spirit

Punk rock saved a lot of lives, but Jello Biafra and Dead Kennedys showed me how to live mine.

Not that I swallowed everything they said hook line and sinker; rather, it was the method of their madness that I took as my personal model: agit-prop dsiguised as entertainment.

The "entertainment" part of the equation cannot be underestimated. Jello Biafra's lyrics, when separated from the music to which he composed, can be humorless and didactic. However, when coupled with the exhilratingly melodic hardcore punk that Dead Kennedys specialized in, the message was incisive, devastating... and given today's political climate, eerily prophetic.

I got into the DKs around the time of the Frankenchrist album, which resulted in the band and their indie label, Alternative Tentacles, being taken to court for "distribution of harmful matter to minors" in the form of a poster with images designed by reknowned Swiss artist H. R. Giger (best known for creating the creature from the Alien movies). They won the battle, but it was a Pyrrhic victory in the long run-- the band broke up shortly afterward.

I played catch-up with their whole catalog, and it was around this time (circa 1987) that I started to immerse myself in conspiracy theories as a hobby. I can directly attribute Biafra's paranoid rants as the inspiration for my future obsessions with JFK's assassination and other sinister plots to control the world.

You see, Biafra wasn't just some tinfoil-hat-wearing loonie-- for a punk rock frontman, he was always surprisingly articulate and very handy with a searing turn-of-phrase. His conspiratorial subject matter always fell between the frighteningly plausible to the hilariously over-the-top: in one verse he can hint that the Peace Corps builds labor camps instead of schools in Third World countries, and then also imply that Ronald Reagan dined on the flesh of charred Nicaraguan nuns!

In 1979, he ran for mayor in San Francisco and came in fourth-- out of a field of ten, and he even forced the top two contenders into a run-off! His platform was a sturdy demonstration mixing punk-rock politics with a near-'pataphysical absurdity: forcing businessmen in the Market district to wear clown suits; allocating empty high-rises for squatters; holding elections for police in their patrol areas; rent control...

He has paid the price for being such a polarizing figure in the punk rock scene. He was beaten by Berkeley punkers for being a "sellout", resulting in a shattered leg; his old bandmates sued him for back royalties; and the Frankenchrist trial sealed the band's fate for good.

But then again, he didn't sell his songs to Levi-Strauss for a TV commercial, which was the catalyst for the record label books being opened and the band lawsuit coming about; and at every opportunity Jello Biafra has risen to the occasion to decry corruption and hypocrisy at all levels of society. One recent story I heard was that he was asked to speak at some music symposium decrying the advent of Napster and file-sharing software. The symposium expected Biafra, an indie-label owner, to rant against the new technology infringing upon profits, but instead he used his time on the mic to inform everyone in the room that not only did he endorse file-sharing, but he also wished more people would do it! He cleared the room, but not before some people on the panel agreed with his outrageous sentiments.

I write all of this because I went out ands bought a 2-in-1 CD copy of two classic DK albums-- Plastic Surgery Disasters and In God We Trust Inc. Because Biafra lost the lawsuit against his former bandmates, he no longer owns the rights to the masters of those albums, so the money I spent goes not to him but to the other litigants. I intend to burn copies of the CD and return it to Amoeba Records for store credit.

I have the original albums on cassette and vinyl respectively. I could make copies from those sources onto my computer, and then burn them onto CD, but this time I took the shortcut-- I really needed to hear these albums again, and as quickly as possible. And I really need to hear them in my car-- what good is a song like "Buzzbomb" if I'm not cruising around like the protagonist in that song's lyrics?

Plus, it's not like I hate the remaining DKs-- I understand a musician's frustration at not being paid enough for musical contributions to classic albums. It's not like East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride and D.H. Peligro were session musicians-- they were a part of one of the greatest punk rock bands that ever formed. Their contributions were just as important as Jello's, even as Jello bore the brunt of the band's image by virtue of being the frontman. Ray's guitar lines are signature; Klaus' basslines rise above the call of duty time and time again; and when African-American drummer Peligro joined the group, his intense hardcore style helped the band take their brand of punk vitriol up a full notch or two.

The lyrics, at one time in my life, were irrelevant. The PMRC was long gone, Clinton was in office, and no one ever thought we'd go back to the days of Reagan/Bush Republicanism... then, the year 2000 came around, and just when we thought we were over the Y2K scare, along came W and 9/11 to usher in a backwards-retreating Age of Fear.

And now, songs like "Bleed For Me" have deeper meanings once again. With Abu Ghraib and the horrors of Guantanamo Bay captivating the headlines, the lyrics of "Bleed For Me" merely need a timely updating regarding names and locations-- otherwise, they echo what's going on in the world today with alarming clarity. Just change the reference to the Russians to terrorists, and change the reference to "Cowboy Ronnie" to "Cowboy Georgie", and the song is still potent.

If the members of Dead Kennedys weren't squabbling right now, maybe they'd be doing just that. In 1981, on the heels of Reagan's landslide election, DK changed the lyrics of their 1979 underground hit "California Uber Alles" to reflect the changing of the political guard. Instead of lampooning Governor Jerry Brown, DK realized they had more dangerous fish to fry... they even retitled the update "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now" and referred to the 40th President as "Emperor Ronald Reagan/born again with fascist cravings"...

What is rock music doing to stem the tide nowadays? Not much. For example, Audioslave played Cuba recently because George W. Bush granted them visas-- it makes sense for a band whose majority of members made up Rage Against The Machine. I like Rage's music, but politically they were an anomaly: they got popular after the first Bush reich was voted out of office, and-- curiously enough-- they disbanded just before the second Bush regime came into power.

I was there at the DNC 2000 conecert that almost turned into a riot. Rage played their set, and they were in their limos by the time the near-riots started. Who was onstage by the time the cops pulled the plug? Local band Ozomatli... but the press played up the Rage angle because it made for better copy.

Compare this to when the DKs played the Washington Mall in D.C.: I was in the third grade and living in California, obviously, so I didn't even hear about that legendary show until a few years ago, which brought D.C. punks out by the hundreds of thousands to fuck shit up in the nation's capitol.

Take into account the fact that then-Attorney General Ed Meese was busy revoking the visas of bands that wanted to play the U.S., and you see how wrong the notion of Audioslave playing Castro-controlled Cuba under W's watch really is.

I saw a kid in Burbank the other day as I drove to work. He had a Mohawk, a leather jacket, a Misfits T-shirt... and a cel phone.

Did I get pissed? Sort of, but for different reasons. I got pissed off because the more things change, the more they stay the same. Back when I first discovered punk rock, I was surprised at how many kids were more into the fashion than the message. I mean, I was a late-bloomer when it came to the punk phenomenon, but I felt like I'd been a punk in spirit before I found the scene. Meanwhile, the kids who looked the most "punk" were just a bunch of bored rich kids with credit cards and the free time to pick and choose their carefully crafted outfits.

I walked around with long hair (a punk anathema at the time), unbuttoned flannels, and dirty jeans. No Doc Marten boots. No bomber jacket. No cool band T-shirts. I prefigured the grunge style, I suppose, by a few years, but I wasn't trying to make a fashion statement-- I was just trying to get by as best as I could.

So when I see kids aping the latest style, my impulse is not to get all huffy, as if punk belonged to me and only me. No, instead I let out a deep sigh and remember that I was seeing these kinds of absurdities occur when I was a kid.

But that gives me hope, you see... because for every clueless suburban kid who doesn't know Dead Kennedys from Good Charlotte, there's a slew of kids out there who are going to take to heart the lessons of bands like DK. These same kids also will take cues from bands like Public Enemy, The Ramones, The Coup, The MC5, Fugazi, and The Clash.

These kids will care about the world they live in, and they will fight for the right to live in a world that they have a hand in creating.

And that is truly a cause for celebration. "Punk's not dead, it just deserves to die," Jello Biafra once sang. And he was right. And he still is right.

But I thank God that every day on this planet, another child is born, another child with the potential to keep the punk spirit alive... because as we know, the punk spirit is really the hip-hop spirit, the Hippie spirit, the Beat spirit, the Surrealist spirit, the Cubist spirit, the avant-garde spirit, all the spirits of rebellions past, updated and tricked out to appeal to the new masses.

The urge to rebel, to question authority and spit in the face of convention... that will never die, so long as humans keep coming into this world. And as we speak, there's a kid out there who is poised to become the new Jello Biafra, or maybe the new KRS-ONE, or perhaps the new Ian MacKaye (frontman for Minor Threat/Fugazi)... at the very least, the new Joe Strummer or (gasp!) Eddie Vedder...

I can't wait to see what form it will take on next...