Dead Kennedys - The Other New Wave

We have to prove that we've grown up now. We're not a punk band, we're a new wave band.

(Jello Biafra)

If one is used to looking at rock music from a historical perspective, that is, as a continuous process of transformation and cross-pollination between genres and styles, then it's likely that for many people the arc of the Dead Kennedys represents the final stage in punk's mutation into hardcore. Punk, a phenomenon born in New York with the Ramones in 1976, then emigrated to Britain to show itself to the world, eventually branching into two major cultural as well as musical movements: new wave and hardcore. This is obviously an oversimplification: arguably the Who, the New York Dolls, MC5 and the Stooges were already punk; and before them, perhaps, so was Link Wray.

But while it's tricky to pin down how we got to punk, it's easier to trace how punk led to hardcore. Just head to California and ask about the Germs in Los Angeles and the Dead Kennedys in San Francisco. In 1979, Darby Crash's band (he died at 22 in 1980) released that immense, seminal milestone called “(GI)“, which remains their only proper album; but that alone was enough to take Detroit's proto-punk, New York's punk'n'roll fury and the nihilism of the Sex Pistols, and spin them through a centrifuge, amplifying and above all speeding them up into sonic violence, rhythmic power and existential drama (“We must bleed” was their own “Anarchy In The U.K.”).

It then fell to the Dead Kennedys to complete the job: institutionalizing (what an ugly word!) hardcore (faster tempos, more pyrotechnic guitars, and “I don't need your way of life”), while also rediscovering a political and social awareness, albeit one fiercely laced with irony and cynicism. Their debut album stands as the most feral, astonishing slab of proto-hardcore ever recorded, while the following mini-album In God We Trust plays out as the quintessential record of a genre that, alongside contemporaneous work by Minor Threat and Black Flag, was busy claiming punk's most feral inheritance. It's groups like the aforementioned Black Flag and Minor Threat, along with plenty of other "minor" names from the hardcore scene like TSOL and MDC, that owe a great debt to Jello Biafra's band. Indeed, although the Dead Kennedys didn't release an album until 1980, they'd already been active in San Francisco since 1978, and the year before had put out the single “California Über Alles”, taking around California's clubs a kind of music they themselves called new wave - a label that will make plenty of people wince, but which, on closer inspection, isn't so far-fetched. In a sense, the Dead Kennedys were proof that punk had matured, and that the hardcore born from it was nothing more than a new, more violent and self-aware punk wave.

The band was founded by Eric Boucher, who renamed himself Jello Biafra, borrowing the trademark of a gelatinous dessert (Jell-O) and the name of a secessionist Nigerian region (Biafra), together with guitarist East Bay Ray, bassist Klaus Flouride and drummer Carlos Cadona, who was soon replaced by Bruce Slesinger. Biafra was something of a political agitator, well known in San Francisco for having run for mayor in 1979 on a pseudo-anarchist platform, finishing a far from negligible fourth out of ten candidates with 4% of the vote.

The following year saw the release of Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, an album that is indeed packed with politics, though fortunately the lyrics never collapse into simplistic propaganda or toothless moralizing. The Dead Kennedys were not politically correct - how could they be, with that name? - and the cover of this first album, a photograph depicting a scene of urban guerrilla warfare during the White Night Riots[1], makes that abundantly clear: a black-and-white photo, police cars burning, flames rising into the sky, smoke dissolving into the air. At the top left, the band's name in green Gothic lettering: "Dead Kennedys". Sacrilege, heresy, blasphemy.

The band's name and the record's packaging alone already had damaging effects on the group's reputation, quite apart from the sonic and verbal violence of the music itself, so much so that Irs Records, the American label the band had signed to, ran into enormous difficulties distributing the album; in the end it was the English label Cherry Red that made the album available in America, via import, of course. It's no coincidence, then, that the Dead Kennedys' debut sold fewer copies in America than in England; the band even set off on a tour of Albion's shores, where they showed that while punk had died giving birth to new wave in Britain and much of the US, in California it had mutated into hardcore.

The songs on Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables are fired off at breakneck speed: they detonate in East Bay Ray's untamed guitar work and in Jello Biafra's histrionic performances; they crackle in the explosive rhythm section set up by Klaus Fluoride and Bruce Slesinger. The opening of “Kill The Poor” warps the stylistic tics of a certain brand of British pop-rock: it's like nuking the Beatles or the Kinks with viciously acidic riffs (a trick East Bay Ray was particularly adept at); for his part, Biafra declaims like a crazed clown, while the rhythm section lurches abruptly forward behind an incendiary chorus. “I don't need this fucking world”, Biafra howls on the following “Forward To Death”: less a song than a one-minute-twenty blast of pure detonating fury.

“When Ya Get Drafted” is the aesthetic manifesto of the Dead Kennedys' brand of rock: there's irony (expressed through Biafra's sickly vocal delivery), ferocity (found in the rhythmic devastation wrought by Fluoride and Slesinger) and a sense of the macabre (audible in East Bay Ray's quavering, sketched-out harmonies). But while the Dead Kennedys already had one foot in hardcore's grave, with the other they remained miraculously tethered to an unhealthy idea of rock'n'roll, propulsive and corrosive to the nth degree (“Let's Lynch The Landlord”, “Stealing People's Mail”, “Funland At The Beach” and the cover of “Viva Las Vegas”, the song made famous by Elvis).

The most complex tracks are undoubtedly “Chemical Warfare” (a furious, belligerent dance interrupted by a dishevelled waltz turn), “Ill In The End” (a track so distorted, marked by sudden rhythmic and harmonic collapses, that it borders on deconstructed) and the atomic mantra of “Drug Me”.

The road to hardcore is paved by atrocious tracks such as “I Kill Children” and “Forward To Death”, whose lyrics, in their spite, impact and realism, land like a genuine kick in the balls: “I kill children/ I love to see them die/ I kill children/ And make their mammas cry” (“Io uccido bambini/ Amo vederli morire/ Io uccido bambini/ E faccio piangere le loro madri”).

And finally there are the record's two unsurpassed masterpieces: “California Über Alles” and “Holiday In Cambodia”.

“California Über Alles” is an invective hurled at then-California governor Jerry Brown, laced with references to Nazism and George Orwell's novel “1984”: “I will be Fuhrer one day… now it's 1984”. The track opens with the dull grinding of drums under assault from the guitar's white noise, then explodes into an anthem as memorable as it is ominous. “Holiday In Cambodia”, meanwhile, is a sort of punk-psychedelic journey charted by East Bay Ray's guitar, which stretches out the atmosphere through long, liquid riffs, and by Biafra's performance, which reaches peaks of cynicism, hysteria and delirium as he offers both radical-chic college kids and spoiled children of good families a "nice" holiday in Cambodia, amid civil war and the systematic massacres carried out by guerrilla-dictator Pol Pot, whose name is also invoked at the end of the lyric, though purely for its onomatopoeic value.

In 1981, Dead Kennedys returned with a new EP, In God We Trust, Inc., and a new line-up (Bruce Slesinger had been replaced by D.H. Peligro). The new addition behind the drums gave the songs an extra jolt of speed: the rhythm became more relentless, while Biafra's lyrics poured further fuel on the fire already lit by the previous album. The flagship tracks of this latest step toward hardcore are "Nazi Punk Fuck Off!", a scathing renunciation of punk's Nazi-leaning fringe, and "Religious Vomit", which instead takes aim at all religions, accused of luring in followers by promising them eternity in exchange for money ("free for a fee"). The album's cover art is telling in this respect too, conceived by Biafra himself and realized by graphic artist Winston Smith, showing the image of a crucified Christ on a cross made of enticing dollar bills. But this time, to avoid distribution problems and dodge any form of censorship, Biafra decided to found his own label, Alternative Tentacles, which would not only release In God We Trust, Inc. and the subsequent Dead Kennedys albums, but would also support other emerging bands from the US hardcore scene (a memorable example was the compilation titled "Let Them Eat Jellybeans", put out by the fledgling label in 1981, which featured, among others, bands of the caliber of Black Flag, Bad Brains, Half Japanese, Flipper, Circle Jerks and DOA).

As already mentioned, with Peligro on drums the songs' rhythm accelerates sharply, settling into the breakneck tempos of full-blown hardcore. This brings changes for the other elements of the band too: the guitars' harshness reaches its peak, one that would in some sense become a standard, while Biafra's revolutionary jester-like vocals settle into harder, more direct declamations, though still colored by inventive vocal shadings.

The defining elements of hardcore are laid out clearly on tracks like "Hyperactive Child", "Kepone Factory", "Dog Bite", as well as the already mentioned "Religious Vomit" and "Nazi Punks Fuck Off", on a record that, despite its brevity, remains a starting point (or an endpoint, depending on how you look at it) for hardcore music as a whole. Only "Moral Majority" and "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now" partly escape this mold: the former wraps itself in unusual liturgical moods before erupting into sheer pandemonium, while the latter is a surprising display of the band's chameleon-like skill, turning "California Über Alles" into a swing number for failed jazz musicians (this time Biafra's target isn't Jerry Brown, but a certain Ronald Reagan)!

The follow-up wasn't long in coming; in November 1982, in fact, Plastic Surgery Disasters hit the shops, an album that on one hand consolidates hardcore's stylistic hallmarks, confirming the formula of the previous two records, and on the other disguises rock'n'roll inflections as dynamite-laden outposts (the groove of "Halloween" echoes rockabilly classics), surf (just take note of the intro to "Forest Fire"), ska (the irreverent sax-and-clarinet counterpoints on "Terminal Preppie") and even pop ("Moon Over Marin" is an unusual melodic gem, roughened slightly by Biafra's vocal performance, capable of rivaling the most inspired Husker Du at blending hardcore and pop). Looking closely, one of the California band's chief qualities was precisely their ability to bend a small slice of that rich undergrowth of quintessentially American music to the hardcore idiom (sure, there's no trace of blues or folk in Dead Kennedys' music, but, as already noted, rock'n'roll and surf music are equally fertile ground for Biafra's band, just as country music would become down the line).

Obviously, none of this stops the fourteen tracks on the album from coming across as genuine sonic tanks, ready to flatten everything in their path: from the listener's ears straight to the brain. The rhythm section is now battle-tested: Klaus Flouride's bass is tasked with kicking the songs off and clearing the way for Peligro's rhythmic torrents, while East Bay Ray's guitar delivers, alongside his usual arsenal of savage dissonance, lightning-fast solos that are less over-the-top than before, but no less effective.

Biafra's lyrics, as usual, are political and social invectives hurled with rage and bitterness: the trash'n'roll of "Bleed For Me" denounces the torture and killings carried out by the CIA in the name of peace, while the already mentioned "Terminal Preppie" takes aim instead at "preppies" (an untranslatable term designating a type of person similar to Italy's "paninari", if you will, only a bit cooler since they're typically college kids).

The only real criticism one can level at Plastic Surgery Disasters is the lack of standout tracks capable of capturing the essence of the record, the band, and, why not, an entire music scene (after all, that's what songs like "California Über Alles", "Kill The Poor" and "Holiday In Cambodia" had done). But Dead Kennedys had already had their revolution, and on their third album all one could ask for was stylistic consistency and a high average quality across the tracks — goals they hit squarely. So, if one had to single out a single song above all, the choice could only fall on "Riot", a six-minute track that opens like a horror cabaret number and proceeds into a sinister ride, punctuated by ancestral drums and lysergic fuzz.

The most recent reissue of the album, Manifesto's 2001 edition, pairs Plastic Surgery Disasters with the preceding EP: an unmissable reissue.

The release of Frankenchrist in October 1985 marks a halt in the high quality of Dead Kennedys' output that had held steady up through Plastic Surgery Disasters.

Frankenchrist is in a sense also a courageous record, since it almost entirely shuns hardcore's canonical conventions, but at the same time it's also a not-very-convincing work: essentially, the California band manages to avoid falling into the trap of stale repetition of by-now-cemented models, only to land instead in the fire of a certainly varied brand of rock (from the dark-psychedelic leanings of "A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch" to the polished-up western of "Goons Of Hazzard", via the psychobilly pogo of "Macho-Rama"), but one that is ultimately conventional and inoffensive, despite the usual polemical verve of the lyrics ("Chicken Farm" is perhaps the sloppiest track the band ever recorded). Even Biafra's vocals come across as somewhat softened and no longer as ferocious as in the past, to the point of nonchalantly rolling out night-owl crooner performances, as on the opening "Soup Is A Good Food". Other anomalies crop up in the mariachi horns of "Mtv Get Off The Air" and in the heavy synth blasts that turn "At My Job" into an improbable 23 Skidoo-style tribal-industrial number; anomalies that wouldn't be harmful in themselves, were it not for the veneer of gratuitousness wrapped around them.

Barely a year later, in November 1986, Biafra and co. dusted off the heavy artillery on Bedtime For Democracy: twenty-one tracks, eighteen of which average two minutes each. Having rediscovered the brutality set aside on the previous record, Dead Kennedys nonetheless sporadically but stubbornly draw on rhythmic and harmonic devices borrowed this time from country music (the opening "Take This Job And Shove It", a reworking of a David Allan Coe song, and "Hope With The Jet Set"). The tracklist of Dead Kennedys' final studio album is rounded out by three longer tracks: "Cesspools In Eden", hardly a memorable song but notable for East Bay Ray's electric flourishes; "Chickenshit Conformist", which thrives on sudden tempo changes; and "Lie Detector", an impetuous and flawless hardcore-punk anthem. Biafra's lyrics also regain their sharpness and wit, throwing the insecurity of hardcore-metal bullies back in their faces on "Macho Insecurity" and railing against the hypocritical buyers of anarchy-symbol pins and shirts on "Anarchy For Sale".

The story of Dead Kennedys as a band ends in 1986, even before the release of Badtime For Democracy. The band's troubles had in fact begun the year Frankenchrist came out, which contained a reproduction of a work by the great artist H.R. Giger titled "Penis Landscape". Diehard associations of uptight, bigoted parents feared for their children's psychological safety and sued Alternative Tentacles. In the end the trial came to nothing (screw moralistic prudishness, pardon my language), but covering the legal costs left Biafra and co. financially ruined anyway, pushing the band toward its breakup.

The vocalist would go on to build a respectable solo career, but in 2000 he was dragged to court by none other than his former bandmates over royalty disputes: East Bay Ray, Peligro and Flouride accused him of pocketing the lion's share of the songs' royalties without paying the other three their rightful share. Biafra was found guilty of fraud and had to pay the former Dead Kennedys members a total of two hundred thousand dollars. Many believe the three actually dragged Biafra to court as payback for his refusal to license "Holiday In Cambodia" for a Levi's commercial. What followed was a dismal spectacle of mutual accusations, disputes over commercial activities tied to the Dead Kennedys name and the use of their songs in films and ads, and even another lawsuit, which ended with the other three members being granted the right to revive the Dead Kennedys name without their historic founder.

Getting back to the music, it's worth noting the release of Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death, a tasty collection of b-sides and rarities, put out in 1987, again on Alternative Tentacles.

The opening one-two punch of "Police Truck" and "Too Drunk To Fuck" is without question devastating, but other tracks stand out too, like "The Man With The Dog", "Life Sentence" and "Saturday Night Holocaust", all songs dripping with blood, adrenaline and napalm. Also of interest are the single versions of masterpieces like "California Über Alles" and "Holyday In Cambodia", presented in slightly less overwrought and morbid guises, as well as the cover of a Bobby Fuller classic, "I Fought The Law". Rendered epic and moving (an explosion of unbridled rebellious joy) in the version the Clash recorded in 1977, "I Fought The Law" becomes more menacing and disillusioned in the hands of Dead Kennedys. Finally, worth mentioning are also the live divertissements of "Pull My String" (it starts by hinting at "California Über Alles", then swallows up the Knack's "My Sharona", polemically turning it into "My Payola[2]", before exploding into a liberating, exhilarating chant) and "Night Of The Living Rednecks" (the rhythm section improvises a be-bop groove while Biafra embroiders over it with a delirious story to declaim).

If these seventeen tracks can be considered, at least from a discographic standpoint, minor offspring, one still can't help but recognize the undeniable value of a collection that, far from being a mere hodgepodge of celebratory material, gives us back some of the band's lesser-known episodes - no less worthy of interest - from the Californian group's history.

In 2001 Manifesto Records released the live album Munity On The Bay, which collects live tracks recorded around the States between 1982 and 1986, followed in 2004 by the far more significant Live At The Deaf Club, a recording of a full concert the Dead Kennedys played at the Deaf Club in San Francisco on March 3, 1979. This latter live album is highly recommended over the former, not only because it's an important piece of raw historical testimony, but also thanks to a breathtaking setlist: from a surprising funk version of "Kill The Poor" to the first version of "When Ya Get Draft," titled "Back In Rhodesia," from the inevitable "California Über Alles" and "Holiday In Cambodia" to "Police Truck," from the enjoyable covers of Honeycombs ("Have I The Right?") and Beatles ("Back In The U.S.S.R.") to the now-classic cover of "Viva Las Vegas."

It's nice to remember the Dead Kennedys like this: pissed off at the world but not yet torn apart by legal disputes and bad blood, far from the traps and ugliness that the independent record industry system had in store for them (you can play at being dissidents as much as you like, but in the end money always wins out over music, unfortunately). And it doesn't even matter much whether Biafra was right or his former bandmates were, there's no point taking sides as many fans have done, because the memory of the Dead Kennedys - the real, revolutionary ones, not the caricatures who reunited in recent years just to scrape together some cash - should have come before everything else. Über Alles.

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