Lively Dead Milkmen Like to Rattle Audiences

You don’t have to prod them to get the members of the Dead Milkmen to live up to the band’s image as a snotty, nothing-is-sacred bunch of post-punk jokesters.

“I’m sorry, we were just busy damaging the hotel,” was how the lead singer, who goes by the name Rodney Amadeus Anonymous, chose to start a recent phone interview. “We’re in Houston. We don’t like it. We want to go home.”

Fear not, hotel owners of the nation. The band--which plays tonight at Bogart’s and Monday at the Roxy--was not inflicting classic spoiled-rock-star destruction upon its accommodations. It was just another typical deadpan quip that proved that the Dead Milkmen are as amused at being underground rock heroes as they are at pretty much everything else.

Among the targets of mercilessly witty digs on “Beelzebubba,” the Philadelphia band’s fourth and latest album, are spoiled collegiate types (“Brat in the Frat”), hippies (“Smoking Banana Peels”), nihilistic youth (the college radio hit “Punk Rock Girl”) and PBS’ nature obsessions (“Born to Love Volcanoes”).

But the band is also trying to be taken a bit more seriously than it has been, and the new album also addresses some fairly dark issues-- such as wife beating--though in typically sarcastic Milkmen fashion.

“We are serious,” Anonymous said. “But we try to hide it. The point is, if you come right out and clobber people over the head with it, they’re not impressed. But if you have a song about toilets backing up, people understand.

“I’m not really interested in making fun of things,” he continued. “People think that’s my whole thing, but there are a lot of things I want to sing about, like cable TV. Bands like Devo say TV is the way people are brainwashed by the government. I say, yeah, but it’s a pleasant way to be brainwashed. Better than some Marxist guy yelling at you.”

But for all the seriousness, Anonymous is finding the snotty, irreverent reputation impossible to shake--not that he’s trying too hard.

“It’s kind of a neat thing,” he said sarcastically, “to go somewhere and meet people who aren’t very bright but think they are and say, ‘Boy you guys are dumb.’ Well, thank you!”

The new album has posed even more of an image problem.

“Everybody’s been getting on my case for this album saying we’re sick and sexist, and we’re not,” he said. “We’re probably the calmest people in the world. Our biggest excitement of the day is when we find good tea.

“But people keep yelling over the phone: ‘That song “Sri Lanka Sex Hotel” . . . You’re sick!’ But one girl, I explained that the song was inspired by the movie ‘Prick Up Your Ears,’ and she goes, ‘Oh, I like that movie.’ Maybe I should include these explanations with the record.”

Of course, those kinds of experiences won’t necessarily lead the Milkmen to stop testing the limits of tolerance.

“I imagine we’d take on any target,” said Anonymous. “Right now I’m writing the most cliche heavy-metal song in the world. Basically, this song’s about a guy’s love for a 12-year-old girl with artificial legs. There are songs like ‘Sexy and Seventeen’ and ‘You’re Sixteen.’ I said, ‘Let’s see how far down in age we can go before someone screams about it.’ I think 16 is probably the limit. You sing about a 15-year-old and the police start to monitor your every move.”