6-04-04 15:44 DEAD KENNEDYS HOLIDAY IN CAMBODIA (live) By MIKE A concise History For Consumers Everywhere (by Gregg Turkington) Dead Kennedys were one of the most popular and important American hardcore punk bands of the 1980's, and in their nine year history stirred up a good deal of controversy through their overtly political songs and actions. The 1986-87 trial of lead singer Jello Biafra for allegedly distributing pornography (a poster by artist H.R. Giger that was included in the band's Frankenchrist LP) brought worldwide attention to the band and the issue of censorship, but unfortunately also helped lead to their demise. Dead Kennedys (usually written without a "The") formed in July 1978 in San Francisco, with the lineup of Biafra, vocals; Klaus Fluoride, bass; East Bay Ray, guitar; and Bruce Slesinger (a.k.a. Ted), drums. Biafra (real name Eric Boucher), came out to California from his hometown of Boulder, Colorado to attend U.C. Santa Cruz, but ended up quitting school and moving up to San Francisco after being immediately impressed by the early San Francisco punk scene. Biafra was attracted not only to the energy, but to the politics and "cultural terrorism" that bands such as Negative Trend brought to their music. One of the first people Biafra met in San Francisco was Will Shatter of Negative Trend ( and later of the infamous Flipper), who told Biafra, "Hey, you should be in a band. I've been playing bass for only three days and I'm in a band." The Dead Kennedys premiered at Mabuhay Gardens, a Filipino restaurant in San Francisco's North Beach section which served as a home to punk bands for nearly ten years. It wasn't too long before the band gained a considerable following around San Francisco. Live, DKs were a combination of chaos and theatrics, with Biafra's political monologues appearing between nearly every song. Musically, the band could be described as a cross between the Sex Pistols and the Ventures. In 1979 the Dead Kennedys received further attention when Jello Biafra ran for the mayor of San Francisco. Running with his campaign slogan "There's always room for Jello, " he finished fourth out of a field of ten, with over 6,000 votes. Supervisor Quentin Kopp quickly had a law enacted to ban people from running for mayor using "funny names." That year the DKs first single was released. California Über Alles, written to California governor Jerry Brown and what Biafra called his brand of "Zen fascism," became an underground "hit," and subsequently received British release on Fast Records. Unfortunately, this song was just the first of many DK titles to be misinterpreted, and California Über Alles became a popular slogan of young fascists. A later single Kill the Poor, was also interpreted literally, and drew some real nasties to Dead Kennedys shows, especially yin foreign countries, where the sarcasm of the song was not picked up in translation. Due to the success of California Über Alles, Dead Kennedys were invited to perform at the Bammies, the Grammies of San Francisco, which Biafra describes as San Francisco's "backslapping circus banquet." During dress rehearsal, DKs ran through their current hit, but when got onstage, they treated the audience ( full of music industry bigwigs and mainstream rock acts such as Journey) to a scathing attack of the music industry, in a song called "Pull My Strings" composed especially for the occasion. The prank was a good one, and Dead Kennedys were not invited back. A European tour and the release of the classic Holiday in Cambodia single furthered the DKs reputation. Their debut LP, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, was released in 1980 by IRS in the U.S. and Cherry Red in England. The first pressings on IRS came in a orange cover. As Biafra puts it, "Without telling us, the ruined the cover, saying 'Oh, duh, it would make it different from the import.' Yeah, inferior to the import, change it now!" They did, back to the black and white cover the band submitted. Fresh Fruit was chock full of witty Dead Kennedys songs, including the hilarious, "Stealing People's Mail, ""Forward to Death" (written by the departed 6025), "I Kill Children" (again, some people misinterpreted this one), a cover of Elvis's "Viva Las Vegas" with new lyrics, and the A-sides of their first singles. The back cover featured a found photo of a depressing-looking lounge band (a Dead Kennedys logo has been spliced on their drum set and skulls and crossbones onto their instruments). Somehow, a member of the long-gone lounge band came across the DKs LP and sued the band for using the photo without permission; consequently, the LP was issued with the heads of the band members cut off. When this didn't satisfy the lounge band, the photo disappeared altogether. Cherry Red, which owned UK and European rights to Fresh Fruit, issued a red vinyl version of the LP, as well as licensing it out to dozens of small foreign labels. When asked which ones, Biafra was able to name most from these from memory. He warns, however, that many of the imported copies floating around these days are pirates. "Anything that comes in this country with 'Made in Italy' 'Made in Spain' or 'Made in Portugal' on it is a pirate pressing... Plastic Surgery Disasters, In God We Trust, Inc. and Fresh Fruit were licensed either to Base Records or Artisan in Italy, and as far as I know those companies have since gone out of business. somebody still has some of the master parts, ad has gone ahead and Xeroxed the covers, and put out Clorox-bottle quality pressings, which are slipped over to a cut-out distributor, the same one who was busted for bootlegging the Apple records catalog in 1976, who then sells these for less than we can sell our own records in our own country... and then stores that are too snooty to deal independent distributors buy them from them, then jack it up to an import price and rip off our people. None of the inserts come with them. As far as I know, all the money's going to the underworld, from the Spanish, Portuguese and Italian pressings." Buyer beware! Fresh Fruit has only recently been reissued, on Biafra's own Alternative Tentacles label; before that, the pirate pressings were often the only one available. (The DKs had had a bad experience with IRS, and Fresh Fruit was the only LP which the group could not retain the rights to. The other albums were all issued by Alternative Tentacles, and remain in print.) In 1981 the Too Drunk to Fuck single was issued, complete with a peel-off sticker in the front to cover up with "offensive" title. The single charted in the UK, despite a BBB ban. Weirdly enough, the song became among college frat boys in the U.S., who often shoed up at the DKs shows. Punks sometimes resented the Kennedys for attracting these outsiders to their shows, but the DKs made up for it by going out of their way to support the real punk scene by forcing promoters to book unusual underground bands as openers, and insisting that the bands get paid reasonably well. Let Them Eat Jellybeans, a compilation LP put together by Biafra, was released around this time. Jellybeans served as an introduction for many to punk and underground music, featuring such bands as Black Flag, Flipper, Circle Jerks, the Bad Brains, Voice Farm, and the Dead Kennedys themselves. Once again, this was released in many countries and pirate versions abound. After a change of drummers ( Slesinger left, Darren "D.H." Peligro joined), the DKs released a 12" EP titled In God We Trust Inc. Most of the eight songs included dealt with corruption and fascism in organized religion, and the record became a target of the religious right, which featured Christ on a crucifix made of dollars. Lyrics of songs such as "Religious Vomit" and "Moral Majority" are often quoted by religious right wing groups during presentations on the evils of rock and roll. Musically, In God We Trust Inc. was a bit of a departure for DKs. Most of the songs included were of the thrash variety of punk - incredibly fast, short songs. The EP included a wild cover of "Rawhide," and a version of "California Über Alles" updated to cover the election of Ronald Reagan. Also included was "Nazi Punks Fuck Off, " which was later mistakenly referred to on the Phil Donahue Show as "Nazi Punk," in an attempt to show that punk rock embraced Nazism. Fortunately, an audience member corrected Donahue. "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" was also released as a 7-inch single by Subterranean Records, which was originally set to release In God We Trust. The single was uniquely packaged in a plastic baggie with the lyrics printed first on mylar inserts, and later on the bag itself. A cloth armband with an anti-Nazi symbol was included. The single is still in print, and can be had for $3.50 ppd., yet for some reason it continues to appear in collectors ads for ten dollars or more. Plastic Surgery Disasters , in many ways the Dead Kennedys best album, was released in 1982. This featured the singles Bleed for Me and Halloween and attacks on everything from preppies to mechanics to "Winnebago Warriors." It also included "Moon Over Marin," as close as DKs ever came to a ballad, although the anti-pollution lyrics are not the sort that Frank Sinatra will be crooning anytime soon. As always, DKs stuffed the album cover with interesting reading matter, this time a large booklet of lyrics and collages by Biafra and his artistic collaborator Winston Smith. Plastic Surgery Disasters marked the end of the alliance between Alternative Tentacles and Faulty Products. The "bankruptcy" (don't believe it) of Faulty Products cost the band (and many small labels distributed by Faulty) lots of money and delayed the release of many Alternative Tentacles records. Biafra took it as a sign that he should put out the records himself, and after a brief manufacturing and distribution deal with Subterranean, during which the world was introduced to the Butthole Surfers via their first ever release, ATR finally became independent. Rumors had it that an LP to be called Cancer Cures Everything was coming soon , but after a long hiatus, the Frankenchrist album was released,. Considered by Biafra to be the DKs shining moment ( although fans don't usually agree), Frankenchrist was the LP that got the band in the biggest trouble of its career. It wasn't the music however, that got the band in hot water( and with songs like "MTV get off the air" and "Stars and Stripes of Corruption," the music wasn't certainly endearing the band to everybody in the world), it was a poster that was included free with the album. Biafra stumbled upon a reproduction of a painting by European artist H.R. Giger titled "Landscape No. 20: Where We Are Coming From." The painting, which features dismembered, ugly genitals copulating in what looks like sludge, had been reproduced in many books and magazines over the years, and Biafra secured the rights to include it as part of the Frankenchrist package. About the painting, Biafra says "I began to realize, 'My god, we have met the enemy and it is us, this is what we do to each other every day in consumer-oriented society. Wait a minute, this is what we're talking about on a lot of the Frankenchrist songs.' I thought the Giger painting would be a great way to drive home the point, even if some people in high positions of power with no sense of humor didn't seem to understand." Originally, the painting was meant to be the gatefold inner cover for Frankenchrist, but a member of DKs vehemently objected and it was instead inserted into the album as a poster. Although the poster was expected to raise some eyebrows, no one expected it to cause as much trouble as it did. A warning sticker, albeit a sarcastic one, was affixed to the cover, partially to parody the warning stickers that the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was demanding at the time, partially to cover themselves in case there was difficulty. The sticker read : "WARNING : The inside fold out to this record cover is a work of art by H.R. Giger that some people may find shocking, repulsive or offensive. Life can sometimes be that way." When a San Fernando Valley mother complained that her 13- year old daughter had purchased the record as a gift for her 11-year old brother (at a Wherehouse Records outlet in a large mall), the LA City Attorney's Office decided to prosecute the case. Deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the case, admitted they chose to prosecute the DKs because it would be a "cost-effective" way to send a message to other musicians, record companies and fans. Guarino had been considering prosecuting several other groups when this case came along, and he thought he could win this one. The first Biafra heard of all this was when he was awakened from his sleep one morning by the sound of his window being broken and several police officers invading his house, supposedly to seize the "evidence." ( No one bothered to knock.) They took numerous personal effects, including his address book, as well as a few copies of Frankenchrist and the business ledgers of Alternative Tentacles, making it impossible to conduct business for a while. Charged in the case were Biafra, and four others, including the 67-year old man whose company pressed the Frankenchrist disc. Conspicuously not charged were Wherehouse Records which sold the offending album. They had agreed to stop selling Frankenchrist and all other Dead Kennedys albums when the controversy first surfaced. Biafra and the others decided to fight the charges of distributing harmful matter to minors, and set up the No More Censorship Defense Fund, which along with helping with the legal fees in the Frankenchrist case, makes available copies of articles dealing with censorship and plans to help others who are being harassed. Contributions came in mostly from fans of alternative music; envelopes of teenager's allowance and an encouraging note were common. Not so common were contributions from those popular figures who stood to suffer if Biafra lost the case. Three notable figures who did come to Biafra's aid were Frank Zappa, Little Steven Van Zandt and Paul Kantner. Although Tipper Gore's PMRC did not claim credit for the case, they certainly approved of it, and it was their talk of rating records that led to the pro-censorship climate of the mid and late 1980's. ( Of course, they are very loath to call it censorship, even though several major record store chains had agreed to not to carry any record that contained a negative rating label.) The No More Censorship Defense Fund called for a boycott of Coors beer and other companies that financed the PMRC, and chronicled their activities in the newsletters inserted in DKs albums. Finally, after months of delay, during which Biafra's time was taxed enough that he had no time to work on his music, the case went to trial. After a week-long trial in which witnesses such as Greil Marcus testified on the group's behalf, and a respected art teacher attempted to show how the poster was an integral part of the Frankenchrist package, the jury came out deadlocked (7-5 in favor of acquittal), and the judge dismissed the case. Ironically, the painting which stirred up all the controversy had been printed in several books which could be found in libraries all across the U.S., all published without incident. Giger is a highly respected artist who had even won an academy award ( for his Alien set design), and found all the controversy very strange. In the midst of all the hullabaloo , the Dead Kennedys had broken up. Bedtime for Democracy, their final album, came out in late 1986, and was unfortunately a major disappointment. While many of the lyrics were interesting enough, musically it verged on the generic, and there were few standout cuts. The song that received the most airplay was the cover of the Johnny Paycheck tune "Take This Job and Shove It." Another tune, "Rambozo the Clown," inspired a T-shirt featuring a drawing of Rambozo himself. During the final year of virtual purgatory waiting for the Frankenchrist trial, Biafra embarked on a couple of short solo tours, speaking on the issue of censorship among, many, many other things. These spoken-word performances were issued on the No More Cocoons double album in 1988. He also recently assembled a fantastic collection of the DKs early singles and lost tracks, Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. The package included a bonus flexi disc, the tracks of which were also included in the cassette and CD versions. East Bay Ray, who sparked the breakup of the band when he announced he was leaving, went on to form the ill-fated ( and rightfully so) band the Kage, with female vocalist Banana Witt. Klaus Fluoride continues to produce exciting local bands such as Whipping Boy and Tragic Mulatto, and to release his own bizarre solo discs, including Because I Say So. He's currently playing with the Muskrats. Darren Peligro played guitar and sang in the Jungle Studs, a truly exciting mix of pop, soul and punk, and is now with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. According to Biafra, original drummer Slesinger is now a San Francisco architect, and 6025 is working on his goal to become the "Captain Beefheart of gospel music." There are several collectible Dead Kennedys releases floating around., including a couple of bootlegs. "Skateboard Party is a bootleg... I know the guy who put out the original pressing, and then he farmed it out to somebody else who ran wild with it and we had to put a stop to it," says Biafra. And what about that DKs picture disc that's being advertised everywhere? "That's a total, total bootleg. This guy wasted our time for doing an interview for a fanzine in England, and then pressing it as a $25 dollar picture disc. And people wonder why I'm so mean about not letting people tape my shows now... Because I'm really sick and tired of people making shitty recordings and then who gets the complaint letters saying they're a crook? Me! It's another example of where greedy people wreck it for everyone else. "There's another bootleg, too, it's really horrible, recorded in 1980 in Germany with a fold-out poster with an iron cross on it which was the tour poster at the time, leading me to believe the promoter put it out. I think it's a recording of a show in Bonn recorded on someone's walkman, which they probably set right in front of the PA or they couldn't possibly have gotten it to sound so bad. Usually it goes for about $30, and it may be that rare, but there's a good reason for that. There was a second pressing on brown vinyl that came out four years later. Another rare Dead Kennedys item is one that was unknown until now. "Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho... oh, he's gonna kill me for letting this out of the bag but I can't resist: Ray was in a band called Cruisin', who made a single; one side was called 'Vickey's Hickey,' with Sha-Na-Na type doo wops. 'Vickey had a hickey...' I can't remember the other side of it. On Cruisin' Records I guess; it was sold at their shows. I think they may even still exist in some form around here." While looking at the discography that was being prepared for this article, Biafra suddenly yelled "What is Viva La Revolution? Needless to say, if I haven't heard of it, it probably means it was not supposed to come out. "Some 'CD connoisseurs' have told me that they think Frankenchrist sounds a great deal better on CD than it does on vinyl, which shouldn't surprise me in a way, since I have a habit of trying to squash as much music onto one disc as possible, and so the last three DKs albums were over 23 minutes a side, and you lose a little bit of loudness when you do that." Biafra himself does not own a CD player. "So many of my favorite records are never going to come out that way: they're just too old or too obscure or they're from countries where CDs just aren't a practical item, especially for bands like that." Among Biafra's collection are items from a trading system he has with a friend of his up in Portland. "We pile up both the most unusual and the absolute worst records we find at garage sales and thrift stores, and just trade stacks to each other. Once he came up with The Singing Cops from Yakima, Washington, which I guess were these patrolmen, all trying to be a Sha-Na-Na type band, so there they are, posing in the police locker room on the back cover, with their sleeves rolled up pseudo-'50s style, and one of them is even flashing a switchblade, which he'd probably confiscated from some poor kid he'd probably beaten up earlier in the day. "Another one I got is by Buzz Martin, the singing logger. He sings all these vintage country tunes about his logging truck and how much he hates environmentalists and the forest service; and his chainsaw, things like that. And on the newer one he has his wife in this ridiculous 'Alice in Wonderland' queen outfit, singing with him on stage, and his son who has a Herman's Hermits haircut in the 1970's, singin' a cover of "Rhinestone Cowboy.'" There are a couple of Dead Kennedys videos available, one through RAM video, another released by Target Video, and Biafra briefly appears in the movie about the band X, The Unheard Music. The DKs also perform in Urgh! A Music War film, along with Gary Numan, the Police and others. "At the time, Miles Copeland was trying to sign us to IRS, so he was courting us as a possible future item, to rape and pillage and profit off of. And so we were put on the bill at the Santa Monica Civic in L.A. Unfortunately, my mic cord got tangled right away when I'd figured out a way to step on top of one of the movie cameras and jump over the barrier into the audience. So that didn't happen. We are in the movie, but A&M forbid our presence on the soundtrack because of our name. Jerry Moss, the 'M' in A&M, supposedly is a yachting buddy of the Kennedy family and didn't want anybody called Dead Kennedys on the label. "That's why Faulty Products was started as well, as a branch of IRS, because originally Fresh Fruit was supposed to go out through A&M, but A&M wouldn't touch it, so they created an American arm of the very appropriately named Faulty Products." The Dead Kennedys' name did cause its share of trouble too, although Biafra says, "I've heard unsubstantiated reports through the grapevine that various third or fourth generation Kennedys actually like the band and understand the real reasoning behind the name... I was also told that the Kennedy that died of a drug overdose was into us and maybe even had seen us live in L.A. at the Whisky. What I heard from one of his friends was that he was actually quite a talented poet and an aspiring rock shaman. But try as they might they couldn't get him to kick the drug habit, and plus, of course, his family wouldn't hear of having a bohemian in their midst, so he was quite alienated supposedly." Biafra plans to return to doing music imminently, and has finished an EP with a one-time only band he calls Lard. The only other music released from Biafra recently was one cut on a ROIR compilation credited to Bank of Sodom. According to Biafra, his music "could go in any number of directions and possibly under several different names." In the meantime, fans will no doubt also enjoy his next spoken word record, High Priest of Harmful Matter. Links Related News   SMALL FACES TIN SOLDIER (LIVE Beat Club 1967) (kopiere 2) - Tuesday 20. of April The Small Faces story starts in the late fifties when the very young Steve Marriott was sent off to audition for the role of the Artful Dodger in the London stage version of "Oliver". Apparently, when Steve did the audition in front of the show's director, Lionel Hart (playing a skiffle rendition of... 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