The Dead Milkmen were odd ducks in Philadelphia's 1980s hardcore scene. They played really fast, but with a clean guitar channel, and wrote satirical--often strange and very imaginative--lyrics. It felt like they were almost a ska band. And in fact, they did have a few ska songs in their set like "If You Love Somebody, Set Them On Fire," "Little Man In My Head," "Gorilla Girl," and a cover of The Specials' "A Message To You, Rudy."

Today, we bring on Dead Milkmen guitarist Joe Genaro. We talk about the band's relationship to ska, Joe's love for The Specials, The English Beat, Philly locals The Hooters, Operation Ivy and what it was like to play a LIVE 105 radio event with Skankin' Pickle (Along with Duran Duran and Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine.)

We discuss their recent cover of Heaven 17's "(We Don't Need No) Fascist Groove Thang," which they turned into a ska song, the influential role of Dead Kennedys' In God We Trust, Inc, Joe's love for Dr. Demento and Weird Al (And how excited he was when he heard himself played on the Dr. Demento show), Why they mentioned drummer Jon Wurster in the song "Stewart," and we breakdown the recording of Big Lizard In My Backyard, and discuss some of the weirder promotional events Dead Milkmen did when "Punk Rock Girl" broke, including a bonkers performance on Club MTV with Downtown Julie Brown.

Plus we discuss the band's excellent new album, Quaker City Quiet Pills, which was released on June 9th.

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If you like our theme song, go download the EP Lives by Slow Gherkin. They wrote the opening and closing songs for our podcast. You can get both tunes from their Lives EP. Also, check out Dan P and the Bricks two LPs. They provided the mid-roll ad transition music. 

Support the In Defense host Aaron Carnes by purchasing a copy of his book, In Defense of Ska. The 2nd, expanded edition of In Defense of Ska will release in Oct 2024. 

Co-host Adam Davis has a band called Omnigone. Their latest record, Against The Rest released on March 31, 2023. 

The In Defense of Ska editor Chris Reeves runs a record label called Ska Punk International. They have new releases coming out all the time.

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