Dead Milkmen bassist commits suicide

cnn.com ^ | 3/11/04 | cnn

[Britton J Wingfield]

NEW YORK (Billboard) -- Dave Blood, bassist for defunct Philadelphia rock act the Dead Milkmen, committed suicide Wednesday, according to a post by his sister on the band's official message board (http://deadmilkmen.com).

In a subsequent post, Milkmen drummer Dean Clean confirmed the news.

[Britton J Wingfield]

Maybe he can back up Joe Strummer now...

[Britton J Wingfield]

Well, I certainly screwed up the title. Can you fix that for me? Thank you very much.

[nuconvert]

Dead Milkman??

Never heard of them.

[Petronski]

I always liked 'Punk Rock Girl,' though the video looked like had been made in an hour for about 20 bucks.

I also wonder how old the dude was.

[weegee]

Biggest fame was among the college crowd in the 1980s.

[BCrago66]

So now we have a Dead Dead Milkman.

[zarf]

He's dead Jim.

[NYC GOP Chick]

What about Joey & Dee Dee Ramone?!

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Ping.

[philetus]

Me neither. Must have been really good music.

[dead]

"Big Lizard in my Backyard" is a fun album.

I bought in on a lark in college, mainly because my college nickname was "Dead" and my nickname in high school was "Milkman" so I was sort of obligated.

I haven't broken it out of the collection in at least ten years, but "Taking Retards to the Zoo" was one of my favorites.

I actually worked in a group home and took re... ummm... developmentally disabled adults all over the place, including the zoo.

Sorry the dude killed himself.

[lowbridge]

[anncoulteriscool]

In the 80's in subscribed to Philadelphia magazine so I remember them.

[Incorrigible]

Total bummer!

[3catsanadog]

Never heard of him or Dead Milkmen.

[Incorrigible]

Stern fan and Dead Milkmen fan...

Cosmic dude, cosmic....

[dead]

LOL! We are quite often in the same minority around here.

[nuconvert]

Good Grief!

Is that the band? Looks like a few Monty Python members snuck in there.

[HAL9000]

You'll Dance to Anything...

[TheSpottedOwl]

Rest in peace...

[GeronL]

Can the dead commit suicide?

[TheSpottedOwl]

You've never heard of the "Dead Milkmen"?

Don't worry about it, you probably wouldn't like them....

[APFel]

Well, I'd like to thank you for the post and the info. "Big Lizard in my Backyard" was one of my favorite albums when I was a teenager.

Very left album, by the way. There is a song called "Right Wing Pigeon" that I'd like to quote...

He's just a right wing pigeon from outer space
sent here to destroy the human race
He don't give a damn about you or me
He just sits on his ass and watches T.V.

Thank the Lord I grew out of that crap. But nostalgia is nostalgia...

APf

[Happygal]

You think YOU are in a minority around here?

I could be dead for months around here and no one would notice until they got the smell! ;-)

[dfwgator]

I'll always remember the Dead Milkmen as being the favorite band of the former eccentric Detroit Tiger baseball player Jim Walewander.

[nuconvert]

Nope. little too old, I guess.

So what kind of music did they do?

[Xenalyte]

Big-time drag, y'all.

[dead]

Lighthearted punk, I'd call it.

Not Mozart, but Mozart's pretty damn boring when you're 19 and drunk.

[mylife]

Maybe he can back up Joe Strummer now...

Remember the milkmens tune "aircrash museum"? About a farmer who has buddy hollies plane go down on his farm?

"were gonna stuff em! puttem on displaaay ..patsy cline! buddy Hollaaay!"

"buddy hollys in the kitchen...the big boppers by the stairs....richie valens in the back room but nobody cares.."

[Redcoat LI]

They had a great song "The Thing That Only Eats Hippies"

[nuconvert]

"Lighthearted punk"

Hmm.......

[Incorrigible]

The original Beelzebubba

[nuconvert]

LoL.

Kind of a novelty act........

[mylife]

"The Thing That Only Eats Hippies"

"It ate Stills and Nash, before they could shout, then it chewed on david crosby....but it spit him out!!"

[wardaddy]

Creative types are mighty sensitive ....and often somewhat neurotic. Sad.

[Incorrigible]

HappyGal!!!!!!!!!!

I'm heading back to the old sod yet again in May for a communion/confirmation.

My nephew is in the lonely position of defending President Bush in his class so I need pump him up!

Cheer up HappyGal, I think of you often. Ping me on one of your articles already!

[Redcoat LI]

Yeah,thats the stuff!

Eat your paisley.

[Happygal]

May, you say?

Any chance of us meeting up this time? (You can bring the missus! *LOL*) ;-)

[Incorrigible]

Hey Jack, what's happenin'?
- I don't know.
- Well uh, rumor around town says you might be thinkin' 'bout goin' down to
the shore.
- Uh, yeah, I think I'm gonna go down to the shore.
...

- Uh, what's the Sand Bar?
- Ah, it's a place that lets sixteen year-old kids drink.
- Ah, cool.

 

Thoughts of Seaside Heights
Driving a Bitchin' Camaro..
Loud music blasting on Ocean Blvd

Whoa!  There's a rush going through my head.

So unfortunate how talented yet tortured artists have to end it this way...

 

[Incorrigible]

See above!

[Our man in washington]

So they had lyrics of:

"He's just a right wing pigeon from outer space
sent here to destroy the human race
He don't give a damn about you or me
He just sits on his ass and watches T.V."

Okay, now I'm going to say something really politically incorrect. With all due respect to the recently deceased, Ever notice it's the leftists that kill themselves far more often? I mean, there's this guy, Spalding Gray, Abbie Hoffman, Mitch Snyder, Washington DC Council president John Wilson, and probably Vince Foster.

Among noted conservatives who have killed themselves, only two names come to mind: columnist Linda Bowles and former North Carolina senator John East.

Frankly, leftism is just not a philosophy that's good for mental health. Leftism combines utopianism and lack of personal responsibility. The combination can be very alienating, because utopia isn't achievable and a life without responsibility is a life without meaning.

I don't know the circumstances of this particular suicide. I'm just commenting on the larger point of why leftists seem to kill themselves more often than conservatives. I am generalizing from the small number of celebrity suicides. Among people I've heard about through friends and family, however, I've noticed the same trend.

[mylife]

Its a sad ending.

The Milkmen were one of the few bands that made me smile in the last 20 years.

[Coleus]

I can't wait for the summer.

[BobS]

Those guys from the English rock band "The Anti-NoWhere League" are still doing stuff to create anarchy. Their live concerts in Yugoslavia wrecked that country. Was Joe limiting his pursuits?

[Zeppo]

It was kinda quirky, kinda catchy, kinda raw, tongue-in-cheek punk rock. As others have mentioned, Bitchin' Camaro and Punk Rock Girl have probably gotten the most airplay. It's a bit of an acquired taste, though. If you're motivated, you can hear a few samples on amazon.com here, here, and here (about a third of the way down the page).

[Penner]

Sad to hear the news... the Milkmen were one of the better punk bands. RIP, dude.

[Skip Ripley]

Detroit Tiger fans (like me) will always remember the impact the Dead Milkmen had on the 1987 pennant race. The team had a young utility infielder named Jim Walewander who won a few games by playing well outside of his actual ability. He was a fan of the Milkmen. They even visited him at Tiger Stadium and met the legendary Sparky Anderson (would have loved to heard that conversation).

The media in Detroit had a field day with the whole Walewander/Milkmen affair. What a sad end. I really enjoyed their work.

"Stuart" from the album "Beelzebubba" was the funniest damn thing I've ever heard.

RIP Dave Blood....

[EmmaPeel]

Poor man, RIP.

I actually sang this to my husband last week:

"Bitchin' Camero
Bitchin' Camero
Donuts on the lawn

Bitchin' Camero
Bitchin' Camero
Tony Orlando and Dawn"

Good times.

God Bless him and give him the peace he couldn't find here.

[NewRomeTacitus]

A good indy film, "Hard Core Logo", points up the patheticness of holding onto nihilism as a lifestyle. Old punkers reunite for one more tour only to learn that "the good old days" were horrible when compared to the lives they built after quitting.
This movie helped me see that early fame and success can lead to serious mental problems when you fall off the chart of public consciousness. Perhaps it's good that most musicians are left-wing. If they were more like me they'd have arsenals and ideas about taking "the ingrate fans" with them.

[PRND21]

bitchin' camaro bitchin' camaro, i ran over my neighbors
bitchin' camaro bitchin' camaro, now i'm in all the papers