I have been a fan of the Dead Kennedys since I first heard them back in 1983 or 84. It’s no exaggeration to say the band is 100% responsible for me becoming interested in politics. In fact, one of my most vivid teenage memories is my parents confiscating all of my punk albums as punishment for whatever fuck-up I’d gotten myself into (lord knows there were plenty of those), and then later returning ONLY the Dead Kennedys records, “because they have social value.”
I never got a chance to see the Dead Kennedys live, although my old man and I went to see Jello Biafra (singer, primary lyricist, and face of the band) on a spoken word tour at the University of Rhode Island back in 1990 or so. He was good… although by the second half he sounded kind of paranoid.
Or so I thought. Fact is, a lot of what Jello predicted -in politics, in society, in our media, in our surveillance state- has come true, and then some. And for perhaps the first time I ever, when I think of the world I grew up in, I feel… old.
Consider this your early open thread for Saturday night. I’ll post two more videos/songs (not necessarily Dead Kennedys) in comments, and I hope you’ll do the same.
