Dead Milkmen



""Out in the woods

Up to no good

I wanna make friends with the badger""

- The Badger Song

Punk grew in popularity during the 1970s and by the mid-eighties it was a pretty mainstream genre, with prominent bands like The Clash gaining critical acclaim and billboard hits. "Heavier" punk music became popular as well and punk bands became serious.

The Dead Milkmen were not.

Poking fun at religion, politics, society, and punk music itself, the Philly-based Dead Milkmen are certainly one of the greatest satiric rock bands. Invoking, subverting, and referencing standard musical cliches, the Dead Milkmen had a pretty steady underground following from their start in 1983 and received more mainstream attention from Punk Rock Girl. The band broke up in 1995, having released eight studio albums, one live record, and a bunch of other side releases.

In 2008 they reunited with a new bassist, Dan Stevens, as founding member Dave Schulthise passed away in 2004. Their album Yellow was released in 2011.

Tropes related to, invoked by, or sung about by the Dead Milkmen:
""God hates war
 * All Just a Dream: Silly Dreams
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: From Methodist Coloring Book

And God hates crime

But he really hates people

Who color outside the lines""

""Oily rags are special things/You know to me they're diamond rings/Maybe we can have some fun/Maybe we can burn someone""
 * Also in Nutrition where the speaker admits that he's a deadbeat and has no ambition, but hey, at least he cares about his nutrition.
 * Ax Crazy: The speaker in Violent School, If You Love Somebody Set Them On Fire, and quite a few more
 * Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Satirized by the Dead Milkmen themselves and sung about
 * Conspiracy Theorist: The speaker in Stuart, who has theories about what the queers are doing to the soil!
 * Deep South: "Hello my name is Billy Bob and I don't give a damn" in Tiny Town
 * Emo Teens: Mocked in Instant Club Hit (You'll Dance To Anything) You wear black clothes say you're poetic/The sad truth is you're just pathetic
 * Everything's Even Worse with Sharks: The beach is thoroughly derided in Beach Song for its stupid sand, stupid fish, and stupid people but the worst part is that the speaker gave his ice cream to a shark and now has nothing to eat.
 * Fan Hater: The speaker in Instant Club Hit (You'll Dance to Anything) hates the bands and hates the people who dance to them. Of course, the speaker is just jealous that a bunch of arty European bands are more popular than his decent, American music.
 * Funny Aneurysm Moment: Their many songs about suicide, drugs, and death became very less funny when bassist Dave Schulthise committed suicide by overdosing
 * Genie in a Bottle: I Dream of Jesus except it's not a genie, it's Jesus Christ, and he's in a Manishevitz bottle that the speaker's mother finds behind a 7/11
 * Hipster: The subjects mocked in Instant Club Hit (You'll Dance To Anything)
 * Lyrical Dissonance: Dark humor and lyrical dissonance are pretty standard tools
 * Motor Mouth: In Moron
 * Parody Names: Drummer "Dean Clean" and lead guitarist "Joe Jack Talcum" are gentle parodies of punk names like Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, etc.
 * Philadelphia: Expect strong Philly accents and references to Philly landmarks
 * Punk Rock
 * Pyromaniac: If You Love Somebody, Set Them On Fire

"Gonna send 'em all to that big folk festival in the sky"
 * Surf Rock: Parodied in Beach Song, where they complain about wasting the summer at the beach
 * Also parodied in Beach Party Vietnam where the speaker sings about cooking hot dogs with napalm and surfing with the Viet Cong (possibly a reference to the line "Charlie Don't Surf" from Apocalypse Now and The Clash song that was written from the line)
 * The Cuckoolander Was Right: In I Dream of Jesus the speaker's mother claims to have found Jesus trapped inside of an old Manischevitz bottle. Considering the mother's past history of getting into fights and her former church which believed dancing was "a one-way ticket to hell" the fact that Jesus is actually in the bottle is a pretty surprising.
 * The Quincy Punk: Satirized quite a few times, most notably in Punk Rock Girl
 * The Stoner: Smokin' Banana Peels
 * Three Chords and the Truth: Subverted. Quite a lot of songs use just a few chords but the "truth" delivered is pretty subjective.
 * True Art Is Angsty: Satirized heavily.
 * Went to the Great X In the Sky: The Thing That Only Eats Hippies


 * Wisdom from the Gutter: As The Dead Milkmen were often deliberately crude and ridiculous, it's pretty shocking when a song like The Secret of Life, which is about the speaker's interstellar romp with a space alien, is genuinely sweet and provides the message that there is no secret to life, since secrets only serve to turn people against each other.
 * If I Had A Gun is from the same album (Soul Rotation) and while one might expect it to be along the same lines as Violent School where the speaker rambles about how awesome violence is, it's actually a pretty interesting contemplation about how the speaker would be different if he owned a gun and had the power to destroy.
 * Word Salad Lyrics: Invoked, subverted, satirized over and over again.
 * Yandere: Again, If You Love Somebody, Set Them On Fire