Many things have changed for Joe Jack Talcum in the last 10 years, since the Dead Milkmen broke up. Back in the day, Talcum (n? Joe Genaro) could support himself with music?not that he lived expensively. The Dead Milkmen toured in vans and crashed on couches, and as he joked to me on the phone from his home in Philadelphia, when you're young, "You don't worry about health insurance and all these stupid grown-up things."

Now Talcum has a day job in computers, and because he can telecommute, he takes his laptop and his job on tour. And where he used to play in just one band, he now plays guitar and organ in several, and his nasal, untrained, but endearing voice often takes the lead. This Monday he brings his solo act to the Loaf and Ladle in Exeter, following a performance by Providence's Death Vessel with Micah Blue Smaldone.

Even today, Talcum is best known for the Dead Milkmen, the college radio staple that embraced the DIY ethos but never really called itself "punk." The Dead Milkmen came out of Philadelphia in the early '80s and landed hits like "Bitchin' Camaro" on stations around the country. The band's loose playing and jokey lyrics-witness "The Thing That Only Ate Hippies," or "Takin' Retards to the Zoo"-nearly typecast them as mere wiseasses, but their sharp hooks and wordcraft turned lyrics about the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon, the losers who hang out on the beach and the cute girls who shop at Zipperhead into memorable songs. The band has held up so well that their label, Restless, released a live greatest hits collection, Now We Are 20, last year, and their MTV hit "Punk Rock Girl" made it onto Rhino's new Left of the Dial box set, along with cuts by peers such as the Minutemen and Camper Van Beethoven.

After the Milkmen's final tour in '94, Talcum slowly launched other projects, starting with the Butterfly Joe band that included Milkman Dean Sabatino.

"We tried pitching to all kinds of record labels, big ones and small ones, and we just got nothing but rejection. One label said, 'Well, we have a female singer in mind, how about if we do it that way?' And that was the only thing close to an acceptance. And then we were just playing local shows just for the fun of it, and a local guy, John Razzler said, 'OK, we'll do an album for you.'"

Butterfly Joe released their self-titled album in 2000. By then, Talcum also had the Town Managers (who once played a show at Portsmouth's now-defunct Elvis Room) and the Low Budgets, where instead of guitar Talcum plays the organ-a Farfisa knock-off called the Teisco Teischord Checkmate B that he bought cheap on eBay. His steadiest project right now, the Low Budgets have yet to reach the fame of Talcum's first band. But as Talcum admits with a laugh, "We're one of the laziest self-promoting bands ever. Things have to come to us before anything happens.

"I don't see the drive in us that I saw in the Dead Milkmen, in the early days. The one thing to make it happen, I guess, would be for everyone to quit their jobs, and then you'd be forced to make something happen or starve. Like jumping off of a diving board. Which is what the Dead Milkmen did."

But Talcum also finds today's rock scene more frustrating. "We're finding less college radio support than in the Milkmen days, is my opinion. ... I think a lot of college radio stations are a lot more mainstream than they used to be." Talcum also observes, "(fewer) young people go out to shows. In Philadelphia, we're playing basements. That's what the Low Budgets do. We play a basement until that basement gets shut down by police or neighbors complain too much, then we'll find another basement we'll play. The economics of doing a legitimate all-ages venue just don't work out these days."

Even though Talcum still gets in the studio, you're more likely to hear his work through cassettes and, now, mp3s of his endless 4-track recordings. The Cheesies project that's on his Web site (www.jacktalcum.com) features Talcum and his roommate taping songs at home, and although the Low Budgets have only two official releases, at www.lowbudgets.com you can find live tracks, out of print 7"'s, or the "Tape Over Hanson" EP, which they produced by copying their songs over a batch of Hanson cassingles. The new solo record that Talcum is releasing this month, on Valiant Death, also came from cassette recordings-"a compilation of my home recording stuff, which I used to pass out to people on cassettes."

"Making records is fun. I will admit to that. And it's definitely social, because there's a lot of hanging out, and there's a lot of talking," Talcum says. "It's good to be in a relaxing atmosphere when you're making a record, rather than a stressful, tense atmosphere. That's no way to work, that's no way to make music in my opinion. If someone's beating you up saying, 'No, play this again, you're doing it wrong!' And I actually have worked with producers that do that, and I just don't like them. I wouldn't work with them again. Even though they might get a good result out of you, the experience is so bad, it's like, 'Ugh. I don't want that again.'"

Talcum famously still gets along with almost everyone he's worked with, including the other Milkmen. Later this month, they're even playing a reunion show-although under grim circumstances.

"Our bass player (Dave Blood) killed himself in March," Talcum says. "Very shocking and surprising. When Left of the Dial came out, we got called and asked if we wanted to play a show in LA to promote the album with a bunch of other bands. And I was like, 'Do you know that our bass player killed himself?' We weren't only not together at the time, but now we don't have a bass player. 'Yeah I know that, but I thought maybe you could get another bass player or something.' I was going to tell him no right then and there, that's the most ridiculous idea I'd ever heard. But I decided to humor him and say, 'I'll ask the other two guys what they think and I'll get back to you on Monday,' or whatever."

But after they talked it over, the three surviving members agreed to a reunion. Dan Stevens of the Low Budgets stepped in to play bass. And although the Left of the Dial show ultimately fell through, they're now reuniting in Philly on Nov. 21 and 22 for a benefit concert in Blood's memory. "I hope that everything goes well. I like rehearsals (with the Milkmen). I enjoy going in there. It's fun. It's a fun social thing too," he says, laughing. "I'm looking forward to the show, but then after that, I won't have that anymore."

The proceeds will be split, with half going to three suicide prevention and suicide survivor counseling organizations, and the other half to the Studenica Monastery in Serbia. "That was Dave's will. He willed all his Dead Milkmen royalties and future earnings to that monastery." The Dead Milkmen played a tour in Yugoslavia, "as the civil war broke out. I think we left the day the fighting began, in the second wave of the civil war, the wave that ended with the NATO bombings drop. Well, Dave went back after we broke up, Dave went back to Serbia and taught English there, he learned to speak Serbo-Croatian here in the U.S. first, and he just fell in love with the country and the people there, and that was basically his second life after the Milkmen." And, as I hear the "bloop" of Talcum receiving an Instant Message on his computer, he adds, "We all have our second lives."

Joe Jack Talcum and the duet of Joel Thibodeau and Micah Blue Smaldone perform at the Loaf and Ladle, Exeter, Monday, Nov. 8. Call 603-778-8955 for more information.