November 11-17, 2004

cover story

Blood Brothers

HOW IT'S GONNA BE: (l-r) Dean Sabatino, Rodney Linderman and Joe Genaro work out the kinks with Dan Stevens. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

The Dead Milkmen return to pay tribute to the late Dave Schulthise.

by Patrick Rapa

On a warm October night, The Dead Milkmen converge on their rented practice space in the Ivy Ridge section of Philadelphia. It's their fifth or sixth rehearsal—they've lost track already—since they started hatching plans to put on a concert in tribute to Dave Schulthise, aka Dave Blood, their fallen bandmate. Rodney Linderman shows up first, having taken the R6 in from downtown. Dean Sabatino, who lives in Media, drives up next. The two have already begun setting up, screwing on cymbals and moving amps, when Joe Genaro, who lives within walking distance in Manayunk, lugs his tattered guitar case through the door. He's also brought Dan Stevens, who plays bass with Genaro in The Low Budgets. He's been charged with the task of filling Schulthise's shoes when the Milkmen take the stage for the upcoming memorial shows at the Troc.

It's been 10 years since the Philly punk legends—inspiration for innumerable snarky rock bands—played their last show together. The wild hair has either fallen out or settled down, but they still dress the part in T-shirts and dirty jeans. Now in their 40s, Rodney Anonymous, Dean Clean and Joe Jack Talcum -- as fans know them—seem to have grown older without turning into grownups.

Wandering: "Since the breakup of the band David has never really found his niche in life," his sister Kathy wrote on The Dead Milkmen's Web site after he died. Painful tendonitis in his hands forced Schulthise to give up playing the bass.

As soon as he plugs in, Genaro's guitar amp blows a fuse. No big deal. He'll just use the keyboard amp and they'll run the keyboards through the PA with the vocals. Sabatino opens his bag and hands out CDs of a Texas band called O'Doyle Rules. They did a cover of "Punk Rock Girl." He also has a Bing Crosby 45 for Genaro (his birthday was the week before) and a copy of the April 15 issue of Rolling Stone, the one with the picture of Schulthise in it.

Linderman walks around the room handing out set lists, a working model of the one they'll use at the Troc. The three surviving Milkmen have decided, through a loose system of voting and vetoing, which songs would be dusted off for the memorial. Then, after very little banter, Sabatino clicks his sticks and the band launches into "Punk Rock Girl." Looks like they're planning to open with their biggest hit.

Despite the lack of warm-up and a minimum of pre-emptive knob twiddling, the sound is clean and tight. Genaro mixes up some words in the second verse but executes the guitar solo neatly. Stevens, looking very much like a kid among these Philly punk forefathers, darts his eyes from Genaro's hands to his own feet and keeps up nicely.

The song ends sharply, leaving only a breath of silence before the ranting, chanting "Tiny Town" starts and Linderman begins prowling the room with his microphone. Then comes "Tacoland," "Serrated Edge," "Where the Tarantula Lives" and "Methodist Coloring Book."

In 45 minutes, they've methodically plowed through all 17 songs on the set list. It's as much a testament to the punk aesthetic that spawned the band as the tension that hangs over them when they get together to play these days. They are elated to be making music together but wounded by the loss that inspired it.

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"We never considered the fact that one of us might die," says singer/keyboardist/occasional flutist Linderman. "So we never wrote any sad songs."

In that way, in many ways, the band was not prepared for the news that on March 10, the 47-year-old Schulthise had overdosed on pills at a friend's house in Westchester County, N.Y. It was suicide. He left a note.

Posting on deadmilkmen.com, Schulthise's sister Kathy theorized her brother was depressed for a number of reasons—among them the death of their mother in January. Also, she wrote, "Since the breakup of the band David has never really found his niche in life."

The news sent shock waves across the Web, triggering an outpouring of grief and disbelief and memories on the site's message board, which accumulated page upon page of postings. Fans and old friends who'd lost touch with the Milkmen came forward to express their condolences. Sabatino, who runs the site, figures there were more than 500 messages.

Linderman, who'd been busy with work and neglecting phone messages and e-mails, found out about Schulthise's passing when the story was posted on CNN.com. "I just remember going cold," he says. "I was a robot for days on end." Part of him didn't want to believe it. "I honestly thought that Dave Blood had pulled a hoax," he says, trying to laugh. In a band full of funny people, Schulthise had always been the cleverest and most accomplished prankster.

But the bad news was undeniable.

"E-mails started flooding in," recalls Genaro.

" 'KDU played a block of Milkmen," says Linderman.

VETERANS OF A FUCKED-UP WORLD: "It's actually been great to rehearse and play with Joe and Rodney again," says Sabatino (here). "The first rehearsal was strange. Some things came back to me like riding a bike. We've had to work harder on others." Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"I was actually surprised that his death was so widely reported—making Rolling Stone, and [being] mentioned on the CNN TV news crawl," says Sabatino. "I thought we were just that little punk band from Philadelphia."

The Inquirer ran an obituary that weekend. Schulthise's body was cremated and a Quaker memorial service was held in Media where much of his family lives. His ashes were scattered around his home in Westchester County, N.Y.

"I am, of course, sad, but now I'm actually a little angry about it. The act seems so pointless and destructive," says Sabatino.

"I tried calling him a week or two before, something like that," says Linderman. "I should have been more persistent trying to get a hold of him. You find yourself asking, "Was there anything I could have done?' The answer's no. " I didn't see it coming."

"He was very good at hiding his depression," says Genaro.

Painful tendonitis in both hands, which plagued Schulthise in the band's later years, made it impossible for him to keep playing.

"I remember doctors saying it would be best if he just stopped for half a year and not play the bass. But he refused to take that route," Genaro says. "He actually did learn a whole new way of playing bass. He had a new bass teacher. He decided he was gonna keep going. At that point, to him, the most important thing in his life was playing in the band."

When The Dead Milkmen called it quits in 1995—some members complained it just wasn't fun anymore—Schulthise was the only one to drop out of music altogether.

The last time all the Milkmen were together in one room was in the summer of 2003, when they gathered in a sound studio in Bryn Mawr to record the audio commentary for Philadelphia In Love, a collection of the band's videos. The surviving bandmates recall the joy and comfort they'd experienced that day, reminiscing with old friends. "We were all sitting there laughing, having fun. And that's good. I can hang onto that," says Linderman.

The DVD and accompanying CD compilation of rarities and live tracks sparked a renewed interest in the band.

"We started to get offers for reunion shows. For varying reasons, we had to turn them all down," says Genaro. The band considered it but couldn't make the commitment. Schulthise was into the idea, despite the intense pain a reunion would mean for his hands. "It's just sad that we couldn't have that happen. But I think if he'd stuck around, eventually our wheels would have come in synch."

It was always agreed that the band, which had split amicably, would not re-form without all of the original members. If Schulthise's tendonitis had healed or somehow been surgically remedied, there was a good chance the Milkmen would have reunited at some point.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"It was never a thought in our heads of ever replacing anyone. I've always said we were like this great example of a utopian commune. We shared all writing credits and all money," says Linderman. "And we would have waited forever for him."

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The first night Genaro met Schulthise, in the early 1980s, the lanky bass player snuck not only gin but also tonic and limes into the guitarist's Temple dorm. The two drank and jammed on Ramones songs. It was an instant friendship.

"I think the first song we wrote together was this complete Ramones rip-off called "I Don't Wanna,'" remembers Genaro. "We wrote that in my dorm room." Soon he enlisted old pal Linderman, but the band didn't come together until their friend Sabatino told them he had some free time now that his old band, Narthex, was splitting up.

Due to scheduling conflicts, The Dead Milkmen never got everybody in the same room for a practice before it was time for their first show, at the Youth Center in Harleysville. A teenaged Jonny Wurster, who would later show up in Milkmen lyrics and, later still, play drums for Chapel Hill's Superchunk, introduced the band. Genaro's amp blew that night, too. Still the bandmates worked it out and left Harleysville energized and encouraged.

The band that had performed before it had practiced soon became a rehearsal machine, getting together two or three times a week in parents' basements to work out songs. For them, practice wasn't a chore, it was the best thing going.

They put out homemade cassettes and played in basements and small clubs around town like Abe's Steaks and City Bites. Unmuddied by distortion pedals—couldn't afford them at first—the Milkmen broke from the punk mold with loose, upbeat melodies and comic lyrics. The four learned to stick together to make it through their first tour across Reagan's America before the release of their 1985 debut Big Lizard In My Backyard. They were obvious outsiders, even for punk rockers. This kind of music was supposed to be serious business. The so-called jesters weren't always well-received.

"It made us tough and made us rely on each other," says Linderman of that first tour. "It's not like people were really happy to meet us. The only smiles that we would see during the course of a day were from our fellow band members. " We formed a nice brotherhood." They all moved into a West Philly hideout together and began making music nonstop.

Schulthise, armed with a sharp, dry sense of humor, was always pulling stunts. Once he invited Jehovah's Witnesses in and tried to convince them that he ate a "Christian lunch."

"It was like The Addams Family," laughs Linderman. "You'd always see people run screaming from the house."

Slowly, the band built up a cult following, bolstered by frequent live shows and the occasional "hit" on college radio, like "Bitchin' Camaro," "Instant Club Hit (You'll Dance to Anything)" and "Takin' Retards to the Zoo." 1988's Beelzebubba became the band's fastest-selling album (although 1985's Big Lizard In My Backyard would be their best seller overall) thanks to the catchy, heartfelt love song, "Punk Rock Girl." The video—featuring the four running around South Street and performing in the Eastern State Penitentiary—even enjoyed an anomalous run on MTV.

It was Schulthise's idea for the band to fake a breakup during a show in Sweden—just because fellow carefree punks Camper Van Beethoven had done it for real at the same club. Of course the Milkmen script called for an onstage reconciliation as well. It's moments like these that cemented the band's place as pioneers of punk satire.

On a tour that brought them to Yugoslavia in 1991, Schulthise became smitten with the place. His bandmates were not. "It's not the vacation capital of the world," recalls Linderman.

"It's one of the most unusual places," adds Genaro.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"It was one of the scariest nights of my life," counters Linderman, recalling wolves howling all night in what was supposed to be a hotel but turned out to be just some old woman's house. "That was the thing about Dave. He could take a place like that and actually find something fascinating."

Post-Milkmen, Schulthise began studying Serbo-Croatian culture at Indiana University. Eventually he moved to Serbia, to a town called Novi Sad, on the Danube. He landed a job teaching English and wrote historical fiction and poetry. His blissful stay was cut short, however, when NATO began bombing the country in April 1999. Fearing his presence would burden his Serbian friends as the conflict escalated, he left the country.

In December of 2003, Schulthise gave what was likely his last interview to online music journalist Mark Prindle. "To use a shopworn phrase ... those were the best days of my life," Schulthise told Prindle of his time in Serbia. "I felt a great joy and excitement in my life for the first time in years ... probably because I was living out my dream and it was more fantastic than I could have ever imagined it to be."

Schulthise spoke of a desire to return; he never made it back.

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Plans for a memorial show stemmed from an offer to play a concert out in L.A. to coincide with the release of Left of the Dial, an independent rock compilation featuring "Punk Rock Girl." Whether that show is still happening is up in the air, but it got the surviving band members thinking about how to pay tribute to their lost brother. They decided a concert in Philly was appropriate. When the first night sold out, a second was added. In the audience will be Schulthise's brothers, Kurt and Joe, who consider the concert a fitting tribute.

Old Philly bands F.O.D., Electric Love Muffin, Van Gogh's Ear and Nixon's Head are also getting back together to open for the Milkmen. None of the musicians are getting paid and most everyone involved in putting on the shows is donating their time. Half the proceeds from the ticket and shirt sales will go to the Studenica Monastery of Serbia, and the rest will be split among Mpower: Musicians For Mental Health, Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania, and Folcroft Survivors of Suicide, Inc.

"I definitely didn't want to call it a reunion," says Linderman. "It's not some other band where you can replace people and it still functions. It's an honest-to-God four piece. Now, Dan is doing a great job. But to be a reunion, it has to have Dave."

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At what might be the Dead Milkmen's seventh practice leading up to the memorial shows, the band is once again racing through the set list. They've bumped it up to 21 songs, adding fan favorite "Big Lizard In My Backyard."

"We haven't played these songs in 10 years. I remember " playing "Bitchin' Camaro' onstage at the Troc for the last time and thinking, "I don't have to play that one ever again!' Well, I was wrong about that," says Sabatino. "It's actually been great to rehearse and play with Joe and Rodney again. The first rehearsal was strange. Some things came back to me like riding a bike. We've had to work harder on others."

On "Punk Rock Girl," Genaro nails the lyrics and the solo this time. "Beach Party Vietnam" is even louder and more raucous than in the old days. The bandmates occasionally let on that they're having an OK time, letting loose with a smile or an excited gesture.

"Every now and then I've caught myself. "Geez,' I think, "I shouldn't be having fun, this is a memorial show.' But then I think—what used to crack Dave up was when we first started playing, punk bands never smiled. And they didn't have fun onstage," says Linderman. "He played the hell out of that thing, and he smiled every minute."

Dave Blood Memorial Benefit Show featuring The Dead Milkmen, Nixon's Head and Electric Love Muffin, all ages, Sun., Nov. 21, also with F.O.D., doors 7 p.m., sold out, Mon., Nov. 22, also with Van Gogh's Ear, doors 6 p.m., $15, The Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-5483.