The Dead Milkmen Archives

“Day Hikers Meet The Night”

This one was sent to me by our old friend Seven. Its an original cassette copy of “A Date with the Dead Milkmen” that belongs to Kurt Schulthise. Kurt asked Seven to transfer it to CD soon after Dave passed, which he did, (he’s waiting to see him to return it, didn’t want to trust it to the mail).

There’s a lyric sheet with the tape. It’s a scan of a faded photocopy and I tweaked the contrast a bit so as to be a bit more readable here. Joe signed it (as Jack Talcum) and that stands out very clearly. Also, it is cut off on the edges of the original — I didn’t crop it that way.

This was recorded in Manayunk on Baker Street where Joe and Dave (plus others) shared an apartment, and released to friends in 1983 – before I (Dean) joined the band. I believe that Rodney is playing drums on these recordings. Maybe Joe or Rodney can provide some details about this tape in the comments.

Thanks to Kurt and thanks Seven!

Here’s a mp3 of the show mentioned in the “Bucky Fellini” ad I posted earlier.
The hostess was Cyndy Drue. She worked with The Milkmen from time to time. Cyndy can be heard on the “It Ain’t Over ‘Til The Dead Milkmen Sing Mix” of “Smokin’ Banana Peels” and seen as the skinny nurse in the video for “Big Time Operator”.
Sorry about the crappy audio quality. I think I recorded this on a boom-box.

Street Beat

Later,
Bubonic

Here are a few shots taken backstage in Cincinnati at the “Bogarts” club one night. I think that the photo credits go to Dan Mapp – our tour manager. This first one shows Dave warming up, Joe working on the set list, Rodney is redecorating, and I’m sipping tea.

Joe says you can’t see the set list until show time!

Rodney providing the world with much needed Chieftains graffitti.

Joe and I “shooting-up” in the mens room…(sorry!)

Here’s a couple of shots from the video shoot for “The Thing That Only Eats Hippies”. This was our first video and in fact the only one shot on video tape. The first photo shows Rodney in between two hippies played by David Wildman on the left and Chris Coccia on the right. David was a local show promoter and music fan. He used to book shows at the Kennel Club and later became partners with our manager David Reckner and formed Raw Productions. They managed us and few other bands as well as promoted shows in the area. Chris was a friend and our first band photographer. He’s been a a professional comedian for many years and recently MC’d the benefit reunion shows we did to honor Dave Blood in November 2004.

The next shot shows Rodney and Joe performing as the rappers TDM. This was shot in an upstairs parking garage which would later become the home of Third Story Recording. We recorded Eat Your Paisley here.

The last shot shows Dave Blood and I dressed as the “punk rockers”.

Here are scans of the original artwork for the lyric sheet included in the Beelzebubba record album. You can click on the image here for an even larger (almost full size) version that will open in a new browser window. Joe wrote out the song lyrics and doodled in the margins. Update: Joe says Rodney also contributed to the illustrations – thanks guys!

Nice 4.25″ x 7″ ad from the newspaper.
Lots of great info packed into this one:
This was the band’s first album on CD as a new release.
The band was on WMMR’s local music show, Street Beat, hosted by Cyndy Drue (not Cindy Drew). I believe this was the program where Rodney coined the term “Butt Music” to describe the Milkmen’s musical genre.
I made it to all the shows listed except for the one in Sinking Spring.

Later,
Bubonic

This is a pass from the “Amuck In America” tour we did with Mojo Nixon and the Cavedogs. We were all on Enigma Records at the time and Fuji Film sponsored a tour that we went on together (they gave us all film camera’s). Two busses – a bad boy bus and the good boy bus (my key – from the “good boy” bus – is still on there!). A VERY fun tour with plenty of stories…

Taken by Nina Sabatino. A lovely photo of Joe from “back-in-the-day”.

Various Milkmen related buttons. My favorite is the “Smell Me” pin!