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Then came the excellent single called The Deviation Amplification Spiral.
Title taken from book on bad ass youth called "Resistance Through Ritual." Rebellion here
is standing on chairs, listening to disco, and sporting a shaved head. Viva la revolution!
This release contains a nice mention of John Travolta before he was king of Hollywood the second time.
Both the bitter and the happy tracks here are top notch.Hey! Liner notes! This record is now on CD on the Slampt comp which has its own blurb immediately below | |
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Clicking It Roll A Disco Shaved Head Thrills |
Chewing Broken Glass Yeah, it's True |
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Seven Unlucky Sevens
Further proof that the Slampt record label is the paragon of virtue, they have released a CD (it's like a small record) which contains out of print early 7"s 
from such seminal bands as the Yummy Fur and Avocado Baby as well as our own
heroes, Milky Wimpshake. It is the opinion of this milkywebmaster that "The
Deviancy Amplification Spiral," which takes up tracks 24-28, is MW at its finest
hour. From the opening "I'm carrying a torch for you/I'll carry your suitcase too,
if you like" to the final "fuck you" rhyme on "Yeah, It's True," I can't imagine
a better record. And I have a wicked great imagination. Also includes proof that Pavement's
"Cut your hair" is not the best pop song about getting a haircut.
Same track listing as above |
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On Slampt's Elastic Jet Mission | Cyanide Guilty Trip |
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| compilation, Milky Wimpshake contribute two songs, Creepfoot and Spidey. Spidey is a bedroom comic song for the ages. The rest of the album rocks. Severely. | on Cactus Gum Records has an alternate version of You're Shaken I'm Stirred and some other good stuff. | ||
Play Love Songs for Punk Rockers 
is a fine description of the band and this gem. I will be deep in the ground before I stop characterizing "Cheque Card" as anything less than perfect. The rest of the songs prefigure Bus Route, which is good or bad depending on which side of the pop/punk aisle you sit. (I admire those who sit in the middle, blocking those dastardly conservative fillibusterers.)
This release generated a little bit of buzz, getting played on college stations. Little did they know, that within the next five years, MW would get a bit more buzz and spun on many college stations. Who's laughing now? Hopefully you.
Liners here.
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Cheque Card Kickstart Affair |
My Heart Beats Faster than Techno Milk Maid |
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In mid 1997, Milky Wimpshake broke new ground with its first CD, Bus Route to Your Heart.
Doubling the recorded MW corpus, the album acknowledged influences, redid some earlier tunes and had plenty of new tracks. The production values and guitar driven songs mark this as a turn toward the power pop, pulled off with aplomb. Still, the humble self-reflection and clever rhymes ("Queens/refried beans/Lebanese") of early Wimpshake are not gone. Also, bilingual action!
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| Take a Chance on Chances |
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Scandalized Traumatized and Baptized |
| is a CD co-released by Troubleman Unlimited and Slampt which features a version of Hey! Brother Mine, a nostalgia deliquent thing that was released first on their tape. Pete explains the song in the liner notes. Yee hah. Viva collaboration! Got to Troubleman's troubling site for more info. | is the name of a double LP comp put out by Washington D.C.'s Paroxsym Records. It has Milky Wimpshake doing the Isley Brother's This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You). Yet another piece of the MW's love song lineage becomes clear. This record would be cool enough if it came with prefab cover art. But it's got hand painted cover art! Get it or be considered square (in a bad way). | ||
| [ | Sometime around here, Pete recorded a song called Not Poetry and then forgot about it, until an enterprising fan sent it to him on a tape and MW decided to re-record it. And people say God is dead... | ] |
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8/2000 Live Show
As part of a US Red Monkey tour, Pete played a solo gig at Sound & Fury Records in NYC, USA. I was too lazy and religiously observant to check out the Saturday afternoon show but a certain punkrockmonkey, stalwart friend of the site (where have you gone?) taped it and even generously converted it into mp3 form. Check out the Billy Childish cover tune.
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Home is Where the Hate Is
Like it says in the liner notes, a release about what's wrong with England:
provincialism, materialism, conformity, etc. But so much more...a battle
between nostalgia and reality, classroom cliques as indicative of larger
societal problems, the possibility of moments stolen from an overwhelmingly
vapid lifestyle. Dedicated to two high school sweethearts who we hope
didn't get married. Thick vinyl, fine coverwork (note phone 'BRRING'ing and valium). "Itchy Feet" is the best subversive MW since "Hey Brother Mine," and equally high on the Grand Catchiness Scale. Makes me want to piss in coffee
and get out of this two bit town. [Ed. note -- I did, the town part, not the coffee one]. On Libellous Vinyl.
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The 7" called Dialling Tone has on one side a tribute to modern pop ballad aueters. 
The other side is the best MW phone song, and that's saying something.
To further classify,
Dialling Tone falls under the rubric of the "dump your boyfriend" song, and kiss my cliche-spawing grits if it doesn't make me want to get a boyfriend and proceed. Catchy catchy catchy! The double barrel cover on the "AA" side shows the wimpy side of the equation and gives a tantalizing glimpse of what a DIY punkpop medley might look like. The record has a little history of MW by Pete.
Put out by Ferric Mordant Records but sadly sold out.
Dialling Tone True Love Will Find you in the End/Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste | |
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REVIEWS:
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THE WIMP is Pete Dale.
The record has the first two songs from the Milky Wimpshake tape done without the help of drum or bass. According to the liners, done in one take no less. Theme here is unreciprocal relationships, with lots of zany imagery, thankfully lacking in observational humor. Wish I could say the songs here somehow marry politics and punk rock, as the cover might indicate, but it's non-political quirk folk. "Screaming louder than loud"? Don't think so. Quiet punk, that wimp. Get it from those screamers at troublemanunlimited.
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Fake Fool Not Zombie At the same session, Pete recorded solo a number of political and non-political songs, which might have never be heard by human ears outside of New Jersey, except for the efforts of a line of tape exchangers culminating in Mr. D. Conroy, who purveyed it to me. The songs are a snapshot of what a rotten state of things were/are, and the joys despite it. Mp3s for all, except the 1st, which is on the Xmas CD below.
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In 2002, Lovers not Fighters dropped like a love bomb to all us fans of good pop everywhere. The world's stereo systems rejoiced. The album has been characterized as "mature"; I quickly came to MW's defense before I realized that was a compliment. There are two songs about/against academia, one significantly catchier than the other, but both supporting the idea that being smart and well-read should not be an end of itself but should lead to questioning and actively resisting the bad parts of this modern world. Honor is paid to those who came before, voting is mentioned twice, alcohol receives its due, and "also" is rhymed with "torso". Matters of the heart are of course not neglected; "Dialling Tone" is about as persuasive an argument for infidelity as there could be. Here's the tracklist:
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(Hey! Lemonade also came out on the Troubleman 2003 Sampler CD. Meow meow meow meow. Dialling Tone also came out on the Fortuna Pop! comp "Be True to Your School". From the liner notes, by the inimitable friend of all pop fans, Fortuna Pop!'s Presidente: I have been warned about Pete Dale. The Slampt überlord is a revolutionary communist and impossible to work with. He has "This machine kills facists" tattooed on his eyelids. He will have me sourcing record sleeves from small tribes in Papua New Guinea at vast expense. It's a pleasant suprise when I run into him at Pop-a-Go-Go! that he doesn't twist my arm behind my back and accuse me of breaking the 1985 miners' strike but instead asks if I'll release Milky Wimpshake records. This I am happy to do, especially if it avoids any more awkward questions about what I was doing in Nicaragua in '83. I'm told Pete mellowed when Steve Spraydog got into reggae and introduced him to the joys of weed, but I secretly suspect that actually he's just one of those good blokes. Wimpshake's records are pure punk-pop gold.) |
A Christmas Gift from Fortuna Pop! v. 2
The great Fortuna Pop! label put out a record of Christmas-related songs in late 2002. Gospel it aint, but it's got a really pretty song by Homescience which is a winterized version of a certain MW album title. The Wimpshake contribution here, despite what certain heretics say, is stellar, reclaiming the holiday season from the clutches of marketting grinches.
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Needed: Heart Handbook
Three fine songs on perennial Wimpshake subjects: love, our rotten world, and being broke. Would the folks at Stax who penned "I Got Everything I Need" have ever anticipated it would be in such fine company across genres and oceans? Fuzz on side A and the Wimp solo on B. Of note to nerds: track #3 has a lyric which is repeated in a Wimpshake original, namely "Kickstart Affair." On a handsome '45 on Fabulous Friends records.
Needed: Heart Handbook |
Spring of 2005 saw the release of Popshaped a/k/a Tried and Tested Formula, filled with eighteen (yeah, life!) old and new songs. The back catalogue is deep and rewarding but the new stuff is, like many a companion animal, easy to love. With the exception of one song, all themes have gotten their due in previous songs but merit repetition: how we crush and how we love, ongoing influences by local and Canadian sources, the potential of representative democracy, the hazards of consumer society, and real heroes (e.g., Spiderman) over fake ones. The truly new thought here is getting even, which might involve leaving and might involve a more Dixie Chicks like outcome. Available from Fortuna Pop (U.K.) and
Bitter Like the Bean (U.S.A.).
File this under Wimpshakesque: Pete Dale, playing with an illustrious backing band called the Beta Males released in February 2006 Betrayed By Folk. This protest record covers Hurricane Katrina, I.D. cards, Live 8, and dubious installations in the north of England, with positive nods to folk and R&B heroes and their contributions. There's lots against work and a bit on the intricacies of punk parenthood, e.g., the problems of entertaining a child while being interrogated by the police.
The tracks:
Sounds XP nicely parses the title (and more),This is Lancashire thinks the album's point is somewhat obvious, One Dollar A Secret finds it too angry, but it might be the guilt, whereas Wide Open Road says it strikes the right balance between style and subtance, and Tasty argues the more Pete Dale, the more palatable a world. 
Fall 2008 brought One Good Use for My Heart, a five-song EP on the Fortuna Pop! label. There's lot to love here ... pop/punk expectations and punk/pop realities, an anarchic duprass, and the metapop boast "I'll finish this song like I finish a beer." Ordering info at the Fortuna Pop! site.
Reviews around the blogosphere at: Kitten Painting, Russell's Reviews, God Is in the TV, In Love with These Times, in Spite of These Times. Songs (and an mp3 or two):
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In April 2009, Pete Date of Milky Wimpshake played the
played the "Phoning It In" radio show, broadcast on KDVS 90.3 FM in Davis, California, and on the Internet.The 27-minute show includes interviews, some old songs, and some new ones. All and all, an entertaining half hour. Here's the track lists, with approximate starts, interview bits in italics:
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