Dead Kennedys: Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

Dead Kennedys: Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

1987

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Police Truck  2. Too Drunk to Fuck  3. California Über Alles (single version)  4. The Man with the Dogs  5. Insight  6. Life Sentence  7. A Child and His Lawnmower  8. Holiday in Cambodia (single version)  9. I Fought the Law  10. Saturday Night Holocaust  11. Pull My Strings  12. Short Songs  13. Straight A's  14. Kinky Sex Makes the World Go 'Round  15. The Prey  16. Night of the Living Rednecks  17. Buzzbomb from Pasadena (alternate version)




This is it! This is what got me into the band...It was one in a pile of CD's I picked up for my birthday as a teenager when I was first exploring the world of punk (I believe I went over all this before in the Circle Jerks "Group Sex" post) and this shit really sealed the deal...I must have listened to this a few thousand times. To this day I can still recite all the lyrics for the entire album off the top of my head (even the spoken-word track!!). I don't have the CD anymore, but I have an old vinyl copy which is pretty interesting because the final two songs are on a separate flexi-disc...

 Y'know, those floppy, paper-thin, plastic-film discs, like the kind they'd give away at McDonald's that would have a jingle or something on it...

If you're only going to pick up one Dead Kennedys album, pick up the McDonald's one...The part about the pickles always gives me goosebumps...Wait, what am I saying? Pick up "Give Me Convenience or Give me Death"! It's a compilation of non-album singles, B-Sides, live tracks (of songs that didn't appear on the albums) and an odd alternate take of "Buzzbomb," that Jello sings in an old lady voice that ends up sounding like the Crucifucks...

 Somehow this posthumous collection of odds and ends up capturing the spirit of the band better than any greatest hits ever could...This is where you find all the prime stuff..."Police Truck," "Too Drunk to Fuck," "Insight" are all punk classics..."Holiday in Cambodia" and "California Über Alles" appear here too, but in their original single versions, which sound pretty similar to the versions on "Fresh Fruit", except they're maybe a little less trebly and not quite as intense. This version of "Holiday in Cambodia" doesn't have the whole "Pol Pot" section, either...

But the real highlight is "Pull My Strings" which is one of the best live recordings ever...The band was invited to play at a music awards show and took the stage in white dress shirts (like the Knack (or some other nice band that you'd take home to Mom) would wear), turned around their hidden skinny ties to form dollar signs and proceeded to eviscerate the music establishment...

 It's hard to single out the greatest moment in the song, but here's a few:

• Jello's announcement that the band are no longer a punk rock band, they're now a new wave band... 
•  Turning "My Sharona" into "My Payola."
•  The mock Bob Dylan backing vocals during the breakdown. 
• The Line: "And when I'm rich and meet Bob Hope, we'll shoot some golf and shoot some dope..." 

Things do drop off a bit at the end, with "The Prey," which is a stalker narrative set to boring lounge jazz, and "Kinky Sex Makes the World Go Around" which has always creeped me out...It's essentially a political spoken word piece (I mean, I can kind of make out a static-y version of "Bleed For Me" in the background, I think...), but the sound of the Iron Lady orgasming about a war turns my iron stomach...

Yuck!!

It's weird that there's no tracks dating later than the 1982 "Halloween single" on here...



I can't recall the band releasing any singles from the "Frankenchrist" or "Bedtime for Democracy" albums, so there's no B-Sides that I know of...Does anybody know if there were any outtakes from those two albums? Hmmm, that's got me thinking, which is always a dangerous proposition...

Anyway, a little birdie told me it's Friday, so it's time to sit down in the fluffy chair, flame up the herb, woof down the beer and listen to some music...Let's do "Pull My Strings" by the Dead Kennedys...Have a great weekend everyone!

     

Dead Kennedys: Bedtime for Democracy

Dead Kennedys: Bedtime for Democracy

1986

Alternative Tentacles Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Take This Job and Shove It  2. Hop with the Jet Set  3. Dear Abby  4. Rambozo the Clown  5. Fleshdunce  6. The Great Wall  7. Shrink  8. Triumph of the Swill  9. Macho Insecurity  10. I Spy  11. Cesspools in Eden  12. One-Way Ticket to Pluto  13. Do the Slag  14. A Commercial  15. Gone with My Wind  16. Anarchy for Sale  17. Chickenshit Conformist  18. Where Do Ya Draw the Line  19. Potshot Heard 'Round the World  20. D.M.S.O.  21. Lie Detector



**** Note: It's late and I'm too tired to edit, so I'm just posting this (despite the fact that every time I take a quick glance at this post I spot another glaring error)...Hey, look at it this way...You can test your editing skills at home on this raw, unedited post! A fine, constructive way to spend a Thursday....***********


Ugh, my portable CD player broke when I started my shift at work yesterday...The good news is that it has an FM radio built in, so I can listen to that...The bad news is that I have to listen to 8 hours of radio everyday...I don't know where you live (a few guesses, either Hale, Michigan, Tempe. AZ or Tucson, AZ) but radio here in the Tempe/Phoenix area is the worst! I can't even take 5 seconds of modern auto-tune pop radio and there's no way I'm going to spend the day listening to Tejano, so that leaves about 1 classic rock station, 1 active rock station, 1 soft rock station and 1 random hits of the 60's, 70's, and 80's (with that horrible Sheryl Crow/Kid Rock duet from the 2000's thrown in for good measure) station,  so I usually flick back and forth between those three stations...I've had people recommend NPR, but holy Christ, is NPR boring! 

In the eight hours I listened to radio yesterday I heard that acoustic Green Day graduation/last episode of Seinfeld song three times!!!

 Same with "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2."  I also had to listen to Creed...To be more accurate I had to listen to about 80 different Creeds... Who the hell started that Creed style of singing where everything is delivered in a manly, blustery manner in an octave lower than usual?  I heard Jeff Tweedy of Wilco refer to it as the "Singing Mule" style, which is perfect...Was it Alice in Chains? Pearl Jam? If so...

FUCK YOU ALICE AND CHAINS AND PEARL JAM!! WHAT HELL HATH YOU WROUGHT UPON MY EARS?!?!?!?! Nahhh, I guess that's not fair...I'm sure they had no idea what they had unleashed...Actually, thinking back, I believe the Stone Temple Pilots were officially the one too many...



I also heard a new Avenged Sevenfold song that sounded so much like Metallica's "Sad But True" that I couldn't believe it! It's seriously exactly the same except the words are different!! Check it out if you don't believe me!

...and here's the Metallica one...Or it might just be the Avenged Sevenfold again...It's hard to tell...

But man, those Avenged Sevenfold guys are brave...

Sure, bitchy T-shirts aside,  Overkill was pretty cool about letting them steal their logo, but Metallica have a pretty litigious reputation... Oh yea, another thing that blew my mind...Somebody actually called in to request "Sweet Home Alabama"!!! Who in the hell hasn't had enough of that song?!?! Why even bother calling? You know they're going to play it every five minutes anyway!  Either way, I bought a new CD player and hopefully that'll be the last I hear of the radio for another 10 years...

Anyway, I didn't invite you here to bitch about the radio all day...I invited you here to talk about the final Dead Kennedys album, "Bedtime for Democracy"...

 It's weird that this is the only DK album I don't have on vinyl, since it was the first one of the first records I ever bought ..I must have given my copy to a friend or something...It's also weird that at one point in time this was easily my favorite Dead Kennedys album, since it's probably my least favorite one now...I don't know why my perception of it changed so much...I think I might have been blinded over how brilliant the best tracks on the album are (there really are some stunners) but for the most part a lot of it is kind of an indistinguishable, samey-sounding (although pretty exciting) blur...

It's one of those instances where the lyrics are stronger than the music. In the past the incredible lyrics were matched to ace melodies and interesting instrumentation, but now the music kind of just functions as a plain, white backing...It might be their decision to go back to "In God We Trust, Inc"-style straight hardcore, however lacking the raw enthusiasm for hardcore they once had...Still, there's some knockout stuff here that ranks above my favorite DK material...I love "Shrink" which has a hilarious sci-fi concept...Basically, to overcome overpopulation and the dwindling of Earth's resources, they come up with a plan to shrink people to insect size, but of course once all the common citizens (and their poodles) are shrunk the people in power break it to them that they, of course, won't be joining in:

"So now you've made the big shrink
Meanwhile we'll keep acting big
We well-bred beautiful people
Who says we have to go too?
Cops and Mason businessmen
Were exempted from the ovens.
As if you weren't already
the rest of you are all our termites now..."

It works so well because the great idea is matched to a catchy melody that won't leave your head...Compare this to "D.M.S.O" or "Dear Abby" which also have funny and smart concepts, but ultimately fail because there's no melody at all (That said, one of the most amusing things on the album is "A Commercial" which is essentially spoken-word)...

The best songs on here expand on the mid-tempo "Frankenchrist" style."Chickenshit Conformist" being one of my personal favorites...It's kind of heartbreaking to hear the normally indefatigable Jello Biafra finally giving up and outlining his disillusionment with the punk scene. The lyrics couldn't be more dead-on:

"If the music's gotten boring
It's because of the people who want everyone to sound the same
Who drive the bright people out of our so-called scene
Till all that's left is a meaningless fad...

Who played last night?
"I don't know, I forgot.
But diving off the stage Was a lot of fun"..."

And "Cesspools in Eden" is just the band doing what they do best...Revealing the (this time literally) poisonous underbelly of the American Dream over a creepy crawly soundtrack...Dream homes built over toxic waste dumps...Nothing to do but drink pink lemonade and watch Martinez burn...

So yea, if I was forced to rank DK albums this would be on the bottom, but that's not really indicative of its quality...It still rules, it's just that not every album can be the best one...Still, I can imagine punk purists ranking this much higher than more experimental offerings like "Plastic Surgery Disasters" or "Frankenchrist." It's just that my personal tastes lean more towards their more "out-there" stuff..The overall quality of the band's output was so high anyway that ranking the albums against each other is pretty pointless...

Let's just shut up and listen to "Shrink" by the Dead Kennedys...Enjoy...

Dead Kennedys: Frankenchrist

Dead Kennedys: Frankenchrist

1985

Alternative Tentacles Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Soup Is Good Food  2. Hellnation  3. This Could Be Anywhere (This Could Be Everywhere)  4. A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch  5. Chicken Farm  6. Jock-O-Rama (Invasion of the Beef Patrol)  7. Goons of Hazzard  8. M.T.V. - Get off the Air  9. At My Job  10. Stars and Stripes of Corruption


The infamous "Frankenchrist" album...Believe it or not, it wasn't the "offensive" title that got them in trouble (although I'm sure it didn't help), but a poster insert by the highly respected artist H.R Giger (who just very recently passed away)...

Unfortunately, my copy is one of the later pressings and didn't come with the banned "Penis Landscape" poster...Here are some TV show appearances from the time period to give it a bit more context...Like this appearance on Oprah, back when Oprah's show was pretty bad-ass...As a kid, I remember seeing a lot more arguments on there and a lot less Nicholas Sparks..

...and here's a news thingy that's pretty insane...Hard to believe there was a time you could end up in court for a making a record...The good old days, indeed!

The odd thing about it is, I can't think of many records that would have lyrics more useful to children than "Frankenchrist"! "Soup is Good Food" prepares you for the outside world more realistically than any graduation commencement speech I've ever heard and his take-down of the whole high school athletics culture on "Jock-O-Rama (Invasion of the Beef Patrol)" is monumental...

Here's the lyrics for reference:

"You really like gorillas?
We've got just the pet for you
It's the way you're forced to act
To survive our schools

Make your whole life revolve around sports
Walk tough-don't act too smart
Be a mean machine
Then we'll let you get ahead

Jock-O-Rama-Save my soul
We're under the thumb of the Beef Patrol
The future of America is in their hands
Watch it roll over Niagara Falls
Pep rally in the holy temple
And you're forced to go
Masturbate en masse
With the favored religious cult
Cheerleaders yell-"Ra Ra Team"
From the locker room parades the prime beef
When archaeologists dig this up
They'll either laugh or cry

Jock-O-Rama-On the brain
Redneck-a-thon drivin' me insane
The future of America is in their hands
Watch it roll over Niagara Falls
Unzip that old time religion
On the almighty football field
Beerbellies of all ages
Come to watch the gladiators bleed
"Now boys, this game ain't played for fun
You're going out there to win
How d'ya win?
Get out there
And snap the other guy's knee!"

Beat 'em up! Beat 'em up!
Ra Ra Ra
Snap those spinal cords
Ha Ha Ha

The star quarterback lies injured
Unconscious on the football field
Looks like his neck's been broken
Seems to happen somewhere every year

His mom and dad clutch themselves and cry
Their favorite son will never walk again
Coach says, "That boy gave a hundred percent
What spirit
What a man"

But who cares?
Games over-Let's go get wasted man
To the 7-11, to the liquor store
Let's party all night and party some more

Another Trans-Am
Wrapped itself around a telephone pole
"I ain't drunk, officer
I just fell gettin' out of my car"

Don't worry about it, son
We were that way when we were young
You've got all the skills
To make a damn good businessman

Jock-O-Rama-that's the law
Come lick the butts of the Beef Patrol
If the future of America is handed to them
Watch it roll over Niagara Fall"

That's what's so shaky about labeling art as harmful or pornographic...To the people who put Jello on trial, this was unspeakably profane stuff, on the other hand,  I think everybody should hear these lyrics...I also happen to think that the most controversial track, "Stars and Stripes of Corruption," is a pretty powerful piece of political criticism for being "just a punk rock song."  Is some of the language shocking? Sure, but not more shocking than a lot of the mean-spirited jive that I see passing as politics these days...

"Tell me who's the real patriots
The Archie Bunker slobs waving flags?
Or the people with the guts to work
For some real change
Rednecks and bombs don't make us strong
We loot the world, yet we can't even feed ourselves
Our real test of strength is caring
Not the toys of war we sell the world
Just carry on, thankful to be farmed like worms
Old glory for a blanket
As you suck on your thumbs

Real freedom scares you
'Cos it means responsibility
So you chicken out and threaten me
Saying, "Love it or leave it"
I'll get beat up if I criticize it
You say you'll fight to the death
To save your worthless flag
If you want a banana republic that bad
Why don't you go move to one?...

I'm thankful I live in a place
Where I can say the things I do
Without being taken out and shot
So I'm on guard against the goons
Trying to take my rights away
We've got to rise above the need for cops and laws
Let kids learn communication
Instead of schools pushing competition
How about more art and theater instead of sports?"

 Believe it or not, that's just a small excerpt of the lyrics, the song runs along for about 6 and a half minutes at punk speed, so it's pretty text-heavy stuff...You really get maximum enjoyment from this album if you're sitting down, lyric sheet in hand...Not that the music isn't spectacular to listen to...

This has become one of my favorite DK albums, because they try so much different stuff...The hardcore speed is toned down in favor of more mid-tempo psychedelic/hard-rock...Really, the only track I'd call straight hardcore would be "Hellnation." Instead they opt for unexpected touches, like the triumphant trumpet fanfare in the middle of "M.T.V. - Get off the Air" and the synth-heavy industrial rock of  "At My Job." I also love the way that "Jock-O-Rama" is sequenced right next to "Goons of Hazzard," so we get to see what becomes of meat-heads when they grow up...

But all the weirdness suits the band perfectly...I think they hit their peak here, musically and lyrically...It's too bad there's such an aura of negativity surrounding this album...In my mind, despite the sometimes ugly bluntness of its delivery, it's a very positive message with a healthy sense of humor...It never comes across as a mere catalog of the world's ills like most punk albums...He actually offers up some answers, and although you can argue whether or not they're the right answers, at least it's something other than the usual "roll over and die"...

"It's the only world we've got
Let's protect it while we can
That's all there is and there ain't no more..."

 Here's "Stars and Stripes of Corruption" by Dead Kennedys...Enjoy...

Dead Kennedys: Plastic Surgery Disasters

Dead Kennedys: Plastic Surgery Disasters

1982

Alternative Tentacles Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Government Flu  2. Terminal Preppie  3. Trust Your Mechanic  4. Well Paid Scientist  5. Buzzbomb  6. Forest Fire  7. Halloween  8. Winnebago Warrior  9. Riot  10. Bleed for Me  11. I Am the Owl  12. Dead End  13. Moon Over Marin




"Plastic Surgery Disasters" is a 1982 concept album about Joan Rivers...

Oh yea, I meant to talk about this in the last post...The inserts in these Dead Kennedys albums are always amazing...

They really go all-out in these things...Usually resembling a newspaper packed full of hilarious and/or horrifying photos and headlines...Wait, that's exactly like a newspaper, come to think of it...

 The interesting thing about the "Plastic Surgery Disasters" insert is that there's about twenty four 12 X 12 pages but all the lyrics are crammed onto one page and are written so small that I can barely read 'em...But that's probably because I'm a super old man now...I can recall reading these clearly on the dang CD booklet (which must have been microscopic!!!) and having no problem...

Thinking back to those days, I remember this album not quite clicking with me at first...I had only heard (and obsessed over) "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death," "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables" and  "In God We Trust, Inc" and when I first put on "Plastic Surgery Disasters" it seemed much darker, murkier and text-heavy than any of those albums...It didn't quite hit the pop pleasure center that the other albums (believe it or not) hit for me...Not to mention the cover just confused the shit out of me (imagine my surprise when years later I discovered that tiny. dried, leathery hand belonged to a human being! It always registered as a grotesque doll hand or something...).

But over time this has grown on me immensely and has become one of my favorites...It's so much more dense and detailed than their previous stuff...Instead of the generalized societal finger-pointing, Jello delves more into the specific characters that make up Dumb America, like the "Terminal Preppie"and the "Winnebago Warrior"...And "Forest Fire" and "Riot" are so riveting and finely detailed that they function as satiric short stories...Particularly "Riot" which follows the empty-headed riot fantasies, normally associated with punk records, to their logical conclusions...Where you wind up homeless the next day from burning down your city and you eventually run into the well-armed wall of police who get to riot all they please...Such great stuff...

The music is also more detailed...All the various influences are more integrated...It's still hardcore punk, but hardcore punk with psychedelia and Ennio Morricone woven throughout...And check out the band's flawless grasp of pop on "Moon Over Marin." Jello is actually the weak link on this song, his vocal line nowhere near grasping the greatness of that guitar melody... It shows that the band could have been pumping out new-wave pop hits if they really wanted to, but instead chose to focus on pissing everybody off with abrasive punk..It's unexpectedness makes it one of my all-time favorite DK songs, along with "Bleed for Me," which also appears on this album..."Bleed For Me" is just a classic punk blast, with a great chorus...Plus the line, "When cowboy Ronnie comes to town, forks out his tongue at human rights," always cracks me up for some reason...I know it's just a figure of speech, but here's how I imagine it looking...

                                                                 LOLOLOL!!!!

The specificity of the politics on these DK albums don't date them too badly (the unfortunate thing about politics, is that there's always another name you can insert that does the job just as well...) and it actually makes the albums more interesting than the bland, generalized sloganeering that you got from post-80's punk...So if you're a DK fan, don't miss it, if you're one of those folks that hate politicized music, you're probably not a Dead Kennedys fan in the first place...

Here's "Moon Over Marin" by Dead Kennedys...Enjoy...

Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables/In God We Trust, Inc

Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables

1980

Cleopatra/Manifest Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1.  Kill the Poor  2. Forward to Death  3. When Ya Get Drafted  4. Let's Lynch the Landlord  5. Drug Me  6. Your Emotions  7. Chemical Warfare  8. California Über Alles  9. I Kill Children   10. Stealing People's Mail  11. Funland at the Beach  12. Ill in the Head  13. Holiday in Cambodia  14. Viva Las Vegas



 The version I have is the 2002 vinyl reissue released by Cleopatra/Manifesto after the whole Jello Biafra vs the rest of Dead Kennedys trial, where Alternative Tentacles lost the rights to the DK back catalog or something...I don't really know the details of the trial and I've never been interested in court-room dramas...

 "Ripped from today's headlines..."

The back cover on this album has a few different variations...The one I have looks like this..

 But originally the band all had heads, until someone from the lounge band found out their photo was being used without their permission and sued, so the heads were later removed...

However, the CD copy I grew up with had a totally different back cover, that depicted some old folks chilling out under their Alternative Tentacles poster...

Which back cover do you have?

(paste the photo of the back cover of your copy of "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables" here...Make sure you use super-glue so that way it doesn't fall off and disappear from the internet forever...)

I like this record, but then again, everybody likes this record...For an album that was so shocking at the time, with song titles like  "I Kill Children," "Let's Lynch the Landlord" and "Kill the Poor," it's manged to worm its way into mainstream culture over the past 30 years..."Holiday in Cambodia" (and to a lesser extent "California Über Alles") are everywhere...Movies, TV shows, video games...

It's hard to remember the last time I went to a bar and didn't hear "Holiday in Cambodia" pop up on the jukebox...And there's a good reason for that...These songs are well-written and catchy as hell... "Holiday" resonates with people because it was essentially a thrilling update of the well-established "dark, political, west-coast psychedelia" template, just with the all the "hippie-shit" scraped away...And holy shit, does it work...For some reason the psychedelic touches make the real-life horrors seem much more vivid and feverish...Think "Apocalypse Now" for the visual application of this technique...



And a quick glance at the title might give the suggestion that "Kill the Poor" is a dumb Dayglo Abortions-level shock-rocker, but in reality it's smart, funny, concise AM-radio pop...It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine the Ronettes or somebody singing this melody behind a wall of piano and strings on AM radio if it wasn't for Jello's lyrics, which are the most enjoyable part for me, by the way... He has a uniquely hilariously paranoid-political style, although I think he's probably more spot-on than a lot of people would like to admit...Sure, the Neutron bomb wasn't used to wipe out the lower class, but it's not a stretch to imagine that the thought may have crossed somebody's mind at some point...And as far as I know, Jerry Brown hasn't turned anyone into a lamp, but I don't think that these were intended to be Nostradamus-like predictions...They're satire...And it's often side-splitting stuff, too...Invariably, when I put on a DK record, I'm clutching the lyric sheet in hand, giggling along...



 I'd say that "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables" is a great place to get into  Dead Kennedys, just don't stop here, like a lot of people seem to do...Jello's bleating vibrato vocals might be a bit much at first, but East Bay Ray's ominous Eight-Miles-High/Spaghetti Western guitars will get you through the process, and inevitably you won't be able to imagine it any other way...An essential, American punk classic for sure...

Here's "Kill the Poor" by Dead Kennedys...Enjoy...

 

Dead Kennedys: In God We Trust, Inc

1981

Manifesto Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing:  1. Religious Vomit  2. Moral Majority  3. Hyperactive Child  4. Kepone Factory  5. Dog Bite  6. Nazi Punks Fuck Off  7. We've Got a Bigger Problem Now  8. Rawhide


I didn't own a copy of this growing up, but my friend Josh had the cassette, which we'd listen to all the time...One thing I'll always remember about the tape was that side two was blank, with a message urging the owner to use it to pirate away profits from the recording industry (I believe the cassette for "Group Sex" by the Circle Jerks was also blank and contained a similar message)...

...and this was pre-Napster! They should have issued the CD on a rewritable disc to continue the tradition!

Eventually, I bought it on CD, gave that away and very recently acquired the reissued Manifesto vinyl (don't worry, the remainder of my DK vinyls are Alternative Tentacles, for fairness' sake). It's always a blast to hear this again..."In God We Trust, Inc" finds the band tackling the hardcore punk sound that was arguably reaching its peak around this time, although there were definitely elements of hardcore on "Fresh Fruit..." it ultimately leaned towards a more melodic 70's punk sound...But there's not much in the way of melody here...It's all about unbridled adrenalin...Spitting out lyrics faster than you can read the lyric sheet...

 Highlights are "Moral Majority" and "Nazi Punks Fuck Off," which squarely hits their respective targets (religion and thugs at punk shows, respectively):

"It's the new dark ages with the fascists toting bibles,
Cheap nostalgia for the Salem Witch Trials  ..."

-Moral Majority



"Stab your backs when you trash our halls,
Trash a bank if you've got real balls..."

-Nazi Punks Fuck Off

There's also a highly entertaining cocktail-jazz/hardcore remake of "California Über Alles," aimed at Ronald Reagan, instead of Jerry Brown. Man, it seems like we've been talking about Reagan a lot lately...I think it's because I'm in the middle of a run of 80's punk albums, and Reagan was such an integral figure as the absurdist villain...Anyway, I'm dying to make the "Tricky Dicky Screwdriver"...I've got the Jack Daniels and Purple Kool-Aid, but for the life of me, I cannot find any fermaldahyde from the jar with Hitler's brain in it...

 Anyone out there know of any substitutes I can use for the recipe?

The cover of "Rawhide" that ends the album is a lot of fun too...It's such a great showcase for East Bay Ray's western-guitar style...Hell, the whole things good...Even songs that aren't that great ("Hyperactive Child ," "Dog Bite") are at least funny and/or short....The album should particularly interest fans of hardcore punk, or work as an excellent gateway for those looking to make the leap into that genre...

Here's "Nazi Punks Fuck Off"...Enjoy...

Dead Fucking Last: Proud to Be...

Dead Fucking Last: Proud to Be...

1995

Epitaph Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Proud To Be DFL  2. Word Of Mouth  3. Lost Cause  4. Return Of The Knucklehead  5. Mr. Popular 6. Function At The Center 7. Home Is Where The Heart Is 8. Hit The Floor  9.  Club Stupid 10. Minus Adam  11. Better Off Dead  12. S.B.C.G.  13. Free Haircut  14. Society's Pressure 15. Self Pity 16. Action Everybody 17. Sourpuss  18. Insane Authority  19.
Good Cop, Bad Cop  20. What's The Difference 



I consider the mid 90's to be the golden period for Epitaph Records....There was no Screamo or Mall-Punk in sight, and the label was putting out insanely popular albums by Rancid, NOFX and the Offspring, but most of the lesser-known bands were just as good...



I mean, listen to those first couple "Punk-o-Rama" comps...They were incredible! And one of my favorites of those lesser-known bands was DFL (Dead Fucking Last)...

Anyone who's read this blog knows that 80's hardcore is one of my favorite genres, and this record is a loving re-creation of the era...Everything about it is spot on: Breakneck tempos, cracked backing vocals, fucking decent break-downs,..It sounds almost exactly like when the Beastie Boys tackle hardcore, probably due to Ad-Rock's involvement  (he played bass on the band's first album and produces this one in the same gritty, black & white, New York hardcore production style)...

What made the album so memorable was that underneath all that blurred aggression, this was some catchy shit...Once you hear the title track and "Society's Pressure" just try getting it out of your head....Best of all though is "Function at the Center." Maybe it's because I arrived at  hardcore via metal, but I love crunchy, mid-tempo hardcore songs, and the use of dub echo on the vocals is a nice touch...

 Sad these guys weren't around longer...I bought the cassette-only"DFL Tape Show" that came out a coupla years after "Proud to Be..." 

BTW, it's insane to me that the "cassette-only" genre is making a comeback...I'm holding out for the return of digital cassettes, though...

...Around the time of the "Tape Show,"  DFL released another album called "Grateful" that I still haven't been able to find a copy of...

Which is a real bummer cos I never got to find out what the song "300 Lb. Mushroom" was all about...Maybe it had something to do with this, eh? Eh?

 Damn, sorry this post isn't very long today...I guess I don't have much to say about DFL...For some reason I'm having trouble pontificating too much on a bunch of 1 minute hardcore songs, but to fill things out here are a bunch of random words strung together to look like an extra paragraph:

Yarn, blowfish gum wrapper ink-pen banana peel. But will Tuesday sucker punch you today? My guess is whoo-ha diddly widdly bumper-car bindle-boy. Shoes, shoes, where are my shoes? The answer is news, news, newspaper, news. Number 10 whizz-bang oaf-boy bringer-of-bad-clam hambone.  How much for house keys when the floor mats are free? Freedom is a beaded bracelet to which no wrist must ever cling too freely...How much musk melon is too much mushed melon? 

Here's "Function at the Center" Enjoy...

Dead Boys: Young Loud and Snotty/We Have Come for Your Children

Dead Boys: Young Loud and Snotty

1977

Sire Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Sonic Reducer  2. All This and More  3. What Love Is  4. Not Anymore  5. Ain't Nothin' to Do  6. Caught with the Meat in Your Mouth  7. Hey Little Girl  8. I Need Lunch  9. High Tension Wire  10. Down in Flames  11. Medley: Not Anymore/Ain't Nothin' to Do




Special Note: I'm editing this while I'm blasted on beers, so it might work best of you read it with a drunken slur...Let the typos and rambling begin:

I used to have this on cassette back in high school...Definitely a favorite from when I was first discovering punk...I lost it when I lost all my tapes and never bothered to pick up another copy, since I kind of played it to death back in the day...They have this in the jukebox at the bar I frequent, so I'd been pumping it full of quarters recently to hear some "I Need Lunch" and realized how much I'd missed having the album around...

One day me and my friend Jonathan went to the Zia Records in Tempe and I snagged a used CD copy of "Young, Loud, and Snotty"...I took it home, eager to hear it again, put it in my CD player only to be greeted by a phat beat...

"Hmmm, I don't remember the Dead Boys ever rapping about AK's and blunts...And what does 'Thug for life! BEEE-YOOOOTCH!!' mean?" I though to myself...

I ejected the CD and took a closer and look, only to realize...

THIS WASN'T THE DEAD BOYS AT ALL!! IT WAS FLIPPIN' "THUG LIFE" BY TUPAC!!!!

So I went back and returned the Cd, where the clerk scratched his head on how this could of happened...They didn't have another copy, so I picked up something else...A few days later I went to Eastside Records and  picked up the vinyl copy of "Young, Loud, and Snotty" but when I got home and opened it up, inside was a copy of...



 ..BARRY MANILOW LIVE!!!

Nah, I'm just kidding...It really was the Dead Boys this time..I just wanted to post a picture of that Barry Manilow album cover...I always joke that when I was a kid everybody's mom owned that album, but I swear that's true!

Anyway, I didn't invite you here on a Friday Night to talk about Barry Fuckin' Manilow...I Brought you here so we can consume many beers and crank up the Dead Boys all night!  God, this shit rocks so much...I can still remember playing it for the first time somewhere in the 90's...It takes about 45 seconds for album-opener "Sonic Reducer" to cement itself as one of the all-time punk anthems...The cyclical, muted menace of the opening riff eventually gives way to churning punk as Stiv Bators pouts the classic opening lines:

"I don't need anyone
Don't need no mom and dad
Don't need no pretty face
Don't need no human race
I got some news for you
Don't even need you too..."

And that's it...That sums it all up...You could waste a million words dissecting it, but you're never going to nail it as eloquently as that single, stupid verse...You kind of go through the record trying to determine if these guys were a group of geniuses or a bunch of drooling morons...The way "Sonic Reducer" achieves a universality with its antisocial message is very calculated...

 And listen to Stiv howl, "Look at me that way, bitch! Your face is gonna git a punch!" on "I Need Lunch..." Why do you smile when he says it? It's a horrible, disgusting thing to say! But there's a writerly vividness to Stiv's character on the album...And he delivers the line so brilliantly, that when the verse kicks back in it suddenly has a pronounced air of triumph and majesty to it...It's a real payoff moment for his character...The charismatic villain that you can't help but love... The fact that the band's playing so effortlessly summons the stench of piss and warm beer probably help sells the illusion too...There's a reason that a live-recording of "Hey Little Girl", done at CBGB's is placed prominently in the track listing...Gritty, scene-setting...

 Even though there are albums form the late 70's New York scene that I like better,  I still have to declare "Young, Loud, and Snotty" the ultimate CBGB album...I've never physically been there, but my mind has been there via this record...Who knows...Maybe it's not an accurate portrayal of the time and place at all, but it sure is evocative...

The only criticism that I could possibly level at it is that it seems to just kind of fizzle out, due to the odd decision to end the album on alternate takes of songs that had already appeared on side one...And it's not like they're radically different versions either...Must have ran out of songs or recording time or something...Oh well..."Sonic Reducer," "I Need Lunch," "Ain't Nothin' to Do"...The whole thing is classic...

Here's "I Need Lunch" by the Dead Boys...Enjoy...

Dead Boys: We Have Come for Your Children

1978

Sire Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. 3rd Generation Nation  2. I Won't Look Back  3. (I Don't Wanna Be No) Catholic Boy  4. Flame Thrower Love  5. Son of Sam  6. Tell Me  7. Big City  8. Calling on You  9. Dead and Alive  10. Ain't It Fun



This is a record I hadn't heard until maybe a year ago...I had grown up loving "Young, Loud and Snotty" and naturally I wanted more, but this album was just nowhere to be found back then...Pretty much all you ever heard was that it's so severely disappointing that it immediately did the band in...You know the old story...The sophomore slump...You have your whole life to write the first record, you have to write the second album on yer lunch break...

But I'm always suspicious of that story...Very rarely does a great band just suddenly, and out of nowhere, suck...Sucking is usually a gradual process, brought on by the loss of vital band members and/or  years of complacency, so I believe I went into "We Have Come for Your Children" with an open-mind...

And it turns out I like this record! No doubt, it's different than their debut...Ragged, sleazy punk and sexist lyrics are replaced by polished hard-rock and more diverse subject matter...And Stiv's vocals are much more restrained than his previous blood-curdling shrieks and sobs...It was almost shocking on first listen to hear that  "I Won't Look Back" is perfectly respectable power-pop! Listen to it, if you don't believe me!

I actually think they should have pursued this poppier direction a bit more...When they do the more traditional Dead Boys material like "(I Don't Wanna Be No) Catholic Boy," it comes across as a bit rote, but the songs with the more radio-ready hooks are sticky as hell...See their cover of the Rolling Stones' "Tell Me," "Calling on You," "I Won't look Back" and the awesome chorus on "Dead and Alive" for examples of when it goes gloriously right...

That said, the album's peak (and in the running for their best song ever) has to be "Ain't it Fun." Originally co-written by Cheetah Chrome for his pre-Dead Boys band, Rocket From the Tombs, it's the most perfect showcase imaginable for Stiv....It's almost like he was given a brief glimpse of his grim fate and came back from the void to do a presentation on it...Creepy, desperate, doomed...Ain't it Fun? I don't know, it doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs to me...If you're a Dead Boys fan, you've got to seek out this album for that track alone...On the other hand, this album seems to be best suited for non-Dead Boys fans...I still hear it get trashed by punks, but I think folks who are into punk/power-pop/hard rock would enjoy it very much...If one of those 3 genres isn't something you dig, then I'm betting its appeal will remain elusive...

BTW, as soon as I looked at the track listing, I just knew that when Stiv sang "Summer of Sam" it was going to come out as, "SUMMER OF SAY-YUM!" Well, the barking dogs are telling me to cut this short, so "We Have Come for Your Children" is good, Boko Haram is bad, and beers to infinity...

Here's "Tell Me" by the Dead Boys...I hope everyone has a great Friday Night!