I promised to create some digestible playlists so that if you’ve ever been curious about a band you can figure out pretty quickly whether you like them our not.
Here’s the first one. Dead Kennedys. I’ll be the first to tell you, this band is not for everyone. I’ve written about what they mean to me. But this is one that if you’re like, “no way!” I will be like, “I get it.” Jello’s voice is divisive and abrasive, as is the lyrical content, as is the instrumentation, as is the sheer speed at which the music is often played, as is the vacillation between blindingly fast hardcore songs and multi-part mini-plays in the form of songs with drastic tempo and stylistic changes.
Here is a selection of songs that are both my favorites and that I think do justice to the band’s breadth and catalog.
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A little track-by-track commentary:
California Uber Alles: This is perhaps the band’s best-known song along with “Holiday in Cambodia,” which I left off for some reason. This was written at a moment when we were worried about totalitarianism from the left. Jello would later rewrite the lyrics to be about Reagan, when it became clear that American totalitarianism was coming from the right. (The left is more insidious than that!)
Viva Las Vegas: A cover, obviously. This is the closing track on the DK’s first album. They had a penchant for doing hardcore covers of various songs. The joke really works for me. They also did “Rawhide,” “Take This Job and Shove It,” “Back in the USSR,” and some others. Very fun.
The Great Wall: The first two tracks are off the first album; this one is off the last. Within the relatively constrained space of early- to mid-80s hardcore punk, the band went through quite a bit of evolution in the span of 5-6 years, including the theatricality of the Frankenchrist album. (Not to mention the well-documented controversy around that record.) The last album, Bedtime for Democracy, is in some ways a return to form. There are some longer, more complicated songs, but there are a lot of short, fast, tight songs like this one. I also like how lyrically this song is pretty unambiguously direct. I appreciate as well that the production on this album is much cleaner in a way that doesn’t take away from the fierceness of the music.
I Am The Owl: The chorus of this song has always bugged me. It’s just a bit dumb. But musically and in terms of vocal delivery, I love this song, and it may be my most-listened-to DK track.
Moral Majority: This song is a harbinger of the more elaborate act-out songs that would become prominent on future albums. I’m a real sucker for the corrupt-preacher intro, and I love the vehemence of the denunciation of those moral majority cronies—though part of that is my personal baggage.
Chemical Warfare: Back to the first album for the last song. This is a great one for having lots of parts and being like a little play. It’s also deeply horrific if you actually think about a version of this happening, but of course the point is this does happen in places that aren’t country clubs.
Reflecting on this selection of songs is helping me realize that one of the things I love about this band is that they take on some horrific realities and they are also fun and funny. Do I agree with Jello Biafra all the time? Heck no! But I always enjoy him and his antics, and that at least gets me to listen to what he’s saying. Here’s a picture of an autographed copy of one of his post-DK albums that he signed for me after I saw him speak when I was in college—featuring artwork by none other than Winston Smith. It hangs on my office wall.
Also, just for context, the band broke up after Bedtime for Democracy. There is an entity that has toured in latter years as the Dead Kennedys, which was the surviving members of the band MINUS Jello. In my view, that’s not the Dead Kennedys—similar to how Sabbath without Ozzy, just isn’t Sabbath.