Dave "Blood"Schulthise

April 02, 2004

So much real life has gone undocumented. I have spent the days of the downed website in the moment. For awhile the recent loss of my friend Dave “Blood” Schulthise (bass player for Philly’s Dead Milkmen) plunged me back into the dark parts of my own mortal coil. You keep smiling and moving on but you feel like a wheel has fallen off the wagon. I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of years. This is not unusual with people who live down the block from me. I commute to the airport and kids sporting events down narrow lanes of traffic rarely venturing into the space between space stations. If you live in a Starbucks I just might bump into you. The internet brings you all bad news. Its not as soft as the radio. You must read it. There is no context to the voice. The voice is “Palatino” or “Helvetica” or cold cold “Times bold”. In this case I met a new friend of a friend as the context was slowly revealed through a steady tap on the reply button. I shuffled out to the studio the next night and slowly divined the chords for “Punk Rock Girl”. I sang the words I knew. It was the Dead Milkmen’s commercial high water mark. An ironic hiccup in the steady belching of unpretentious heckling thrown at the pop culture status quo. Man...did Griel Marcus write that or did I? I should back off on the Village Voice cream. “Punk Rock Girl” has that beautiful classical melody that flows into the headwater of River’s Coumo’s river. The lyric is perfect. Sounds stupidly simple and romantic but is as subversive as can be. I’ve been playing the song at live shows and it makes me feel better. Dirge lite. A light at the end of the dirge. Its like finding a picture of someone in a drawer and making it come to life by singing to it. It doesn’t matter what the song is. Only the attitude matters. It has to match the picture to make the molecules resonate. I had such fun with Dave. Any conversation could quickly veer into intense philosophical assessment and back onto the road of fart humour and goon show barking laughs. He was smart, sensitive . . . a slightly framed yet giant hearted ambassador of goodness. Equal parts approachable, well read, affable, garrulous then quiet and . . . ultimately . . . fun loving. I guess it was the quiet part that eventually built up and overwhelmed the fun. As is always the case I am angry that I hadn’t talked to him in a couple of years and have, therefore, less of him to keep alive in my heart. We connected over what music is on the earth to do. The Odds had that same prankster element that the Dead Milkmen completely embodied. While neither of us were ever or would ever be hired for a corporate party the Milkmen would need a restraining order from said event. He was at the heart of the smartipants movement that placed whoopee cushions on all celebrity seats. In recent years he spent a lot of time in Serbia and that must have been really good for the Serbs. Enough Dave’s would have eventually made everyone over there feel good again.
There are plenty of heartfelt tributes to Dave on deadmilkmen.com. Please go and celebrate Dave.