Having spent a quarter-century pushing Americans to face the music, the former Dead Kennedys vocalist sits down to tell his thoughts on Obama, political parties, and participatory democracy. Credit: Ramoneart Photography. Up until that point, I had hated punk rock. I thought punk would fade like disco, and with any luck, be replaced with a musical movement led by artists who could actually play their instruments. But in the ambulance, the maniacal vibrato and caustic quips of Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra had me gaping.

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When the Sex Pistols, the signature band of the British punk scene, broke up following their San Francisco concert in January , punk rock entered a new era. The Clash, who went on to become the best of all punk rock bands, had not yet released an album in the United States, so there was no natural successor to the Sex Pistols. It was the moment for US punk, the rumblings of which had become hard to ignore by Already bands like the Avengers were gaining some fame and followings in the Bay Area, but in early American punk rock was still primarily based in New York. While the Ramones were a great band that played fast-tempo catchy tunes and helped create the American punk rock gestalt and aesthetic, they were also very much a New York band. The Sex Pistols, who until they broke up were by far the most recognized punk band, had often been as much about marketing as about music, beginning with the name itself. The Sex Pistols always sounded like a name that had come from a Malcolm McLaren-sponsored focus group or company meeting. You can almost picture McLaren throwing names around that combined sex and guns, two ideas that always sell. But it did not have the power or shock value of Dead Kennedys, the San Francisco band that was coming together around the time the Pistols played Winterland for the last time.
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Learn more about Amazon Prime. Skip to main content. Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. Verified Purchase. Dead Kennedys were sometimes compared to the Sex Pistols in the press, but their lyrics were much smarter and more insightful, and East Bay Ray a much more inventive guitarist than Steve Jones. A lot of people misunderstood Biafra's habit of writing
The best selling and generally the most critically acclaimed album by Dead Kennedys, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables has become a major staple of American punk. It is the only Dead Kennedys album to feature drummer Ted and guitarist Musically, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables laid the blueprint for future Dead Kennedys' releases; loud, noisy, fast, but with a sense of dynamics and musical individualism. The surf and rockabilly-inspired riffs owe something to Ramones ' most influential recordings, drawing from early American AM pop and rehashing it in the immediate, aggressive context of punk rock. The lyrics lend a significant bite to the breakthrough of the already strident musical assault. On the original vinyl version Side A was tracks 1—7 and Side B was tracks 8— The songs on Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables were recorded with minimal overdubs limited to vocals and the addition of rhythm guitar in places. The photo on the front cover, showing several police cars on fire, was taken during the White Night riots of 21 May , that resulted from the light sentence given to former San Francisco City Supervisor Dan White for the murder of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. When Biafra ran for mayor, one of his policies had been for a statue to be erected to Dan White, and for eggs, tomatoes and stones to be available nearby for pelting it. In , the album became the subject of a book, released in the UK, U.