to a record store I'd make a bee-line to the "D" section and inevitably be disappointed that I could never find the perennially out-of-print "Not Richard But Dick."
For me, finding music is all about the hunt...There's nothing like digging through the crates at the local record store and having your eyes pop out of my head when I spot an album I'd been seeking for years...So to me, turning to ebay or other online outlets is like giving up...A pseudo safari...The hunt is canned...
The hunt is canned...
But one night I got ridiculously nostalgic for the days I'd ride the school bus...
...blasting my cassette of "Not Richard, But Dick" and couldn't take it anymore...I finally threw in the towel and just plain-ass bought a copy online...
Again, I'll never understand the world...People seem to really dislike these last few Dead Milkmen albums, so I can only assume that there's something wrong with me...I love this era of DM...The only valid criticism I'll accept is the common complain that it's too short ( just shy of 28 minutes!)...
I think the main reason I find this album so great boils down to one perfect moment..."The Woman Who Was Also a Mongoose." Oh my God! I love this song so much! I honestly think it represents the pinnacle of mankind's artistic accomplishments...
Michelangelo's David? Not as good as "The Woman Who Was Also a Mongoose"...
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? Not as good as "The Woman Who Was Also a Mongoose"...
Season four of the A-Team? Okay, I'll give you that one, but that doesn't diminish the song's achievement...First off, why would you write a song about a woman who chases snakes and field mice and then decide that the best way to realize this grand vision is by making it sound exactly like Lou Reed?!?! How did they arrive at this?! Astounding! And then the icing on the cake is the trilling Pied Piper-esque flute line...
"♪Tweet tweet tweddle deeee...♪"
Why would a Lou Reed possibly song need a flute? And why does it work so well? I'll never understand it...I can only marvel at its existence...Check it out if you don't believe me...
Oh yea, there's nine other songs too! They drop the fluffy "Soul Rotation" sound and adopt a more stripped-down pop-punk-rock style...Less jangly and sloppy than their earlier punk stuff, and Rodney and Joe split the vocals fifty-fifty...The whole thing is really solid (which probably isn't surprising since the album's so short), so pointing out highlights is difficult...I've always though "Jason's Head" was one of their catchiest tracks, I don't know what's really going on the song...Some sort of homicide spawned from jealousy, or maybe it's about slasher flicks...
Who knows...Stays stuck in my head all day, regardless...I also like "The Infant of Prague Customized My Van" which is a fun little rockabilly song about preserved saints...And although musically-speaking, "I Dream of Jesus" isn't one of my favorites, the concept is so brilliant that it hardly matters...To my knowledge, it's the only song that addresses the issue of people using Jesus as their personal genie, and does so in a very literal manner (finding JC in a Manischewitz bottle, who goes on to grant all the narrator's wishes)...
"I Started to Hate You" was another song that used to get an endless workout on that old tapedeck of mine...I know people will think I'm crazy, but it reminds me of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." (flinches). I'm serious...It has the same kind of grand stagger at the end of the chorus...I think Dead Milkmen fans need to revisit this era...So much excellent music to be found. Hopefully somebody does a physical reissue of this someday so future generations will know the glory of this album (P.S. I forgot to mention how amazing "Little Volcano" is...oops!)
Wait, it's Friday! Time to grab a couple of Golden Boys from the fridge...
...and check out some Dead Milkmen...Here's "Jason's Head"...
\
It feels like I've been loitering in the Dead Milkmen section for a long time now...I think I'm just going to power through a bunch of them today, so hold on tight...
Dead Milkmen: Metaphysical Graffiti
1990
Restless Records
Format I Own it on: Compact Disc
Track Listing: 1. Beige Sunshine 2. Do the Brown Nose 3. Methodist Coloring Book 4. Part 3 5. I Tripped Over the Ottoman 6. The Big Sleazy 7. If You Love Somebody, Set Them on Fire 8. Dollar Signs in Her Eyes 9. In Praise of Sha Na Na 10. Epic Tales of Adventure 11. I Hate You, I Love You 12. Now Everybody’s Me 13. Little Man in My Head 14. Anderson, Walkman, Buttholes and How! 15. Cousin Earl
I tend to get into bands via their most inaccessible albums...I think probably has something to do with buying most of my music out of dollar and cut-out bins...
I originally picked up"Metaphysical Graffiti" in the K-Mart cut-out bin...It probably cost about a buck or two and it kick-started my life-long Dead Milkmen obsession...I can't tell you how much I used to listen to this tape, cos it's a secret..
It's weird that I can't tell if this is my one of my favorite or one of my least favorite DM album...Depends in the mood I'm in, considering it's so all over the place...Let's start with album opener, "Beige Sunshine"...It starts out with a choir of children singing nonsense like, "You are an ocelot what are you seeking?" over a cheap Casio beat, then suddenly the band kicks in and it becomes dark, psychedelic hard rock...And beige is a fitting description for it...It's just so overwhelmingly, awesomely beige...
I think my favorite thing about the album is Joe Jack Talcum's new vocal style that he really only uses for this record...Much more ragged and growlier. Was he sick? Had he lost his voice? Was he just trying to toughen up his image? Who knows. Whatever the reason, "Methodist Coloring Book" and "I Hate You, I Love You" are two of my all-time favorites Dead Milkmen tracks as a result...I also love Joe and Rodney's duet "In Praise of Sha Na Na," where they make a pretty convincing case for Sha Na Na's placed in rock n' roll history...
"You can move to Montana and listen to Santana
But you still won't be as cool as Sha Na Na..."
I don't know, man...Moving to Montana and listening to Santana sounds pretty cool, if you ask me...
On the other hand there is quite a bit of skippable stuff on here...Especially once you get near the end.."Anderson, Walkman, Buttholes and How!" has a great title and a guest appearance from Gibby Haynes, but to be honest, I usually end up tuning it out...For some reason it's kinda boring...The "Cousin Earl" monologue at the end kinda grosses me out most of the time (although I am strangely fascinated by the concept of the fungus girl)...."Part 3" has also always struck me as filler-ish too...I usually always forget about the song until I play the album, which is strange because I've probably heard the album a few hundred times (no exaggeration!).
Whatever you do though, don't mistake "Dollar Signs in Her Eyes" as filler! I used to think the song was dull...Like it was so distant and light I could hardly even hear it...But nowadays I can't get enough of it:
"Dreams are only clouds that form and dissipate,
The sky is a highway for metal birds and land is real estate..."
It was too subtle for me...Do you understand the implications of this?!?! A Dead Milkmen song was too mature and subtle for me!!!
I have to give them a lot of credit...They scored a hit with "Punk Rock Girl" and then had the nerve to turn in an album like this..."Metaphysical Graffiti" probably scared away potential fans with its dense and scatter-shot approach (despite favorites like "If You Love Somebody, Set Them on Fire" and "In Praise of Sha Na Na") but if you have a taste for the Dead Milkmen's twisted world there's new things to discover around every corner here...I guess it drew me in....
Here's "I Hate You, I Love You" by the Dead Milkmen...Enjoy...
Dead Milkmen: Soul Rotation
1992
Hollywood Records
Format I Own it on: Compact Disc
Track Listing: 1. At the Moment 2. The Secret of Life 3. Big Scary Place 4. Belafonte's Inferno 5. The Conspiracy Song 6. How It's Gonna Be 7. All Around the World 8. Silly Dreams 9. Wonderfully Coloured Plastic War Toys 10. God's Kid Brother 11. If I Had a Gun 12. Here Comes Mr. X 13. Shaft in Greenland
This album was pretty surprising at the time..First off, they signed to DISNEY!!
But to be fair, back the label wasn't the wasteland of tween pop it is now...
Hollywood Records had quite a few bands I enjoyed like Seaweed, The Suicide Machines, and Fishbone...
Additionally, Joe takes on the mantle of lead singer on this album! Rodney switches to keyboards with a lead vocal here and there...And to top it all off, it's almost a stretch to call "Soul Rotation" a punk record...It's more like, lush indie pop, which is right up my alley so this wasn't as big a stretch for me as it was for a lot of the group's fan-base...In fact, this is one of my favorite albums by the band...
Sure, it could use a bit more Rodney on the mic, but I think Joe fills the void admirably...He has a much gentler approach...Most of the bitter sarcasm is gone, replaced with UFO travelogues and surreal fantasies with a little real world harshness seeping around the edges (see the paranoid ska track "If I Had a Gun" and "Here Comes Mr. X," where Joe tells the story of a neighbor from hell who "invites your kids to an Aryan youth Camp").
I find a lot of the songs on here oddly moving for some reason...When Joe wistfully sings, "There are people who want to kill me, all around the world..." over lonely piano chords, I find myself getting almost choked up..I also find myself bowled over by the child-like cosmic awe of "The Secret of Life"...There really is some beautiful stuff here if you're open to finding beauty in lines like:
"You brought two cats for me to keep,
And told me not to feed them tuna or they'd throw up.
I fed them tuna and they threw up for hours and hours...
I was amazed at all the stuff that came from those little bodies of theirs,
It was puffy like a sponge,
The color of the sidewalk,
And it smelled like the dirty rags beneath the sink..."
-Silly Dreams
Also be sure not to miss "The Conspiracy Song" which is one of the few Rodney-sung tracks on here...It's the most squarely punk songs on the album and Rodney lists off a long, impressive string of conspiracy theories that would give David Icke pause...
"They own the state, they own the church,
They pick the winners on Star Search...
They put the holes in our socks
They put that snake in my mail box..."
Yea, just beginning to end I love this album...The closer "Shaft in Greenland" is a fine send-off, by the way...A duet between Joe and Rodney that sounds like a cross between second wave ska and a James Bond theme song...I'd say it's remarkable for how much Rodney sounds like he's actually happy about the notion of traveling the world and meeting all the people...Not something you hear too often from him...God, I love this era of Dead Milkmen...I honestly can't believe that this wasn't one of the biggest hits of 1992...I mean, what else was going on? Here, I'll look it out...
What?!?!
You've got to be kidding me?!?!?!
Awww, C'mon!!
Dammit, world! How could you let this happen?! It's not too too late, everybody! Run out to your local record store and pick up a copy of "Soul Rotation" immediately!
Oh, wait...It's out of print?
Nevermind.
Here's "The Meaning of Life" by the Dead Milkmen...Enjoy...
Dead Milkmen: If I Had a Gun EP
1992
Hollywood Records
Format I Own it on: Compact Disc
Track Listing: 1. If I Had a Gun 2. Bitchin’ Camaro (The Best Thanksgiving Ever) (Live) 3. Silly Dreams (Live) 4. The Conspiracy Song (Live) 5. Dolce
This is an EP showcasing the "Soul Rotation" highlight "If I Had a Gun." But the big draw here would be the three live tracks and one studio track not available elsewhere.
Two of the live tracks are songs from "Soul Rotation" ("Silly Dreams" and "The Consipiracy Song") that sound pretty good...A little distant perhaps but good...The real reason to get this though, is the Best Thanksgiving Ever version of "Bitchin’ Camaro"...It makes me wonder if Rodney always does a different monologue for the be-bop part of the song or if it's a tour by tour thing, or what...The spoken word section in this version in no way resembles the "Big Lizard" take; instead of "the shore" he tackles diverse subjects such as the Thanksgiving kids table, the Gulf War and Public Enemy....
You also get "Dulce" which is the sort of surfy instrumental you'd find on the first three albums...But yea, if you run across this Ep definitely check it out...It's a pretty good companion to "Soul Rotation." Hey! I just had a great idea!! Why don't someone bundle the two releases together and REISSUE THEM SO NORMAL PEOPLE CAN READILY BU THEM?!?!!
Is this about people not buying music anymore? Is that what this is about? C'mon! You're DISNEY!!! Reissue them as a public service! You guys can take a loss!
Here's "If I Had a Gun" by the Dead Milkmen...Dig it...
My life has been extremely hectic lately...You just never know what the Man Upstairs is going to throw at you next...Last night it was a watermelon...Today it was rotten tomatoes...Hopefully, I get a new upstairs neighbor soon...Anyway, I don't have a blog entry ready for today...So, instead I'm going to dig deep into the vaults for a Friday Night Record Party classic...Ladies and Gentlemen, my original 1988 post for Dead Milkmen's "Beelzebubba" back when it was a new release...Enjoy this blast from the past:
Dead Milkmen: Beelzebubba
1988
Enigma Records
Format I Own it on: Compact Disc
Track Listing: 1. Brat in the Frat 2. Rc's Mom 3. Stuart 4. I Walk the Thinnest Line 5. Sri Lanka Sex Hotel 6. Bad Party 7. Punk Rock Girl 8. Bleach Boys 9. My Many Smells 10. Smokin' Banana Peels 11. The Guitar Song 12. Born to Love Volcanos 13. Everybody's Got Nice Stuff But Me 14. I Against Osbourne 15. Howard Beware 16. Ringo Buys a Rifle 17. Life Is Shit
Is it just me or has NSFNET been running slow lately?
Sorry I haven't posted lately, Mrs. Kay forced us to write a two-page essay on the history of the United States!! TWO WHOLE PAGES?!?!?! ! Totally impossible! What's there to say?!?! Christopher Columbus drove his dumb boats here, had Thanksgiving with the Indians and then they threw ice tea into the ocean or something...
It's a big waste of tea if you ask me? Why didn't they just send it all to me? I would have drank it! Oh yea, then Neil Armstrong was the first guy to do the moonwalk, which means everything you know about Michael Jackson is wrong...So that's two whole sentences...Only about 400 more to go!
On the plus side I almost got the courage to ask out Sandy Harris today...I wrote her a note but was too afraid to give it to her...Wow, I just thought of something! What if I was walking through town and I noticed some smoke and it turned out her house was on fire and I went and rescued her! I bet she'd have to go out with me then!
I wonder where I can find some matches...Anyway, I went to Camelot Music today and picked up the latest Dead Milkmen CD...
...and I've got to say...It was totally worth the $18.99 I paid for it! I love this new compact laser disc technology...The sound is so thin and crystal clear...And it's liberating to throw all those dusty old outdated records into the trash...
So long Barry Manilow, ya big Broadway swell...
(tosses into garbage disposal)
CRSSHKKKRRRKKRRR!!!!!!
Farewell Beatles butcher cover!!!! Ya buncha old hippies!!!!
(tosses into wood chipper) GRAWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!
I only like new music...And my favorite of the new 80's bands is Philadelphia's own Dead Milkmen, and as evidenced by their smash hit "Punk Rock Girl," I believe 1988 is going to be their year!
Sure, Milli Vanilli may get all the Grammys, but us real music fans know that the Dead Milkmen are the ones putting out all the great pop music these days...
What's next? The Dead Milkmen playing Madison Square Garden with the Escape Club and Terence Trent D'arby opening for them? Will expensive champagne and supermodel girlfriends dull their once razor-sharp wit? Who knows...Only time will tell...The only certainty in life is Burrow Owlz!!
(I wonder who Rick and Scott are?)
The band really widens their palette here...Exotic instruments like violins, horn section and accordions pop up like boners at a blackboard. There are so many highlights here it's ridiculous... The neo-psychedlia of "Smokin' Banana Peels," the stirring six-string anthem, "The Guitar Song," but the big winner for me has to be "Life is Shit" which is magnificently bummed-out (and hilarious) gospel:
"And when my friend and I were done,
we went to rest upon the sun,
'cause life takes from us the things, we love
and robs us of the special ones,
and puts them where where we can't climb
and we only miss them all the time..."
Are the Dead Milkmen going maudlin on us? Nahhh, they're just smart enough to know that the only sane response when faced with life's crushing disappointments is a great big laugh in death's bony face...I can just picture myself when I'm 37 years old, washed-up, hanging out in a dive bar in Tempe, AZ, playing this endlessly on the jukebox on a Sunday afternoon...But that's still many years a way...Sigh...
And I don't have to tell you how great "Punk Rock Girl" is...Go ahead...Turn on MTV...Check out 120 minutes...
I bet you'll see Dave Kendell wearing every rock band's T-shirt at once and introducing the video right now...And boy is it the most simple, perfect pop-song ever...You hear the first line and it's like the song has been deeply ingrained in your marrow like some ancient nursery rhyme you never remember learning...And that botched guitar solo is a damn stroke of genius...What?!! No Mom, I'm not swearing! No! No! I don't want to eat any soap!
Especially not those fancy ones in the Avon basket sitting on the back of the toilet that look like little nut sacks, har har...NOOOO!!!!
*GLUB* GLUB*
Yuck! Why does soap taste hot?!?! I'm so steamed at my parents I'm going to dress all in black and listen to rotten-corpse metal...I bet that'll scare 'em...
Yes! "The Rottening" by Cryptic Scribble! I'm going to turn this up to 11 on my portable boom-box you bought me for Christmas!
Track
Listing: 1. The Pit 2. Take Me to the Specialist 3. I Am the Walrus
4. Watching Scotty Die 5. Going to Graceland 6. Big Time Operator 7.
Instant Club Hit (You’ll Dance to Anything) 8. The Badger Song 9.
Tacoland 10. City of Mud 11. Rocketship 12. Nitro Burning Funny Cars
13. Surfin’ Cow 14. (Theme From) Blood Orgy of the Atomic Fern 15.
Jellyfish Heaven
This is the only Dead
Milkmen album I've been able to find on vinyl...And it's got one of
those great plastic sleeves (with the Egyptian motif) that used to come
inside the old Enigma records...
I love these!
Especially the catalog on the back!
I wish I could still order from it
(especially at those prices!). The Enigma roster is kinda awesome...There's a bunch of bands that I can't quite picture occupying the same space...Stryper? Great White? The Pogues? Death Angel? Mojo Nixon?! And I love how they have a lot of great bands but they're just a liiiiiiitle bit past their prime..."Snakedrill" by Wire, Hair-metal era TSOL, "This is the Voice" by Agent Orange, "The Second Coming" by the Dickies....There's even a Montrose album in there! From 1987!!! Along with about 15 different movie soundtracks featuring TSOL...Woah! You can order the "Delta Force" original motion picture soundtrack!
Exclusively performed on the Synclavier Digital Music System!!! I bet that's a real treat to sit through!I miss Enigma Records...I wonder what kind of stuff they'd put out now if they still existed...
Alright, enough talking about the inner sleeve...It took a verrrrry
long time to come to this conclusion, but "Bucky Fellini" has eventually
become my favorite album by the band...I'm calling it the Dead
Milkmen-iest Dead Milkmen album...The surreal whimsy finally snaps fully
into place and just about every song is so consistent that it initially
gives the impression that there's no stand-outs...But in reality, it's nothing but...
I'm going to be straight with you...It's Friday Night and I'm a few beers in, so I'm not going to screw around with coherent thoughts...I'm just going to list a few random things I love about "Bucky Fellini"...
1. I love that the text on the cover is written in Play-Dough! I love Play Dough! It smells so overwhelmingly good that I can't help but take a bite of it...Turns out it's not as good as it smells... Why is it so damn salty? Is it because my salty-ass hands are always touching it?
2. I love the song title "Watching Scotty Die." It's such a simple idea to change the word "grow" to "die," but it pays off so well...The song is great too...A nice country melody that manages to be both hilarious and conveys an environmental message regarding nuclear waste or something...
3. I love that "I Am the Walrus" isn't a cover song...
4. I love the southern feel of the album that may or may not be incidental...You get "Tacoland" which has a very distinct southern twang, inspired by the legendary music venue in San Antonio, TX... They also do a brilliant cover of Texas musician Daniel Johnston's "Rocketship" (Daniel Johnston covers are fool-proof, by the way...I've never heard a bad Daniel Johnston cover) ...There's also the matter of "Big Time Operator" which is swampy, up-tempo southern blues, where Rodney shouts:
"Look out Stevie Ray Vaughan
Look out Charlie Sexton
Look out you cheesy Texas motherfuckers!"
Additionally, I was looking at the album credits (a huge hobby of mine) and noticed it was recorded in Austin, Texas..,Which ties into Rodney's shout out to the virtues of Austin on "Six Days" on the previous album (I can attest to the greatness of Austin, by the way...TA-80 played there a few years back while the Austin City Limits Festival was going on and that place was off the chain!!! I still can't quite believe the insane shit I saw there...Why don't I live there?!?! What am I doing in Tempe, Az?!?!). So, I'm calling "Bucky Fellini" one of the finest Texas-punk albums ever made...
5. There's a line in the utopian fantasy "City of Mud" that's absolutely transcendent to me...In the song Rodney builds a perfect city populated by people that are exactly like him ( a theme he would revisit a few years later on "Now Everybody's Me") and after outlining various scenarios where Bruce Springsteen is brutalized in the streets and nobody's allowed in K-Mart because nobody wears shirts or shoes, we're treated to the incredibly evocative lyric:
"And we never paved the roads,
We just bought VCR's..."
These are the magic crossroads where revolution and complacency intersect....
6.
"Goin' to Graceland
It's gonna be great!
I'm so happy I just can't wait!
Gonna see the bucket that Elvis Presley kicked..."
(chuckle)
7. If I had to pick one favorite Dead Milkmen song, "Nitro Burning Funny Cars" just might be the winner...Just a flat-out rocker where Rodney bemoans a world full of people who sit too long when the light turns green...It was one of those songs I'd heard a million times and didn't think much of it, but on night I was sitting in my bedroom with a Rolling Rock (real Rolling Rock...with the gritty paint job that always seemed like they were covered in birdshit) and the song suddenly illuminated something in my soul that I didn't know was there..I finally understood that a lot of people really do look like Gavin MacLeod!
So there...A bunch of random things I like about "Bucky Fellini" (in retrospect I should have mentioned the "Ballroom Blitz" intro on "The Pit"), so let's get to crackin' some beers...
..and listen to "Nitro Burning Funny Cars" by the Dead Milkmen...Happy Friday!!...
