[transmission from... Tyler Sonnichsen]

"Sarcastic Bourgeousie Weekly," better known as The National Review, has recently published a list of the '50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs.' Now, I understand that to them, this is comparable to SPIN dessicating themselves right into an LCD tome for shrieking 14-year-olds. The NR needs to attract fairweather readers who just may risk erring on the side of social justice and human rights before its too late. But therein lies their problem; almost every artist on their list is fairly left-leaning (Kid Rock, being the exception, is arguably an 'artist'). So, they decided to force themselves, in what may be a list even more awkward than anything that VH1 produced after "100 Most Awesomely Bad Songs," their minion Jon J. Miller has taken a bunch of suggestions of songs that parlay "conservative values." If you want to reacquaint yourself with the very essence of asinine, retarded logic, read their official countdown here.

Basically, despite the artists having not even anything resembling the said intentions when writing the songs ("Gloria" is U2 taking a cue from Patti Smith, who's about as far from right-wing as anyone alive), Miller claims each of these songs makes a strong case for the conservative dogma. Now that you're all clear on why I'm writing this, I've decided to take the liberty (America!) to adopt that same line of logic and contribute a few songs that are sorely missing from NR's plea for readers under the age of 86.

Dead Milkmen - "Don't Abort that Baby"

Here I am with the Milkmen again (check out the last entry if you haven't already). But surprise, apparently, under closer inspection (disregarding Rodney Anonymous' occasional imploring the crowd to swear to not die in Exxon's war), they were Republicans after all! Seriously, don't abort that baby! That kid's got a bright future! Think of all the fun you'll have traumatizing him! Moving on...

Doug Powell - "No Good Way"

For the uninitiated, Doug's a DC comic and friend who's been tearing up the charts* with this catchy ditty about the art of getting a girl to go down on you. So, there you go! Heterosexual, non-intercourse lovemaking! What's more conservative than that? The key line here is "this dick, ain't gonna suck itself!" It takes hard, American ingenuity and work for johnson to get some attention.
* = the hearts of comedy fans everywhere

Ying Yang Twins - "Wait"

Aside from pure poetry like "Walk around da club wit yo thumb in yo mouth, put my dick in, take yo thumb out" and rhyming 'soft' with 'soft,' their message is clearly one of abstinence. WAIT till ya see my dick! 'ey bitch, wait till you see my dick' And 'I'm a beat dat pussy up'? Clearly opening up a can of whupass against any dude who's too much of a puss' to go and fight for God's America! Pansy.

Dwarves - "Back Seat of My Car"

Obviously, we're talking about a strong, American-made car here! Our protagonist isn't going to be living, fornicating, and doing drugs in the back seat of a sissy, foreign-made piece of crap! That would just not be right.

Dead Kennedys- "Kill the Poor"

Yes! Yesssss! Someone out there finally gets it! They...wait a minute. Jello Biafra's being sarcastic? Nevermind, then.

Andrew W.K. - "I Love NYC"

Just listen to this man's love letter to the USA's flagship metropolis. 'I LOVE NEW YORK CITY!! OH, YEAH!!! NEW YORK CITY!!!' Surely he means to evoke vengeance against those freedom-haters responsible for 9/11. Haters of the freedom to PARTY TIL YOU PUKE!!!

Clearly, Jon J. Miller doesn't have his priorities straight. Instead of coming across as a sycophantic demagogue writing for a right-wing rag, he just sounds like a pandering idiot. There's a fine, fine line. Not to play sides or anything, but for all of its pretentiousness, The Nation won't be embarassing itself like this anytime soon. At least not until the "Noam Chomsky Spring Break Edition."

[transmission from... Tyler Sonnichsen]

Being as how this site’s journal is primarily based around two things- music and comedy- I figured I’d try to make a few entries that bridged the two highly praised, often misunderstood performance arts. The last one about the adversity that women face in both realms, despite reaching for it, didn’t work out so well for me. I mean, I got to name check some of my favorite female singers and songwriters, but other than that it didn’t really connect the two fields. So now, since The Dead Milkmen (checkout the DIY-ness) have reentered my CD rotation in a big way recently, I realized how they are one of the few groups in history that blended the two so effortlessly and brilliantly, and I figured I should break down my reverence for all of you fine readers.

I was driving getting off route 95 in Clinton, CT toward the end of the summer of 2001 the first time I ever heard “Punk Rock Girl.” I was listening to the Hartford-based WMRQ, which had faded from the hipster consciousness a bit since its heyday during the Smashing Pumpkins era of my middle school years. By 2001, Radio 104 wasn’t nearly as edge anymore, save for the occasional lunchtime hour when the DJ was allowed to go out on a limb and play something interesting or different so long as it didn’t throw off the status quo too far. I’ll never forget discovering Suicidal Tendencies one evening during my junior year of high school when a DJ eagerly played their 1992 rerecording of “Institutionalized” under those same circumstances. Anything that unique was a breath of fresh air for those of us who’d suffered through “rock blocks” full of Creed, Three Doors Down, Goo Goo Dolls, etc.-style torture at the hands of eighteenth-rate shock jocks with horrible taste in both content and music. But, I kept tuning in for some reason, most likely because I was holding onto that lingering sentiment of when the station was cool, or because I didn’t have a CD player in my pimpin’ 1992 Camry.

I drove around the tight corner toward Route 1 as “Punk Rock Girl” drew to its end, and the DJ came back on the air, ready to explain what the modern-rock kids had just heard. The DJ started to ramble about The Dead Milkmen. “They were a cool band, but I kind of want to punch them and NOFX in the face because they’re responsible for that whole trend of punk bands with whiny, high-pitched voices. Eh, none of you probably even know who the hell NOFX are, anyway.”

This grabbed me. I think I may have owned “Punk in Drublic” at the time, but it didn’t matter. I had heard of NOFX. Did this make me cool? (Looking back now, I now realize the answer was “no” but regardless…). So, I kept this Milkmen band with the gall to feature an accordion and sloppy tongue-in-cheek lyrics in my mind.



When I went away to college a few weeks after that incident, my friend Matt, who was from Philly and righteously familiar with the Milkmen, explained them to me. It turned out that they (composed of singer/keyboardist Rodney Anonymous, guitarist/singer Joe Jack Talcum, bassist Dave Blood, and drummer Dean Clean) were the band that, above all else, really made the accordion and absurd humor strangely appropriate within the context of punk songs.

Recently, I had the pleasure of getting a few words about the band and their sense of humor from none other than “Jack Talcum” Genaro himself (who is the one singing in the video for “Punk Rock Girl” above, and appropriately enough, handles the band's myspace page). Somewhat expectedly, the four of them were normal middle-class kids from the Philadelphia area who drew from a ton of the same influences as most young people did at the time they were growing up, but synthesized them all onto an entirely new level.

“I've always liked to laugh - who doesn't?” said Talcum, “For me, the first inkling that I had that songs could be funny came from listening to the Dr. Demento radio show when I was a kid. Also, I loved Monty Python's Flying Circus…They used music a lot, and their songs were also played on the Dr. Demento show, and I would later buy some of their albums.

”I had decided that I wanted to be in a band, but I did not want to write ‘serious’ songs, per se. I also loved punk music. The Ramones were one of my favorites. I detected some humor in what they did, especially after seeing Rock N Roll High School. At least I thought I did. They were like an ideal to strive for - their attitude attracted me.

“I took a look around the punk bands of Philadelphia and thought that there was a need for a funny punk band. Or at least, I thought that there wasn't one yet, so why not bring one on? I had already written quite a bunch of songs with my friend Rodney [Linderman, later Anonymous] who was probably the funniest guy in my high school…his humor made you think. He had a good mind for satire.”

By 1983, Genaro had adopted the nickname Jack Talcum and they gathered their rhythm section of Blood and Clean and the Dead Milkmen were born. Through the rest of the decade, they grew to prominence, producing a string of silly rock and roll albums that (unlike most anything else that shares that description) are very worthy of repeated listening. The Milkmen, considering their label as a punk band, were never even that loud or hard; they just had an irrefutably punk attitude in their songs, whether iconoclastic (“Instant Club Hit (You’ll Dance to Anything)”), political satire (“Beach Party Vietnam”), caricatures of ‘Mericans (“Stuart”), or just plain silly (“Takin’ Retards to the Zoo,” “If You Love Someone, Set Them on Fire”).

“I do not know who is, specifically, if anyone, the redneck in ‘Stuart,’” Talcum debunked the myth for me. “I think that is a character Rodney made up based on a general stereotype and a conglomeration of people he may have come across in his travels and readings, and not one person in particular. There is a person named "Stuart" who was in our lives at the time, but he was definitely not that person. Our Stuart was very bright, and was a whistleblower for a chemical company and had to get out of town for a while. We took him on tour with us as our roadie for a few months.”

As someone who’s been digging deep into music and comedy for a long time, I cannot think of a single band which bridges the conceptual gap between what constitutes good music and what constitutes funny better than the Dead Milkmen did. I know there are plenty of “funny” musical artists out there. Eric Idle? Stephen Lynch? Doug Powell? All are comedians first and foremost, despite an overarching musical element. Tenacious D? They’re essentially a comedy duo with guitars. Ween? Goofy enough to make you laugh, but the music carries all the weight. (“Goofy” is the key apples/oranges word). None of the artists I’ve listed include more than two members in their writing process. Occasionally, bands come close to a successful synthesis of the two, such as many of the Milkmen’s peers (Mojo Nixon, King Missile), They Might Be Giants, Moxy Fruvous, Magnetic Fields (though those last two are usually aim for clever over funny. Most bands that are any bigger and try to be funny just wind up being puerile and stupid. Granted, the Dead Milkmen had a share of straight-up gross-out songs, but stretching out a successful sense of humor across ten studio albums and self-released cassettes over the course of a decade is a Herculean task. Reaching a group consensus, or at least getting adequate contribution from every member of a group three people or larger, is always a formidable challenge in the context of generating anything thought and laughter-provoking.

”We worked as a democracy, pretty much. If anyone spoke up against a song, it was either rewritten or scratched,” Talcum further explained, “If anyone felt a song was not interesting enough, or would waste the listeners’ time, and our time too for that matter, we would not do it. My recollection is that we scratched more songs in the early stages of the band, when we were still getting a general idea of what constituted a Dead Milkmen song, than in the later days.”

The band are still in close contact with one another, and reunited briefly for commentary on the Philadelphia in Love DVD and rumors circulated regarding a possible reunion tour, but tragically, Dave Blood took his own life in 2004 (read an excellent story-tribute here). Those later days that Talcum alluded may have brought a few unsuccessful albums and an ultimate dissolution, but to someone like me who was born around the time they first started making music, The Dead Milkmen left behind a legacy that continues to make legions of music and comedy fans both laugh and cry…but mostly laugh. Jim Walewander certainly agreed! I included that last gratuitous reference for a reason: read this. I'm serious.

Thanks again to Joe Jack and the Milkmen for years of funny and great music, even if I was too young to recall most of them.