THE LINER NOTES FROM MILK'S JASON'S SONG CD:
We made noise the way a small child learns to walk. There was a lot of stumbling, flailing, knee-slides and tripping over our sonic shoelaces. I don't know what you could classify Milk's genre as, a blend of cheese funk pop rock punk jive metal. One song sounded shamelessly like Mary's Danish, the next, Nine Inch Nails (with no power behind it whatsoever). We stayed in the room and rocked once or twice a week for about ten months, perhaps a year, and played what felt right. Hell, it took us four months to agree on a name.
I played guitar, but had pretty clumsy fingers. I was a pick-dropper. I never learned to tune using a fancy digital tuner, and had trouble with tempo. My strong point was I had an armload of effects pedals purchased with idle income as a backelor/editor. I would either turn them all up (rock song), or all down (sensitive ballads). There was no inbetween.
Andy Jenkins was the guy with underground band experience. He'd played bass in an industrial bash-and-smash band called Factory. They'd been around - Scream, the Anti-Club, rooftop art parties in the warehouse district downtown. They had fans in San Francisco and shit. I roadied for Factory and learned the basics of amp-handling (don't drop) and how to appreciate the pounding of experimental percussion and feedback. Factory disbanded, but Andy kept in touch with the drummer, Dave. It was Dave who tipped us off to a studio with an engineer that had reasonable rates for recording demos.
The other Jenkins was the Milk musician with all the true music experience, the teacher and classically trained sax player Kelley J. She was married to Andy and taught unruly 7th graders the art of "shut the fuck up and play these scales, please" at Wilmington Junior High. She was the cool-headed sniper of the band -- an alto-toting pixie called in for crisis situations like recording, or playing a gig. Shows up, unsnaps the case, pulls out the weapon. One shot, one kill.
The Bridge, aka Rodger Bridges, was a half member of Milk. He rocked with us for a few practices, played 50% of our gigs, and made it into the studio to furbish our demo with extra Fender crunch. His tenure was cut short by a move to Florida to have a baby, which he named after a weather condition. Before that date arrived, Rodger and I lived together, and we got a notice from the landlord 'cause he'd hanged a flag in the front window as a curtain. Rodger was the best skater in the band, sponsored by Gullwing and Foundation.
Jeff Tremaine was the singer. An albino dwarf with a starfish-shaped port wine birthmark covering his entire face (with the center of the star right where his mouth was). He looked like skin-disorder version of Paul Stanley from Kiss. Actually, he kind of blew us all away when he belted out the lyrics for "The Knife Song" for the first time, putting the pathos and passion into it. We'd heard him sing in the car to Replacements songs, but here he was actually singing, and it was good (but that's relative, isn't it?). Jeff's Thelonious Monster-inspired vocal stylings suited the band's sound well... on that song anyway.
Tremaine would often dress incorporating such bold fashions as white shoes, red pants, and a red felt hat. He looked like a designer furniture salesman or something. Jeff told me I had "any and all creative license to make shit up" when writing these words. That's no lie about the singing, the shoes, and the hat. |
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MILK was: vocals JEFF TREMAINE guitar MARK LEWMAN bass/vocals ANDY JENKINS drums R.L. OSBORN saxophone KELLEY JENKINS |
RL Osborn was the inspiration for BMX Action magazine. His dad, a Torrance fireman, saw the spark of potential in his son and launched the first BMX newsletter, and later the first slick magazine devoted to BMX, as a way to bring his family together. Then RL got into trick riding, and his dad launched another mag, documenting freestyle. That's how we all ended up in that room playing music. Andy was Freestylin' magazine's first editor. I was the co-editor. Tremaine came out to be an art director. Even Spike, Milk's official photographer (and later, Malcolm McClaren talent pimp), worked here too. By the Milk era, RL had been doing some experimentation. He got a few tattoos, a Harley, and a drum kit. His friend Davey, from Hermosa Beach homeboys Stanford Prison Experiment, provided tutelage and got the former flatland wizard up to speed on the skins. It was all downhill after we'd cut that demo. Our plan was to use it to get gigs, and mail it to a handful of people. I think. Maybe we just wanted to hold dear a little slab of time when we were a group of friends who came together in the era of Operation Desert Storm, and made up a few tunes.
We played twice. Gig one was a living room in San Diego. We got the call at 5pm from Swank and scrambled like a volunteer fire department, piling into RL's red Suburban and driving two hours to play a 3-song set which we ended with a rambling cover of Sly Stone's "Thank You". Minutes later, the whole shebang was busted by the cops and we loaded out and hit the road. The other Milk show, despite our efforts to not be labeled as a BMX industry house band, was at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon in the flat bottom of a half-pipe at the Orange County swap meet. We were there for the vert contest, but next door there was a gun and knife show. Perhaps we had a little crossover appeal?
"The Knife Song" was our attempt at country dive bar blues, involving a fictionalized account of Jeff's ability to steal beer. This tune joined the Jackson 5, Black Flag, John Coltrane, and a handful of more competent and awesome artists on the soundtrack to the now-infamous Blind video. Widely considered the best skateboarding team video ever, by everybody, the Milk song was utilized during Jason Lee's blistering street section. That solid stance, that fluid style... that neck beard. J's natural comic timing and effortless acting abilities can also be glimpsed in his section.
Drink up.
-- Mark Lewman, 3-27-02, Eugene, Oregon |
