The Dead Milkmen

Philadelphia punk satirists the Dead Milkmen skewer popular culture, indie trend followers, and the intellectually challenged, while frequently indulging their taste for tastelessness. Though their sense of humor has always provoked mixed reactions from critics, who have alternately praised and dismissed the band as geeky, juvenile wisecrackers, the Milkmen earned a devoted cult following, a few novelty hits on college radio, and even an MTV hit with "Punk Rock Girl" (from 1988's Beelzebubba). After incorporating more genuine, serious material on albums like 1992's Soul Rotation, the Milkmen disbanded in 1995, while their influence could be heard on alternative radio throughout the decade. They reunited following the death of their former bass player, and provided sardonic commentary on 21st century life with subsequent full-lengths like The King in Yellow (2011) and Quaker City Quiet Pills (2023).

The Dead Milkmen formed at Philadelphia's Temple University in 1983. Guitarist and occasional vocalist Joe Jack Talcum (born Joe Genaro) and lead singer Rodney Anonymous (aka Rodney Amadeus Anonymous, aka Rodney Anonymous Melloncamp, born Rodney Linderman) grew up together in the small Pennsylvania town of Wagontown. During high school, Genaro started writing a newsletter about a fictional band called the Dead Milkmen, and the exploits of their lead singer, Jack Talcum. When Genaro graduated and enrolled at Temple, he and Linderman kept up a songwriting partnership through the mail. Through his acquaintances at Temple, Genaro met drummer Dean Clean (born Dean Sabatino), who played in a local punk band called Narthex, and bassist Dave Blood (David Schulthise), with whom he struck up a songwriting partnership. All three started playing together in 1983, and with Rodney Anonymous joining them that summer, they performed their first gig as the Dead Milkmen.

Over the next year or two, the Milkmen recorded several live, self-released cassettes, and achieved considerable local notoriety with a live radio performance in 1984. They earned some attention in the punk magazine Maximumrocknroll, and the resulting buzz helped them land a deal with Restless Records subsidiary Fever. In 1985, they issued their debut album, Big Lizard in My Backyard, which consisted mostly of material from their cassette releases. The track "Bitchin' Camaro" -- which featured a rambling spoken intro full of snotty putdowns and nonsensical banter -- became a hit on college radio, cementing their cult following. The follow-up Eat Your Paisley! appeared in 1986, and had some radio success with "The Thing That Only Eats Hippies." Released in 1987, Bucky Fellini was spawned the underground smash "Instant Club Hit (You'll Dance to Anything)," a spot-on satire of Britain's gloomy alternative music and the pretension of its attendant subculture in America. The song (and several remixes) served as the basis for an EP, and it also pushed Bucky Fellini onto the national album charts for the first time in the band's career.

Poised for something vaguely resembling a breakthrough, the Milkmen expanded their cult following even further with 1988's Beelzebubba. That was largely due to the single "Punk Rock Girl," a college-radio smash whose video was also aired rather extensively on MTV. Beelzebubba just missed climbing into the Top 100 and wound up as the group's biggest seller, also featuring fan favorites "Stuart" and "Life Is Shit." A second single, "Smokin' Banana Peels," was also released, and anchored another EP that featured five additional new songs, including the gross-out-fest "The Puking Song." The band's proper follow-up, Metaphysical Graffiti, appeared in 1990 and featured guest vocals from the Butthole Surfers' Gibby Haynes on "Anderson, Walkman, Buttholes and How."

After Metaphysical Graffiti, the Dead Milkmen signed to the Disney-run Hollywood Records, and elected to play things mostly straight -- with no pressure from the company to do so -- on their 1992 label debut, Soul Rotation. Perhaps signaling what they hoped was a new era for the band, Anonymous adopted the new name H.P. Hovercraft, while Talcum switched his to Butterfly Fairweather and took on a larger share of the lead vocal duties. A second album for Hollywood, 1993's Not Richard, But Dick, was the band's final release for the label.

The Milkmen celebrated their tenth anniversary in 1993 by self-releasing Now We Are 10, a CD compilation of some of their early cassette-only recordings. They returned to Restless Records for 1994's Chaos Rules: Live at the Trocadero, a run through some of their best-known songs, and offered the new studio set Stoney's Extra Stout (Pig) in 1995. It was virtually ignored, and the Milkmen elected to disband. All the members got day jobs, and most continued in music on a local basis in Philadelphia. Rodney Anonymous reverted to his given name and started a gothic-tinged Celtic rock band called Burn Witch Burn, which issued a self-titled CD in 2000. Joe Jack Talcum and Dean Clean reunited, also under their real names (Genaro and Sabatino), in Butterfly Joe, who also released a self-titled debut nationally in 2000. The two also gigged with several other Philly bands during the '90s: Genaro with the Town Managers, Touch Me Zoo, and the Low Budgets, and Sabatino with the Big Mess Orchestra. Dave Blood, meanwhile, gave up the bass due to pain in his hands, and went to graduate school to further his interest in the former Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, Restless issued the career retrospective Death Rides a Pale Cow (titled after one of their early cassettes) in 1997, and 2003 brought Now We Are 20, an expanded reissue of Now We Are 10 given wider release by Restless. Philadelphia in Love, a DVD collecting the band's music videos, was also issued.

On March 10, 2004, Blood died by suicide after struggling with depression as well as physical pain. Later in the year, the surviving Milkmen played two tribute shows at the Trocadero, with the Low Budgets' Dan Stevens filling in on bass. Four years later, the same lineup played two more shows in Philly, followed by a gig at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin. The band continued touring, and began working on a new album in 2010. The self-released full-length The King in Yellow appeared in 2011, initially as a digital-only release before its CD issue later in the year. In 2012, the Milkmen started releasing a series of limited-edition 7" singles on their own Quid Ergo label, starting with "Dark Clouds Gather Over Middlemarch" and "Big Words Make the Baby Jesus Cry," followed in 2013 by "The Great Boston Molasses Flood" and "Welcome to Undertown." All of the A-sides and most of the B-sides appeared on the 2014 full-length Pretty Music for Pretty People. The Milkmen contributed "If the Kids Could Git Together" to a split 7" with Flag of Democracy, released by SRA Records in 2015.

In 2017, the Milkmen's Welcome to the End of the World EP was released by the Philadelphia-based label The Giving Groove. The label released the band's cover of Heaven 17's "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" in 2020. The band hosted a weekly program titled Big Questions with the Dead Milkmen on their YouTube channel, and the digital album "Depends on the Horse..." collected songs written for the program, often veering into more experimental, synth-heavy directions than their usual work. The band mocked Trump supporters and alt-right conspiracy theorists on their 11th studio album, 2023's Quaker City Quiet Pills. ~ Steve Huey & Paul Simpson, Rovi