Lest anyone think that the Milkshakes were only about Billy Childish, let me tell you about Mickey Hampshire. Or actually, I’ll let someone else tell you.
Mickey Hampshire was the reason I loved, and the reason I still love, the Milkshakes. For all of the band’s retro posturing and locked-in-time songwriting, Hampshire was a fantastic, expressive rock & roll singer, underrated to this day. He rocked hard but also wrote desperate, mid-tempo ballads that contrasted with Childish’s lo-fi stomping and Link Wray idolatry, and a handful of these tunes—"Don’t Love Another,“ "You Did Her Wrong,” “Thinking ‘Bout That Girl,” and “Despite The Danger"—are affecting stuff, melodramatic and worshipful, yeah, but Hampshire’s singing—his howling, really—always felt sincere to me, well past derivative into emotionally sound. He sang "you” as “you-wuh,” an inexplicable UK-ism that I loved, and while I dug Childish’s workmanlike khakis and sport-coat look, Hampshire was responsible for the sartorial style I tried doggedly, if mostly unsuccessfully, to cultivate while in college (he’s on the far right in the above photo, from the back of Thee Knights of Trashe). He sang with a half-grin. And he was a great screamer, too (listen to “Brand New Cadillac.”) He always sounded drunk. I had a non-sexual crush on the guy. - Joe Bonomo
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