Song of the Day – “Smokin’ Banana Peels” by The Dead Milkmen

The album “Beelzebubba”, released in 1998, is one of the best albums ever made.  I make that statement without hesitation and with the fervor of one who knows what’s inside the album’s grooves… the cassette’s magnetic tracks… the CD’s track-shaped-bits and the mp3’s 1s and 0s.

Man, is this a great album.  I don’t know how many people even remember this band.  They started out as a “joke” band… and they were more funny than musical.  By the time they got around to releasing this album in ’88, they were sufficiently talented enough with their instruments to make actual songs, and damn good ones at that.  This song is probably my favorite on the album.

And this album is still fucking funny – just as many knee-slappers per square centimeter as their previous albums.  Its 17 songs mock or joke about:

  1. frat boys
  2. men who beat their wives and the women who stupidly stay with them
  3. conspiracy theorists
  4. poseurs
  5. thrill seekers
  6. lame parties
  7. love songs and relationships
  8. drinking bleach to get high
  9. horrible body odour
  10. stoners / hippies
  11. singer-songwriters
  12. PBS
  13. materialism
  14. paranoid people
  15. cowards
  16. Ringo Starr and the other Beatles
  17. life

Well, isn’t THAT a fine how-do-you-do!  I’ve referred to this album as the band’s “Dark Side of the Moon”.  It’s that good.  Anyone who disagrees is WRONG!!!!

Okay, I’ll get a hold of myself.  I’m talking too much about the album as opposed to the song again, and I should save this precious (precocious?) verbiage (garbage?) for the actual album review.

Yes, I intend to review whole albums on this blog.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

So, this song switches tempo and feel abruptly between the verse, bridge and chorus.  And it fucking rocks because of that.  Especially when the singer (I forget the cute names they called themselves, you can look it up if you want) screams (he mostly screamed rather than sang) “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!  IT’S TOOOO MELLLOOOOOWWWWW!!!!!”
over and over again.

Classic stuff indeed.

And the use of a keyboard playing the sound of a Hammond organ over the song just puts the cherry on top for me.

If you like what you hear in this song, and you want to check out the band’s stuff, get everything up to this album, and nothing else.  Maybe pick up the “best of” collection they released, “Death Rides a Pale Cow”.

They took a sharp nosedive in freshness and quality after this album.  On one album, “Soul Rotation”, they even ditched the funny altogether and tried to be a serious band.

Not good.

One more thing to say about The Dead Milkmen is that they got their name from this Monty Python Sketch.