Starting off with the reckless insults and putdowns on Big Lizard in My Back Yard (which contains the career-making “Bitchin Camaro,” a catchy cocktail-jazz/hardcore hybrid that tastelessly makes light of AIDS while poking fun at teenagers, the Doors and sports car owners), the group proceeded through the mildly satirical fantasies of Eat Your Paisley!, a record which makes no great effort to be funny or offensive, yet manages to convey a sense of satire by painting bizarre B-movie tales like “Moron,” “Beach Party Vietnam” and “The Thing That Only Eats Hippies.” The group’s wacky observations of stereotypes and artifacts are vague but astute the music is expendable but never less than presentable. Fortunately, their intelligence grew with age rather than sink deeper into the cesspool of sophomoric silliness, the quartet eventually developed a mature, thoughtful approach to their mission.
A homegrown insult machine with a snotty attitude and a grasp of modern society’s cultural monstrosities, the band brought their own whoopie cushion to the party, using a lightweight foundation of plain, unfancy punkrock music, the Milkmen didn’t focus on individual victims so much as unleash their bratty irreverence in scattershot volleys. There are few things staler than an old joke, and Philadelphia’s Dead Milkmen were barely funny when they began their decade-long adventure into the realm of willful punk-rock stupidity.
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