Still Kicking
"Two things really were important to us: a sense of humour and some melodic sensibility of some sort."
If shock value is one of the major tenets of punk rock, ‘80s San Francisco outfit Dead Kennedys must surely qualify as one of the most pure punk bands of all time. Ruffling plenty of feathers from the get-go with their name alone, it was predominantly the scathingly satirical lyrics of frontman Jello Biafra (who left permanently when they originallly dissolved in 1986) that really outraged the ultra-conservative moral majority. As well as releasing singles such as California Uber Alles, Too Drunk To Fuck and Holiday In Cambodia, they further triggered obscenity trials with the artwork for 1985 third album, Frankenchrist, amid many such episodes. Sadly this ruckus tended to overshadow their quite unique music, an amalgam of surf, psych, spaghetti western, garage and rockabilly which has stood the test of time remarkably well.
“For one thing the music stands up because [guitarist East Bay] Ray and I had been musicians for a while,” reflects bassist Klaus Flouride, “and Bruce [Slesirger – drums] – who was Ted on [1980 debut] Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables – he’d also played a little bit in bands, and Biafra had played in a band called The Healers or something in Colorado when he was there, but we were all record collectors and we all brought all sorts of different music to the band. Two things really were important to us: a sense of humour and some melodic sensibility of some sort. Most people knew Sex Pistols and the Ramones at the time, and we really didn’t want to be one of those bands so we created our own little template that involved humour, melody and a lot of politics. We were known as a political band by a lot of people, but I think it was mostly social politics – we peek into things that make people act like they do.
“Back then we were looking at things like [child murderer narrative] I Kill Children, which got us into a mess of trouble, and the first album got us into trouble later. The people who got so offended didn’t read the lyrics, and if they had they would have seen that the bridge for instance explains that we’re looking inside the minds of people and why they act this way. I think most of our songs, at least ones like Terminal Preppie, Forest Fire and Well Paid Scientist [from 1982 album Plastic Surgery Disasters] – all that stuff still applies, including unfortunately a lot of the political stuff. We weren’t telling you what to think – and we still aren’t – rather than saying, ‘Here’s some seeds for you to think about’ and just getting them to think.
“We weren’t just complaining about how fucked up people are we were exploring it, like, ‘Why? What causes this?’ Unfortunately the short answer is always greed and avarice and stuff like that. We were aware that things were fucked up, but we weren’t just saying, ‘Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue’ – which is wonderful stuff, but it’s not what we were about.”
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