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...
(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...
No comments:
Post a Comment