The History of The Dead Milkmen's "Punk Rock Girl" - MTV's Unlikeliest Stars | Music Video Time
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- In 1989, the Philadelphia based punk band The Dead Milkmen unexpectedly achieved commercial success with their mainstream hit "Punk Rock Girl". And the music video to the song became a massive hit when it was shown on MTV. Today's Music Video Time looks at the history behind the song and the making of the music video, as well as what happened to the Milkmen after the release of the video.
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I would like to know how they got the dead milkman as a name. I have a theory about it being from a specific television show.
The maggots were a reference to Dario Argento's "Suspiria". Adam Bernstein & I are big Argento fans. We watched a documentary about him in which we learned that he raised the maggots for "Suspiria" so we just looked at each other and "Maggots!". It was a good day.
Ok I see now. Suspiria makes more sense than a random shot of a Yes video. I must have misinterpreted what the news article said. Thanks for the clarification, Rodney Anonymous... Oh!
Thanks for Big Lizard it made life in small town Western PA much more liveable.
I was wondering if you'd seen this yet :)
Dead Milkmen were the first punk band I ever got into, though I didn't even know what punk bands were at the time. In 1990 I was in 5th grade and my friends older sister was always playing Big Lizard In My Backyard when I went to his house to play. My friend and I were really into Weird Al, and thought you guys were so funny, like a comedy band. To this day Big Lizard is still one of my all time favorites. I finally got to see you play Milwaukee in 2013. It was a show I'd waited over 20 years for, and was worth every second of waiting. I'm really hoping you make a stop here again someday!!!
@@MFcaustic I have plenty of time on my hands since you fired me! :)
I was a cofounder of Enigma Records and Restless Records. Really enjoyed this documentary which I came across by accident. Bravo! Love the DM.
Thanks for watching!
Pictures or it didnt happen.
really?
@@kneel1 yes
Loved these guys when I was 16, had every cassette. My friends and I would quote the lyrics constantly. I am 51 now.
50 year old here. My first punk show ever was the Dead Milkmen when I was 15. Led to a lifetime of punk shows, as I'm now the weird old guy at the show (although these days, there's several of us oldies at any given show).
45. Same here✊🏽
Same here. Saw them at the OK hotel when I was 13 and never looked back! Stuart!!
Yup, I had all of their stuff on cassette tapes
I'm 51 now and grew up in small town. Someone in my junior high in '85 got a hold of Big Lizard and it made the rounds. I was hooked.
My wife has dubbed Punk Rock Girl the greatest love song ever written.
Along the same lines with a more realistic less romanticized depiction of love is in the Pogues - Fairy tale of New York. (Also a realistic vs romanticized Christmas song). Punk rock girl manages to be funny, touching and catchy while still feeling as it has enough of a punk flavor to be more than just a novelty song. Always loved the record store scene with the line “if you don’t have Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin’”. But not only do they not have Mojo Nixon (a recording artist) at the record shop, they don’t know it is even a an artist. They ask if they have Mojo Nixon but are out of hand told that he doesn’t work there! 😂. And the part about “jumped up on the table and we shouted anarchy!” At the Philly pizza place when- and here is the sweet part - they are ordering hot tea. These two are a pain in the ass but they are lovable anyway and a good match. The other funny line that comes immediately to mind is “I got into the car away we started rollin’ I asked how much it cost. She said nothin’ man it’s stolen. Fantastic song! Writing about it is making me love it more!
Your wife is a Punk Rock Poser and has obviously never listened to Somery.
...We got into a car
Away we started rollin'
I said, "How much you pay for this?"
She said "Nothing man it's stolen."
This had me in stitches the first time I heard it. 😊
My favorite line is “we went to a shopping mall, and laughed at all the shoppers.” Brilliant.
"We jumped up on the tables and shouted Anarchy"
Note: fancy tables in expensive cafe's not stable enough to support said jumping. Late night truck stops in Golden BC, however, surprisingly solid.
This was my favorite band for years. Punk Rock Girl on MTV was how I first heard them. Soon after, I had all their albums, listened to them incessantly, hand painted a T-Shirt of the Bucky Fellini album cover, and was basically an evangelist for this band in small town Mississippi. Some of my friends even gave me the nickname Milkman because I wouldn't shut up about them. I still love them all these years later. I see Rodney is in the comments, so maybe he'll see this. If so, thanks for the great fun. You guys got me through some hard times as a kid.
@raluboon .. Me too,.. but after I picked the tape at a "Camelot Music" or "Musicland", I couldn't believe the awesomeness!! .. "Punk Rock Girl" is a very catchy song,.. but my favs from the record are "Brat In The Frat", "Stewart", "The Thinnest Line", "Sri Lanka Sex Hotel" , "I Against Osbourne", hell!.. the whole God-Damn album!!
As a 5th grader in the 80's, I stole a portable tape player from school so I could record punk rock girl off of MTV. I would play it over and over. Later in life, me and my 10yr old daughter were fortunate enough to see them perform. Life is good.
heartwarming story
That guy's story about being paid to call MTV is true. When I was 15 or so I had a friend whose dad worked for the band W.A.S.P., and he paid a few of us 50 bucks a week to call MTV several times a day to request one of their songs. It was a pretty common practice at the time.
Ahhh nostalgia for old Philadelphia. RIP The Gallery.
Great video as always!
if you think hollywood records signing dead milkmen is wild... they briefly released icp's fourth album before almost immediately recalling it.
thanks for this video! always cool to see some love for the dead milkmen.
Every few years I get a little obsessed with this song for a stretch. Thanks for putting so much research into this video!
favorite alumni from my university. my mom used to play punk rock girl in the car when i was younger and then i listened to big lizard in my backyard when i was around 15/16. mind was blown. found out only after being accepted to temple that the dead milkmen formed there- might've been the first 17 year old girl to fully fangirl out over the dead milkmen.
Zipperhead still exists in spirit. They opened a new place basically around the corner called Crash Bang Boom. The original location is currently occupied by the offices of a local business district and they have a ton of Zipperhead signage and ephemera on display there when they don't have some other thing going on in the space.
I actually found out the old Zipperhead name, the name stayed with the building that's why Crash,Bang Boom has that name not carrying over Zipperhead. I haven't confirmed this but what I was told in CBB when they moved off South St.
Last I was down there the building still has the ants on the wall and some orginal graffiti on the roof edge. I haven't been on South in many years and it's 15 mins from my shop. It lost the punk/hardcore counterculture vibes in the early 2000s IMO
“You’ll Dance to Anything”, was their funniest, imo.
"You'll dance to anything by any bunch of stupid Europeans that come over here with their big hair intent on your money instead of giving your cash to a decent American artist like myself"
Just a mention here to let everyone know that The Dead Milkmen have a UA-cam channel that until recently published videos every Saturday morning; lately they've been taking a break and making them less often, but when they do share it's the kind of joy that helps stave off suicide. [RIP Dave Blood]
Thanks!
That's awesome. I know many years ago prior to MTV they were putting on shows outside their house in Philly and small venues. I need to check out their channel. They were a staple of Philly punk/hardcore for most of us growing up on that scene.
This is awesome.. I used to watch 120 mins religiously. I always recorded it and the young ones on beta then me and my high school friends would watch it the next day. Longtime dead milkmen fan as well. Thanks for this 🎉
Wall of Voodoo Mexican Radio was an extremely popular song on college radio then it lept over to commercial radio stations like KROQ. MTV surely helped, but I know that I heard that song probably a hundred times before I ever saw the video. I think sometimes you younger folks make assumptions about things that happened before you were born.
I was thinking that as well- and Rodney played them. I had their t-shirt, hahaha.
KROQ helped launch a lot a careers like Prince. When the remake
of Valley Girl came out they seemed to be making fun of the station.
Not understanding that it had a cultural significance in shaping the countries musical tastes.
100% correct, I heard this song way ahead of the video. And the video isn't exactly "groundbreaking".
Came here to say this same thing. MTV was big, but not the career maker the video suggests.
The Dead Milkmen’s debut was relatively huge for the scene, during which in no part to MTV.
If you were born after a certain year, you have no clue how important college radio was once upon a time.
As a fan of this group. I approve. And RIP Mojo Nixon and Dave Blood
You’re not like the other kids here, in the trailer park
@@mattwarbuckleBURROW OWLS!
@@canadiangemstones7636 jumping Jesus on a pogo stick.
This video was suggest to me via UA-cam and had to click it right away! The first song of theirs I heard was "Bitchin' Camaro" and it blew me away to learn that they were from the same neck of the woods as myself. I was in middle school at the time and I haven't been in a classroom for 25 years and still a huge fan of theirs. The Milkmen still have a cult-esque following to this day and it's great seeing someone wearing their t-shirt out of the blue. I was on South Street a few months ago with some family and they were asking about Zipperhead, which then had me talking about the Milkmen. The store isn't there anymore, but the memories and the giant zipper and ants are still on the wall on the outside of the building. Dave Blood was a neighbor of a friend of mine, too.
I called into dial mtv at least ten times to request this song. No joke. And I was just a 8rh grade middle School kid. It WAS Abusy a lot of times but I persisted - probably because I had a crush on a punk girl that liked this song. ((No joke still)
Really enjoyed this video. Thanks for putting it out. I was in college from 1986 to 1990 and this was one of my favorite bands. Their concerts were some of my most memorable. Just what I needed at the time. Hella fun mosh pits!😅😅 I never watched MTV and I didn't listen to the radio because they didn't play music I liked. I heard of them through my big brother, and I was hooked
Back in the late 80s I had a Camaro and my dad was the mayor! You cannot imagine how much my friends teased me.
So glad this popped up on my feed. I love this band!
Thanks for sharing. The Dead Milkmen were part of my college years. I'd heard about them long before I heard their tracks. I still remember seeing the "Punk Rock Girl" video on MTV. Seems like it got played a time or two on one of the stations in the Kansas City area, where I went to school. Shawn R., Mo-Mutt Music/Sacred & Secular
I discovered my older brother's cassettes in '97 during a difficult time in Middle School. Has been one of my favorite bands since. TDM rocks!!!
The first proper live show I ever saw was The Dead Milkmen at the Uptown Lounge in Athens, GA. 1988, maybe? Late ‘87? Good times. I was just thinking the other day that maybe not enough people know about them these days, so its nice to see this show up out of nowhere.
All of the Wall of Voodoo stuff with Stan Ridgway is some of the most solid music of the 80s. It's been in my steady rotation since around '85
This was a major influence to my writing style when it came to poems and rhyme structures
Excellent job and history. Right up my ally. I remember watching the "Punk Rock Girl" music video all the time on MTV at the time. I was probably 11 at the time. I remember their band name more than anything. One of my older skater friends told me "their name is a take off of the band Dead Kennedys." I asked "Who are the Dead Kennedys?"
Playing this album on cassette in my Ford Fairmont station wagon.... Ohhh such great memories! Absolutely fantastic music. I'm happy to hear they're back
I'm so happy to see this coverage of a pivotal moment in The Dead Milkmen's career. My favorite song is "RC's Mom" (from the same album) which actually should have been called "Gonna Beat My Wife," but I guess it was too controversial a title to even have on their own punk album. It's a hilarious, and rather poignant song, with an added jazz flair. A MUST HEAR for all fans!
Anyone who loves punk should seriously check out the Dead Milkmen. Absolutely wonderful.
Whoa. I sang this song at a karaoke bar years ago. Remember the video too. I used to draw their logo on my notebooks im high school. Can’t believe it’s being covered by this great yt channel.
It's always a good day when a new Music Video Time drops.
I saw them live this summer with the bouncing souls. Amazing show
As an 80's club kid..."you'll dance to anything?" always cracks me up. Love that song.
I used to have a 12" dance mix of "Instant Club Hit"...and "Stuart" has to their greatest song ever.
You'll dance to anything!
Instant Club Hit has probably the most hilarious 30 secs of any song ever ..."You Know what you are? a bunch of Art F**s" and "Choke on this you Danceteria types"..you could never get away with saying Art F*g nowadays....
I never get tired of this song
I love the dead milkmen and enjoy this doc you put together
This song was on the soundtrack of Tony Hawk’s Project 8. I fell in love with it and it stayed with me throughout my childhood. By highschool, I decided to check out their other stuff. I love their approach to punk and always thought they were really underrated. I don’t know if anyone else has made an in depth discussion video on them so I’m really happy to watch this!
I think that’s how I was introduced to it as well. I went thru a punk / alternative / skater phase so the Tony Hawk sound tracks were huge for me. I don’t remember the video at all. PRG is on a playlist I have so it randomly comes on and it just so silly it makes me smile.
This was so thorough and well put together. I did not know a lot of this stuff. Amazing, and i always have always loved this song. I bought it as a cassingle. Good job.
When my son was 7 I took him to his first show. Dead Milkmen at 9:30 club in DC. He had a blast. This girl there asked him if he was here alone and he points at me and says 'no he's here with me'
Always a great day when one of your videos shows up!
Nice!! I didn't even think this song had a video!?
Cool video and channel. SUBSCRIBED
Great video, very insightful and I’m happy I came across it! Big lizard in my backyard, I dream of Jesus and deans dream are some of my favorite songs from them
I was a casual Dead Milkman fan in the 80s. Bitchin Camero always seemed like their biggest contribution to the world.
Also, Bucky Felini had a couple huge college radio hits in You'll Dance To Anything and Watching Scottie Die. So, by 89 they were due to break through to the mainstream. Especially with Bands like The Proclaimers and They Might Be Giants breaking through.
The late 80s was a pretty odd era for music, so not suprised they were trotting different stuff out to see what would hit. Tons of great bands at the time, but most wouldnt get noticed until after Nirvana broke out a coupla years later
I saw The Dead Milkmen in 2023 in Hamtramck, MI. Hell of a band, and it was crazy to see them play over an hour for a free show.
Thanks for this. I remember hearing that song on Mtv for the first time and went out and bought the single. B side was Ringo's Got a Gun. Also a fun jam. They're great to throw in the background and reminisce.
Dead milkmen sent me here
Makes me remember wearing their t-shirt on a septa\Philly bus way,way back when.The concept of the crazed looking cow and the name The Dead Milkmen had one particular woman in hysterics.
Pretty sure Wall of Voodoo had a huge following through years and years of local gigs and developed a loyal fan base then word of mouth...... but sure MTV
Yeah. This host is a clueless child. Bowie owes MTV for his fame??! I knew of Dead Milkmen in Montana before Beelzebubba.
I made no claim Bowie owes his credit to MTV. I'm a huge David Bowie fan. I know he had a number one hit song with Fame in the 70s. If you're thinking I was implying that just because I was using the I Want My MTV promo during my opening talk, that's on you.
@@richwiebe8084no hipster cred hits quite like Montanan hipster cred 😅
Wow! What a blast from the past. I lived in Seattle when they were on MTV. This reminds me of a couple of local bands from about the same time - the Beat Farmers and the Range Hoods. The Beat Farmers had a song called "Happy Boy." Not similar but equally weird. They did some other stuff, kinda cowpunk. The Range Hoods were a great bar band.
One of my favorite music videos of all time.
So great to see the Sony Bono for Mayor bumper sticker at 12:40, because there's the well known story about how in their early days Sony & Cher called up a radio station a bunch of times with disguised voices to win a contest to get their song played, just like the Show & Tell story at 10:34.
Coincidence???
Awesome video. Subscribed.
Punk Rock Girl was played at my wedding when my wife walked the aisle. Much like the video...I was the nerd and she was the punk.
I had friends at my favorite music store who would recommend me new stuff, and that's how I found Big Lizard, it was an instant favorite and I've loved the Milkmen ever since.
Dead Milkmen were popular before they were ever on Mtv, punk shows in CA. on radio would play them all the time
My little hs went to the beach for a week, really bout the whole school. The hotel had recorded 4 hour cable tv cannels on repeat. We watched this video in everyones room about every 30 minutes. All weekend long
after the nineties and early 2000- all creativity has just repeated itself
Smokin' Banana Peels was in a Beavis & Butthead episode called "Sign Here" [ July, 1993 ]
I literally just heard this on WERS radio in Boston (Emerson College). I"ve been listening to them for years and they've never played it that I remember. Someone saw this video.
I saw them a bunch of times in Philadelphia. Years later I used to see different members around town. I once stood in a line behind Rodney Anonymous at an ATM in the 90s.
Love this band. Listened to them a lot in the 80s.
I remember them fondly, am from Philly. they were pretty big in the scene there. I was young when they were around, by the time I was embedded deep into the Philly scene it was a decade later
Wow I thought I knew all the Dead Milkmen factoids, but I learned some new ones here. I got into Dead Milkmen by listening to Big Lizard and Soul Rotation in the 90’s. I had both recorded on a blank cassette. I had a hard time believing both albums were by the same band, but they just have so much great music. Nice work with the doc.
Loved this band. The 8th grade me was so stoked to see them live in Austin, TX around 2011 or 2012.
When I first started hearing David Sedaris stories on the radio, I pictured Joe Jack Talcum from this video, telling stories about being a mall elf at Christmas, because that's who Sedaris' voice reminded me of.
Saw them live this year. They sounded great. Just had a smile the whole time they played. Good stuff.
I love these guys. I have an autographed copy of Big Lizard in my Backyard.
Probably one of the best shows I’ve been to back in 93! I love The Dead Milkmen
Punk Rock Girl was such a good song, and once again, heard before the video was in regular airplay.
Did you get the T-shirt to prove that you were there and that you heard of them first?
My middle school crush Laura put this song on a mixtape that she made me.
She was from California and it was the first time I've ever heard this type of music.
I remember hearing PRG on a college radio station or an alternative station and I saw the vid on MTV a few times. I was a starving undergrad in those days so couldn't afford cable TV, thus didn't get to watch MTV much. I finally saw them live maybe a decade ago. I always enjoyed the band
The Philly music scene in the 80s was hopping. Besides the Milkmen, there were the A's, Beru Review and the Hooters all coming up at about the same time. Oh, and how could we forget the shore band Crystal Sh-t.
Don't forget about Robert Hazard and the Heroes and also Ken Kweeder
Miriam! Wherever you are... You are still THE Punk Rock Girl! No one can ever take that away!
Bought a T-Shirt of Big Lizard In My Backyard in New Hope, PA and had it for almost 20 years - great times. Never did catch them at City Gardens in Trenton, though they played there a lot.
My favorite album, and the first one I heard, is Eat Your Paisley. I still listen to it start to finish.
This is my theme song. I love the Dead Milkmen. I went to see them in concert, but they couldn't play because one of the members was ill. Instead, they hung out at the local record stores and signed autographs for free for hours. They could could not have been sweeter.
I'll never forget hearing "Bitchin' Camaro" on 91X in 1985. 91X was a station that was ostensibly in San Diego, but their actual transmitter was in Tijuana, so they didn't have to follow FCC rules about signal strength. Consequently, you could regularly hear 91X where I lived in North Orange County. I spent much of my radio listening time starting in the mid-eighties bouncing between KROQ and 91X.
So many memories. Saw them around 1990.
Man, I loved seeing these guys back in the day.
The Dead Milkmen were on MTV!? I was introduced to TDM by my best friend at the time, Matthew.
Our radio station played this a lot. Always thought it was a mid 90s song
I saw them at the airport music hall in Allentown, PA. Back in the eighties. They were amazing!
My son bought “Big Lizard In My Back Yard” on LP for me for my birthday!
Having lived before and during the rise of MTV, this is absolutely true. Many bands would never have been discovered and many weren’t good. Heck I watched Video Concert Hall at 11 pm prior to MTV launch. MTV was alt rock centric being based out of NYC.
I never even knew it had a video. I'd only really known the song from it being one of those strange catchy songs the local college radio station would occasionally play.
Always loved these guys
I was a metal kid... before The Dead Milkmen. Their licks were unique and lyrics were amazing. The fact they made a huge mythology beforehand is amazing.
I first heard/saw this video on Beavis and Butthead. Later, in high school, a friend gave me one of their cassettes, and I was hooked.
I grew up in the same area! so I had heard of them locally
What a great band. I saw them a few years ago. It was awesome!
That bit about the job dialing into Total Request Live to request the song... That must have been a REALLY powerful campaign getting it on MTV a full 9 years before Total Request Live started airing.
Still have my vinyl of this. Only saw the video way later. Radio was big for hearing new music back then
Anyone who actually wants to see some of these locations from the video it's still possible. Zipperhead is closed but the ant sculptures are still on the walls of the building on South Street. Around the corner "Zipperhead" re-opened as Crash,Bang Boom. If you want to see Eastern State Penitentiary the building was saved from demo and now open for public tours guided or unguided. You can see where the Dead Milkmen played in the prison. Fun fact Al Capone was held in that prison not far from where they played.
Back in the late 80s and early 90s the band would play shows out the front of their house and small venues on weekends. This tradition of shows popping up.on weekend's on houses, garages, basements and wherever else went on til the early 2000s when bands would have word of mouth shows.
A unique place in Philly punk history is "The Church" or the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. The chruch basement had some of the best shows. It summers it was 100+° and smelled like leather and sweat. Some of the best shows I ever saw were the Church, The Troc, TLA and Electric Factory. Many smaller local shows at tiny venues, many places had one show and that was it. Bands like Kids United, Rizzo Machine and others carried the torch for these older bands into the 90s and 2000s
I remember back 87/88 listening to Them, Suicidal, Corrosian, and REM while riding my buddy’s super sketchy half pipe on my Hosoi Pop Art deck with pink grip tape and green slime balls…
Saw them at No Values, damn good set and they love the scene, even encouraged seeing other bands mid set