Sheesh, I can’t believe I didn’t see this when it was published back in October. Rodney Anonymous kept a rehearsal/tour diary from their shows last fall. The whole thing is as hilarious as any Dead Milkmen fan could expect it to be, but my favorite part is this bit about their biggest hit:
I occupy the unique position in music history of being the only member of a “one-hit wonder” band who had absolutely nothing to do with the one hit. Despite having a writing credit (all of the Milkmen equally share the writing credits no matter what combination of us initially wrote a tune), I neither wrote, sang on nor played on our big hit, “Punk Rock Girl.” I have also never turned down a royalty check for the song. If I could only just figure out a way to get paid for every song that I neither wrote nor played on — the entire Beatles catalog, for example — I’d be set for life.
A few nights ago I got it into my head that I should actually do something when we play “Punk Rock Girl” other than what I’ve been doing for the past 20 years: just standing around tapping my foot like Larry Craig in a men’s room stall. To this end, I’ve asked Joe Genaro (aka Joe Jack Talcum, Butterfly Joe, etc.), our guitarist, to stop by today to help me work out a keyboard part for the song since Joe played the accordion on the original and I want to emulate his style as closely as possible. It takes roughly 10 minutes for Joe and me to come up with something, so we use the rest of the time we’ve allocated for the project watching TV.
I remember when I saw them back on the Beelzebubba tour, Rodney played with a remote control car on stage during that song. Or, wait a minute, maybe that’s the video…
In other exciting news, the Milkmen are “writing and rehearsing new songs and hope to have a release later this year.” Awesome.
That Rodney — he funny.