St. Louis Video: Dead Milkmen, "Notorious/Kill Duran Duran" at Mississippi Nights, 1987

By Annie Zaleski Wed., Mar. 17 2010 at 12:30 PM

Categories: Local History, St. Louis Video

Fact: '80s hellraisers The Dead Milkmen are awesome. The snot-nosed-punk yin to They Might Be Giants' goofy-pop yang, DM skewered pop culture like no other band (cf. "Instant Club Hit," the timeless "Punk Rock Girl"). Guitarist Joe Jack Talcum is constantly on tour -- no St. Louis date this time around, unfortunately -- although DM's official website notes that the band is working on new material and "hope to have a release later this year." ! In the meantime, here's 1987 video evidence of one of its cheekier ditties, "Notorious/Kill Duran Duran" -- a mash-up of the DD hit and other, saltier barbs toward the English pop sensation. DM had been through town before this, though: As its totally entertaining vintage tour blog notes, it played in "East St. Louis" on February 3, 1986. (Where? What club?)

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1987, dead milkmen, kill duran duran, mississippi nights, video notorious

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@M: question -- and i don't mean this in a snotty way, i mean it genuinely -- but do you read the print RFT? which we link to quite a bit on A to Z? since the start of 2010, we've had mostly local coverage -- we've featured/written about the union electric, kevin renick, pokey lafarge, theodore, bradd young, HEARding cats, nu-art jazz series, the SLSO, murphy lee, etc. all interviews. without giving anything away, i have mostly local coverage geared up for april and beyond as well, in print, about various goings-on. and we've had accompanying MP3s or other multimedia elements on the blog to go along with each of these interviews -- making sure people realize who these people "making the scene better" are. and that's a lot of content. i finally have the means to add more writers, which means we'll have more content from freelancers on this blog. and in case people don't realize: the RFT music department is just me. we don't have the budget or manpower (i.e., an army of staff writers/music writers) ready to go to, say, Lemp at a moment's notice -- and i can't be everywhere at once. if people shoot video at a show, email me. i'd be happy to post stuff like that. but until now, however, it's been mostly me having to do content -- and i'm just one person. trying to juggle a weekly print edition and a daily blog. that's a huge, time-consuming, tiring job. lately i've found some neat older video on youtube that i thought people might be interested in seeing. something fun to post on a wednesday, when people are tired and just want the weekend to be here already. that's all.
This was a lovely post. I must, however, comment on something that strikes me as odd; A to Z has a strange fixation on how St. Louis used to be. With as many people reading as there are, you have an opportunity to let everybody know about the great things going on in St. Louis right now. What about a video of a show at the Lemp that happened last night? Maybe an interview with the people working to make St. Louis' scene better? I'd like to see you use your voice to convince St. Louis that its music scene doesn't suck, like so many St. Louisans claim; 'cause it doesn't. It's pretty great, actually.

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