Dead Kennedys' Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables 9781623567309, 9781501308727, 9781623562441

Citation preview

FRESH FRUIT FOR ROTTING VEGETABLES Praise for the series: It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch . . . The series . . . is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration — The New York Times Book Review Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just aren’t enough — Rolling Stone One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planet — Bookslut These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerds — Vice A brilliant series . . . each one a work of real love — NME (UK) Passionate, obsessive, and smart — Nylon Religious tracts for the rock ’n’ roll faithful — Boldtype [A] consistently excellent series — Uncut (UK) We . . . aren’t naive enough to think that we’re your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way . . . watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, you’d do well to check out Bloomsbury’s “33‒” series of books — Pitchfork For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our blog at 333sound.com and our website at http://www.bloomsbury.com/musicandsoundstudies Follow us on Twitter: @333books Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/33.3books For a complete list of books in this series, see the back of this book

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Forthcoming in the series: Super Mario Bros. by Andrew Schartmann Workingman’s Dead by Puzz Poole Beat Happening by Bryan C. Parker Metallica by David Masciotra A Live One by Walter Holland Bitches Brew by George Grella The Geto Boys by Rolf Potts Psychocandy by Paula Mejia Hi, How Are You by Benjamin Shapiro Dig Me Out by Jovana Babović Hangin’ Tough by Rebecca Wallwork Donny Hathaway Live by Emily Lordi The Raincoats by Jenn Pelly Parallel Lines by Kembrew McLeod and many more . . .

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Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables

Michael Stewart Foley

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

N E W YOR K • LON DON • N E W DE L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 © Michael Stewart Foley, 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Foley, Michael S., author. Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables / Michael Stewart Foley. pages ; cm — (3313- ; 105) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62356-730-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Dead Kennedys (Musical group). Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables. 2. Punk rock music--California--San Francisco--History and criticism. 3. Punk rock music--Political aspects. I. Title. ML421.D4F65 2015 782.42166092’2--dc23 2014045849 ISBN:

PB: ePDF: ePub:

978–1–6235–6730–9 978–1–6235–6244–1 978–1–6235–6500–8

Series: 3313Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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For Emma, Hattie, and Ophelia

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Contents

Introduction

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1. I Don’t Need This Fucking World

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2. Mellow Out or You Will Pay

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3. The Sun Beams Down on a Brand New Day

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4. It’s Time to Taste What You Most Fear

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5. There’s No Way Like the American Way

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Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index of Song & Record Titles Main Index

133 137 153 163 165

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Slash: Is it important to document a band’s history? Jello Biafra: Very, very much. You got to leave it behind you so you can infect other people with your disease years later. Slash, June 1980

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Track Listing

Side 1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

“Kill the Poor” (3:07) “Forward to Death” (1:23) “When Ya Get Drafted” (1:23) “Let’s Lynch the Landlord” (2:13) “Police Truck” (2:24) – US version only “Drug Me” (1:56) “Your Emotions” (1:20) “Chemical Warfare” (2:55) Side 2

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

“California Über Alles” (3:03) “I Kill Children” (2:04) “Stealing People’s Mail” (1:34) “Funland at the Beach” (1:49) “Ill in the Head” (2:46) “Holiday in Cambodia” (4:37) “Viva Las Vegas” (2:42) ix

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Politics infuses every aspect of living. You’re in politics whether you want to admit it or not. — V. Vale Dead Kennedys, the archetypal California punk band, pioneers of American hardcore, and political artists non pareil, made their name in a season of San Francisco madness. Maybe that sounds a bit dramatic. Most histories of American punk bands feature myths of alienation, of life on the margins, of the nation’s dark underbelly in the nightmarish 1970s as central to their formation and identity. After all, the Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, and Talking Heads had CBGBs, the Bowery, and Warriors-era New York City, a landscape of economic collapse, littered with human detritus and knifed dreams—the ideal crucible, it turns out, for producing groundbreaking and mind-blowing art. And yet, in 1978 and 1979, New York seemed almost tranquil compared to San Francisco. A city that has seen more than its share of trauma, San Francisco plunged from a summer of thick political and social tension into an autumn cascade of malevolence that so effectively eluded human comprehension it seemed almost demonic. Unlike the massive 1906 earthquake (which could be understood as the work of natural forces), or the 1942 forced removal of tens of thousands of the city’s Japanese American citizens (which could be

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explained by racism and wartime hysteria), the trajectory of San Francisco’s late 1970s descent into hell could not be so easily decoded. Late in what historian Philip Jenkins has called a “decade of nightmares,” San Franciscans felt battered by a relentless barrage of social, cultural, psychological, political, and actual violence. First came the predictable fallout of Proposition 13, a statewide ballot initiative approved by California voters that cut property taxes dramatically and thus vaporized $6 billion in funding to local governments in the summer of 1978. To cut costs, San Francisco closed two dozen schools, laid off more than 1000 teachers, and doubled mass transit fares. Meanwhile, in the tight urban housing market, inflation drove rents up and up as the city experienced a rash of evictions and a sustained (and, for tenants, a losing) battle over rent control. Gays and lesbians were targeted for dismissal from public school jobs in another state referendum, Question 6 (or the Briggs Initiative), that seemed to many part of a national persecution campaign; thanks in part to San Francisco’s Harvey Milk—the gay activist recently elected to the City Board of Supervisors—the “No on 6” vote triumphed in November. Then, the knockout combination of Jonestown and the Moscone/Milk assassinations flattened the city. The People’s Temple, a cult led by the enigmatic Rev. Jim Jones, had recently decamped from San Francisco for a supposed jungle utopia in Jonestown, Guyana; but as suspicions mounted that something wicked might be afoot there, Jones walked his flock of more than 900 through a mass suicide. Days later, as San Franciscans tried to make sense of this senselessness, former city supervisor Dan White shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall. The city seemed to be spinning off its axis. Depending on who you were, you regarded the San Francisco punk scene as either part of the same madness responsible for the city’s lunatic slide or pretty tame by comparison. And if you spent a 2

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lot of time at any of the shows, you might have thought of it as a kind of experimental antidote that did not shield you entirely from the madness (and came with its own manic side effects) but at least gave you some hope. The scene offered a sense of community amidst a crumbling mainstream order, solidarity in the wreckage, and a sense of purpose where others had given up. By the time Dead Kennedys started playing the Mabuhay Gardens in 1978, the club had become the city’s punk epicenter, San Francisco’s answer to CBGBs. A dingy two-storied temple of painted brick, adorned with dirty white Ionic pilasters (stacked on top of ground floor Doric pilasters) and blockaded round arched windows on the second floor, it was topped with an Alamo style mission pediment. It looked like a voodoo layer cake or maybe, come to think of it, a good place to join a cult. In fact, Mabuhay Gardens was a Filipino restaurant and theater that had, until the mid-1970s stayed afloat as a supper club featuring Eddie Mesa, a Filipino Elvis impersonator, and Filipino dancers.1 Located at 443 Broadway, along a seedy strip in the North Beach neighborhood, “the Mab” was surrounded by strip joints, pawn shops, and liquor stores. Tourists were in the habit of traversing this area of Broadway near Columbus in a sleazy yet alluring detour to and from the Embarcadero and Fisherman’s Wharf, taking in the view of punks, prostitutes, and wannabe Beat poets from the safety of their cars as if they were on an urban Lion Country Safari. Compared to the anodyne Googled, Twittered, DropBoxed city it has become in recent years, San Francisco still had neighborhoods defined by their grit: except in the poshest neighborhoods, one could still find apparent descendants of the Barbary Coast throughout the city: junkies and prostitutes, criminals and hippies, rolling over the hills punctuated by archipelagos of gutter lounges and peeling residential hotels. Even before Jim Jones and Dan White smeared the city’s reputation, outsiders called it the “kook capital of the world.” 3

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In the year that followed this season of insanity, it made sense that a band called Dead Kennedys played the Mabuhay Gardens, referring to Governor Jerry Brown as a “zen fascist,” calling for landlords to be lynched and for privileged college students to be sent to Cambodia to work for “a bowl of rice a day,” critiquing government welfare and defense policies, and, inhabiting the minds of serial killers. By November 1978, the Mabuhay had showcased a posse of popular punk bands including the Nuns, Crime, the Mutants, the Avengers, Negative Trend, UXA, and the Dils, all of which offered a range of political and social criticism. By the end of 1979 and into 1980, though, Dead Kennedys led the pack, drawing frenzied crowds to their shows at the Mab, the Deaf Club, 1839 Geary (the Temple Beautiful), and other venues. To anyone on the outside of the scene, Dead Kennedys represented transgression for transgression’s sake and nihilism of the first order. The argument always starts with the name. How could a band named Dead Kennedys be anything but tasteless? Many people reacted negatively to the name—as if it were a celebration of the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy—and in England, in 1980, some venues refused to book their shows (the city of Dundee, Scotland, not only banned the band but each of its members personally) even though their first LP, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, was coming out on Cherry Red, a hot UK label. But as lead singer Jello Biafra (a stage name intended to provoke contemplation, often greeted with bewilderment) explained, the band chose its name to attack “Me Generation” complacency, “which started with the Kennedy assassinations, because the Kennedy assassinations torpedoed the American Dream.” That might sound like a bit of a stretch—there were many variables involved in the American Dream’s sinking, after all—but the focus on the Dream, on America’s promise, and on the failure of Americans to fight for it in the 1970s, is important. “Everybody’s out for themselves,” Biafra told one interviewer, “and the people who were saying something in 4

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the Sixties now just want to sit around and get stoned.” Too bad most historians have missed this combination of young people’s frustration at being lied to about the American Dream and hoping in vain that Americans would protest the lie.2 Although the politics and culture of the 1970s and 1980s have, in recent years, drawn the attention of historians and other scholars, punk has largely been treated as an afterthought.3 Historians of the United States are long overdue in taking seriously the political potency of certain subcultures; if it does not look or smell like Democratic or Republican Party politics or a social movement, our historical bloodhounds (I am talking to you, Rick Perlstein) pass it by. Consequently, Dead Kennedys and the San Francisco punk scene make few appearances in these histories; when they do, it is to be dismissed as merely irreverent and offensive. “A group calling itself Dead Kennedys obviously enjoyed flouting established notions of good taste,” the historian Bruce Schulman declares without any further discussion.4 That may be so, but it is hardly the whole story. In this book, I use the lens of Dead Kennedys’ first album to examine the political experience of one segment of American youth in the late 1970s. As cultural studies scholars have shown, young Americans’ political experience in this period was increasingly tied to the arts, especially music and performance. And they make the connection that most historians have not—that young people turned toward politics in art because they had seen social movements crushed in the early 1970s and no longer had faith in either traditional or progressive politics. It seemed hopeless to keep playing a game that was rigged.5 The point of this book is not to suggest that Dead Kennedys or California punk sparked a revolution; rather, it is to show that Dead Kennedys’ music and performances were a form of political experience that merits attention equal to that which scholars afford to electoral and social movement politics. “While revolution made by music is a joke,” Greil Marcus once wrote, “rebellion sustained by 5

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music might not be.” Maybe punk could not make revolution (though the East German punks later standing atop a crumbling Berlin Wall may have disagreed), but it could provide the space— the fertile soil—where seeds of revolutionary ideas and action could take root. Certainly, Dead Kennedys’ peers and allies seemed to grasp the band’s rebellion-sustaining potential.“The Dead Kennedys are much more than this year’s political gimmick joke band,” wrote one punk critic in the Los Angeles zine, Slash. “In fact they might be one of the most important bands to come out of this scene.”6 At the same time, I do not argue that Fresh Fruit was the “greatest” or “most important” punk record of all time—or even the greatest American punk record. I argue that the LP carries far greater significance than that. This book shows that Fresh Fruit was the most important, articulate, and accessible document of dissent to come from American youth in an age when it is generally assumed that American youth had given up. It is a political document for a generation, even if most of the generation missed it because they were still listening to fucking Hotel California. Even on university campuses where, contrary to popular perception, dissent never faded away completely, most campus political groups focused on single issues; only tiny doctrinaire Marxist splinter groups offered any kind of comprehensive critique of American society, but almost no one was listening to them. With Fresh Fruit, however, Dead Kennedys took an accessible, wide-ranging, multi-issue critique to a much broader audience. I am a historian, and although I rely on my expertise in American political history in this period, I also borrow from scholars in other disciplines who have studied the power of music and, more broadly, sound, to produce certain feelings and emotions in both artists and audiences. As early as 1953, American philosopher Susanne Langer wrote of how “we are moved by music,” of “the way music, abstract, formal though it is . . . . is a tonal analogue of emotive life.”7 More recently, it has become accepted among political scientists and 6

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cultural studies scholars that “music is no longer to be understood as an instrument of, or accompaniment to, politics; it is politics.”8 We know that music, for example, not only exposes us to other worlds, but engages us in those worlds as much as in our own. And the Birmingham school of subcultural studies long ago—in fact, around the time the songs on Fresh Fruit were being written— demonstrated how the creation of an alternative narrative is a form of resistance. The only reason for Vladimir Putin to throw Pussy Riot in prison—prison!—for a ramshackle church demonstration, after all, is because the group’s alternative narrative posed a legitimate threat to the political and cultural order.9 In addition, this book draws on theater and drama studies to demonstrate how Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, on vinyl and live from the stage of the Mabuhay Gardens, not only qualified as politics but stimulated emotions that were, if you can believe it, utopian. This may seem ludicrous on first blush. Fair enough. How could the nihilistic Dead Kennedys have been utopian? To get there we have to overcome the conventional wisdom—that Dead Kennedys were cynical to a fault, content to kick America when it was down, radical poseurs for whom radicalism was just another way of transgressing button-down conservative America. Rather, Dead Kennedys, in the tradition of the Yippies, used humor to call out the lies in American life, and then they followed a more clearly New Left model to name the liars, the abusers of power, and the people who let them get away with it. Out of this vortex of music, politics, and humor came not only a sense of clarity, but a sense of possibility. To think what could be done in a space where people were honest, true, and committed to building a micro-model of a better society! The theatrical Jello Biafra, pantomiming songs and diving into the crowd—long before such sudden plunges from the stage became commonplace—encouraged the audience’s visceral response to East Bay Ray’s sinister-sounding dirty surf guitar, and the rhythmic wallop of Klaus Flouride’s bass and Ted’s 7

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drums. As at hardcore shows forever afterward, audience and band became one and, at least in the years before muscled frat boys and skinheads began pummeling one another, those pogoing in the area in front of the stage—not yet named the “mosh pit”—followed basic rules of decorum, an equality of experience practically guaranteed for all. One emerged exhausted, thrilled, enlivened, and cleansed of America’s dirt. In Jello Biafra’s lyrics, no one was spared. He attacked liberals, conservatives, yuppies, the military, religious charlatans, hippies, and frat boys. Most of all, he cut down the complacent, sometimes hectoring the audience from the stage (in fact, some fans would later take to calling him just another authority figure) that they not accept or be part of the problems sinking the city, state, and nation. More than that, he ran for mayor of San Francisco, stood up to Dianne Feinstein and her police force, and confronted the music industry. That may not have amounted to a utopia, but to punks it was more honest than anything Jim Jones or Jerry Brown offered. Biafra deserves much of the credit for the band’s political identity, but it was in fact a group effort. A mere 20 years old when Dead Kennedys formed, Biafra “already knew so much about what’s wrong with the world,” V. Vale of the pioneering zine Search & Destroy later said. “His bullshit detector was in place and active way earlier than most of us, and that’s why he stands out.” At the same time, Ray and Klaus were not bystanders. Even if they did not see the band primarily as a vehicle for political expression, they did see the potential for punk to change people’s lives. Punk, Ray told Search & Destroy, “is the only protest music left.” And if the Kennedys were not the first San Francisco punk band to make politics central to their art (and they were not) they were arguably the most relentless and certainly had the longest reach.10 If Americans are typically portrayed as retreating from civic engagement and activism in the 1970s and 1980s—of turning inward when they were not swinging to the right politically—Dead 8

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Kennedys and the music they ultimately recorded for Fresh Fruit tell a different story. The band, the music, and the scene at the Mabuhay Gardens and other San Francisco venues helped to write a soundtrack of collective resistance. San Francisco punks, like punks in so many other cities, felt like they were members of a secret society, like they knew something—and were experiencing something—that no one else did. It may seem crazy at first to associate punk with utopia, but collective resistance and the visceral transformative moments that came in performance and on vinyl were anything but nihilistic. For tens of thousands of punk fans at the time (and for hundreds of thousands who have bought, borrowed or stolen the LP on vinyl, CD, or mp3 since then), Fresh Fruit is central to the way they experienced American culture and politics in the 1970s and 1980s (and beyond). This book tells the story of where it all came from and how it all happened. I build my case for Fresh Fruit as a document of historical and political significance a bit like a record producer builds up sound on a track, layer by layer. Chapter by chapter, I provide context, starting broadly with national politics and, in subsequent chapters, narrowing the scope to state, local, and down to the San Francisco punk scene. This approach helps to make sense of not only the origins of this particular piece of art, but it also helps us to understand why the record is so important to so many who have listened to it then or since. The America it indicts still exists, of course, though the various pathologies parsed in the album’s lyrics perhaps run deeper than ever. Analyzing a piece of political art and the artists who made it is trickier, it turns out, than examining a politician or a social movement. Cultural studies scholars have long written about “reception,” arguing that audiences make their own meaning out of art regardless of the artist’s original intent. Winston Smith, collage artist and Dead Kennedys’ main partner in “artcrime,” has described how people are always putting their own interpretations on his 9

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work. “They’ll start to explain to me what it really means, things that never occurred to me before,” Smith told one interviewer. But “I think that happens in all art—people see their own life experience in it.” As the books in the 33‒ series make clear, the same certainly happens with records.11 I feel obliged to acknowledge at the outset, therefore, that I write about Fresh Fruit as both a historian and a member of the audience. I have always seen some of my own life experience in the record. Other Dead Kennedys fans will have experienced the record in other ways, but this book tells how I see it. In fact, it tells how I see it now, which is not the same as when I first heard it. Then, I was much younger, and, after finding Dead Kennedys by triangulating back to them from the Clash and Black Flag, I responded to Fresh Fruit more viscerally. I do not remember my exact words to myself, but it was something along the lines of: “Finally! Somebody gets it!”— about my life, about how much being a young adult in 1980s America sucked, how it seemed like there was not much to live for because nothing seemed to be getting better, and all those snapshots of wonder that I associated with my youth—from huge American cars to moon landings—now seemed like a distant mirage. And although I do not think I understood Fresh Fruit this way at the time, it awoke in me a strange feeling of solidarity; all of these songs with their warped humor made me happy that there was someone out there, a little older than I, making it cool to actually give a shit about politics, mixing it with a confrontational punk attitude and a killer guitar sound. Without Dead Kennedys as my “gateway drug” (Biafra’s term), I would not have found my way to San Francisco’s other political punk bands, like the Dils, the Avengers, and Negative Trend—and maybe not even to the politics of Johnny Cash or Rahsaan Roland Kirk.12 Later, I decided to go to graduate school to write about activists because I likewise admired their political commitment and I wanted to understand why some people protest and some people do not. Over more than a decade of research and 10

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writing about social movements of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and in working as a political organizer in more recent years, my appreciation for Fresh Fruit has only deepened. I now see it within a larger context of American protest culture where it stands as out as a singularly influential piece of political art. That’s what this book is all about.

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1 I Don’t Need This Fucking World When we were coming of age, we weren’t dazed and confused. We were disgusted. We missed the Sixties. All that fire, all that promise, all that fun—mellowed out, left unfinished, paved over into what we now call yuppie culture. Rock and Roll had been reduced to a spectator sport. — Jello Biafra Dead Kennedys and Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables could only have come out of the 1970s but they owe their politics to a sensibility born in the “capital S” Sixties. In fact, like all of American punk, the Kennedys and their first record were built not only in response to the dismal conditions of the Seventies but also in an effort to carry on vital forms of Sixties political culture. That’s right: an artistic movement defined in part by its contempt for hippies actually tried to call forth the better spirit of the Sixties. It is true that most punks rejected as naïve the early hippie embrace of “peace and love,” and felt even more disgust for the latter-day hippie sell-outs, but they remembered the political potency of protest and resistance from their childhood years and, in some ways, tried to resurrect it. Somehow, though, that connection between the Sixties and punk has largely been lost. In fact, in most tellings, the excesses of the 1960s led to the dire circumstances of the late 1970s that made punk possible and, in fact,

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necessary. To take one example, Rebecca Solnit, one our most astute cultural observers, has lately claimed that 1978—the year Dead Kennedys formed—was a “terrible year in which the fiddler had to be paid for all the tunes to which the counterculture had danced.”1 Yikes. That sounds like something the conservative syndicated columnist George Will would write. Such interpretations only feed the conservative political machine that casts everything wrong with the United States today as growing out of the 1960s. They are based on a caricature of the Sixties, one that emphasizes the nut jobs, the cults and violent extremists who made up a tiny minority of that generation—or the dastardly liberals who dared to expand social programs. The alleged excesses of the Sixties—all of those hippies and radicals, the demands for equality and liberation, sexual and otherwise—did not cause the malaise and general sense of national decline Americans associate with the 1970s. Rather, it was the excesses of men in power, men abusing their power—in the Vietnam War and at home, in the forms of a ballooning war budget and hapless management of the economy, and in spying on the American people—that drove the American dream off the end of the pier and into the murk. As Jello Biafra later noted, this was the kind of Seventies stupidity that punk “pissed all over” after protest fatigue seemed to have sapped the energy needed for a new resistance.2 That makes for a tidy tale, but it does not quite explain why punks were so fucking angry in the late 1970s. To begin to unravel that part of our story, we have to roll the tape back to the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, because long before American punks started raging about everything that was wrong with the nation in the 1970s, they had been kids in the Fifties and Sixties. The timing of one’s arrival during the postwar baby boom is important here, in fact, because punks ranged from those born in the late 1940s (like Richard Hell) to the early 1960s (like Henry Rollins), and most (like Jello Biafra) were born in the late 1950s. If most punks were 14

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nineteen, twenty, or twenty-one in 1978, there were others who were twenty-eight, twenty-nine, or thirty, and even some who were fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. The core middle group, along with their older punk brothers and sisters, were among the last American children to be sold—hook, line, and sinker—on the boundless promise of America. And then, as they grew up, they watched the American project fall apart. Vietnam and Watergate were essential chapters in their growing disillusionment, but more often than not, punk tales of the American dream subverted begin with the first Kennedy assassination. In the same way that their parents could describe in vivid detail where they were when they learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American punks are remarkably consistent in recounting their own childhood experiences the weekend of November 22, 1963, when John F. Kennedy was killed, Lee Harvey Oswald apprehended, and the presidential funeral proceedings unfolded. Like millions of American children, they watched television intently in the days after the assassination and, consequently, saw Jack Ruby snuff Oswald live on television. Regular programming—from Leave It To Beaver to Father Knows Best to Ozzie and Harriet to Captain Kangaroo—had not prepared American kids for cold-blooded murder beamed live into their living rooms. Even after the Kennedy assassination, however, most of those kids who would become punks continued to receive a steady dose of propaganda about how great their country was even as the president’s slaying kicked off a series of revelations that told them that, in fact, something was seriously wrong with America. The assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy combined like a single “body blow,” Biafra later said, while the war in Vietnam stripped away any remaining illusions. Among the earliest lyrics written by the Avengers’ Penelope Houston was this representatively sardonic sneer: “It’s the American in me says it’s an honor to die / in a war that’s just a politician’s lie.” 15

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In San Francisco, punks such as Al Ennis and Joe Rees, both Navy veterans of the Vietnam War (though Rees served stateside during the war) could validate Houston’s distrust of the government with tales from their own experience. Ennis, who helped launch the “Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll” radio show on KPFA in the late 1970s, had operated a 50 caliber machine gun on a World War II era Navy river boat (a kind of proto Swift Boat) that transported troops all over the Mekong Delta, narrowly escaping two rocket attacks and several firefights. Cruising down the river, with both sides cleared of foliage by Agent Orange, he felt like they were being used as bait to lure the enemy out of hiding. When he got back home, he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Rees, meanwhile, counted himself fortunate to serve the Navy in San Diego instead of Vietnam, transcribing encrypted radio messages. Still, his recruiter had promised that he would go into engineering drafting because, for Rees, an artist, it would have been the best match for his skills. He felt “screwed over personally,” and that came in addition to it being “real obvious that there was a lot of crap going on with the government that wasn’t honest, and people were losing their lives over it.” Meanwhile, Ted Falconi, long before playing guitar in Flipper, went to Vietnam twice with the Army Security Agency, and found it hard to tolerate American politics after the war. Coming out of the military, he later said, “you demand a lot more,” but when the government repeatedly fails to just get things done, “you become angry with the whole establishment.”3 Less than a decade later, after Falconi and Rees had met at California College of Art in Oakland and were part of San Francisco’s new punk scene, punks young and old were concluding that the American government in the Nixon-Ford-Carter years could not get anything done or, worse, could not do anything right. As the nation watched Watergate run Nixon from office, the great postwar economic boom collapsed into the worst economic bust since the Great Depression. Double-digit inflation, combined with 16

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soaring unemployment—a phenomenon dubbed “stagflation” by the witless economists who predicted it could never happen—and plummeting American production to stamp out what was left of American confidence. Johnny Rotten sang about English youth having no future, but his words resonated with young people from the Bronx to Youngstown, from Detroit to Oakland, and beyond. As foreign competition beat up on American manufacturers, jobs migrated out of the country and the price of nearly everything— gas, bread, milk, rent—soared. The United States had entered an age of crisis from which, in many ways, it has yet to escape. The stock market might have outrun the dot.com bust and the subprime mortgage crisis, but that is hardly an indication of economic stability: real wages nosedived after the 1960s and have never come back up; job security has never come back; manufacturing work is pretty much gone for good; and thirty years of gentrification have run ordinary folks out of cities to make way for yuppies.4 For young punks, that was not even the worst of it. Thanks to what seemed like a never-ending Cold War, they came of age, too, at a time when challenges to American power from the Soviets, Cubans, Iranians and others led policymakers to openly contemplate policies that seemed manifestly insane: building an arsenal of neutron bombs that could kill millions of human beings but leave buildings standing; sending troops to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) primarily to keep the Cuban military, on the heels of victory in Angola, from thinking it could run up a string of victories in support of African liberation movements—even though Rhodesia was ruled by a white apartheid regime; and bringing back draft registration as a way to show the Soviets, who had just invaded Afghanistan, that the United States was unafraid to once again risk the lives of millions of young men in an Asian war. Incompetence on the home front and insanity on the foreign policy front: but where was the outrage? During the Sixties, as those future punks of America lived through the waning of Kennedy-era 17

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optimism and the twilight of the mid-century liberal consensus, and as they began to question the lies being peddled by mainstream society, they could at least take comfort in bearing witness to the courageous ones who stood up and protested. Civil rights activists who dismantled state-sponsored racial segregation; antiwar activists across the country (and in the military in Vietnam) who threw their bodies upon the gears of the war machine; countless ordinary Americans who battled sexism and homophobia in the streets and between the sheets—these were the new heroes to many who would become punks. In the social and political movements of the Sixties and in the counterculture, these kids found models of resistance and integrity that they looked forward to emulating. In fact, demographically, as a kind of subgeneration—or the end of the baby boom generation—most punks had been too young to have been part of the political and cultural rebellions of the Sixties. They were ten years-old in 1968, fourteen years old in 1972—old enough to be aware of the upheaval taking place all around them, but not old enough to fully take part.5 The older punks were lucky, in many ways, to have experienced those rebellions firsthand and then still be young enough and in the right place to be part of punk: in San Francisco alone, this group included V. Vale and Ruby Ray of Search & Destroy; musician and producer Geza X (who was from Los Angeles but who frequently worked in San Francisco); Damage magazine editor Brad Lapin; and veterans Ennis, Falconi, and Rees, who got out of the military in time to experience protest and counterculture in equal measure. And they were not the only ones: future Dead Kennedys Ray Pepperell and Geoffrey Lyall, and DKs artist Winston Smith were also among the older punks who had likewise been shaped by the politics and counterculture of the Sixties. Just like the Clash’s Joe Strummer, many of these older San Francisco punks started out as hippies. Many of the younger punks had first fashioned themselves as hippies, too. Unfortunately for them, they moved into the 18

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counterculture just as it was being co-opted by the mainstream and otherwise fading from view. As Peter Urban, manager for the Dils and the Zeros, later described it, most punks had grown up with “all of the positive expectations of postwar America” as well as with “all the talk of the counterculture” only to see it “all go to shit.” Urban’s sister, who is ten years older, had been in SDS “and when she got out of college, the world was her oyster.” She went to Boalt Hall and became a lawyer. “When I got out of college, we were in the midst of the first deep recession since the Great Depression,” Urban recalls. “It was a different reality for us and [that reality] was pretty obvious, staring us in the face. And we heard all this talk from the hippies about peace and love, and ending the war and socialism . . . and then we saw them all go into their little professions and their hot tubs . . .” This is a persistent theme among punks, that the Sixties rebels—politicos and hippies both—had packed it in, given up on the revolution before it could be won. And although scholars have long challenged the old “Me decade” and “culture of narcissism” labels that Tom Wolfe and Christopher Lasch ascribed to American culture in the Seventies, most punks thought then that when revolution was so obviously necessary, not only were most Americans asleep, but the would-be revolutionary leaders from only a few years past had gone into navel-gazing retreat. “For most of us who were early punks,” Urban concluded, “there was a sense that ‘they let us down, they sold us out, they told us one thing and they didn’t deliver.’ ”6 Among San Francisco punks, no small number thought it was time for a new revolution. *

*

*

Despite age differences and coming from different parts of the country, the three founding members of Dead Kennedys brought their own Sixties experience to bear on their vision for the band. The youngest of the three and the band’s political mastermind, Eric Boucher, who chose the stage name Jello Biafra in 1978, grew up in 19

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Boulder, Colorado. Born in 1958, Biafra’s childhood memories are colored by images of the Kennedy administration. In fact, he remembers being disappointed when his parents brought home their first new television and it did not have President Kennedy’s face on the screen. “When we first went to the store to buy the TV, President Kennedy was there, in color—row after row after row of his head, all the way up to the ceiling . . .” On November 22, 1963, five year-old Eric came in from the yard to find his mother crying on the couch. “What did I do this time?” he thought. “The president is dead,” she told him. Along with the rest of the nation, young Eric was glued to the television for the next four days. He watched as Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television, “gunned down right before my eyes—and again and again on the instant replays,” he later recalled. “The funeral dirge played on and on, and the flagdraped coffin lingered on the black and white screen day after day as people filed past it to say goodbye.”7 Fifty years later, Jello Biafra is still visibly moved when he recalls that day. “It still tears me up . . . You know, [when you think about] where we were then versus where we were a few years later . . . This is still very emotional for me.” When most parents tried to shield their children from the horrors of the president’s assassination, or of the violence of Birmingham, Vietnam, and Detroit, Biafra’s parents did the opposite. Biafra remembers being a “newshound” from the earliest age, “alert to what I saw and what my family chose not to hide.” The unfiltered news of the day “was discussed and it was explained to me,” he remembers, “and it was very ingrained very early that racism is wrong, that war (especially the Vietnam War) was wrong.”8 Such honesty and openness was characteristic of Biafra’s parents, Stan and Virginia Boucher, who taught their kids to be independent thinkers, free of religious influence and mindless patriotism. Stan Boucher worked as a psychiatric social worker, an activist in the mental health movement, and a poet. He was also a Korean War veteran. Although flat feet kept him out of service during the World 20

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War II, he was drafted to serve in Korea. Stan had an iron nerve— as a mountaineer he had, in his teens, scaled cliffs in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs (one of the routes—the BoucherTwombly Route—is now off-limits because it’s too dangerous), and was one of the first people to try climbing the rocks on Pike’s Peak—and that nerve guided him as he went into the Army as a conscientious objector. He received a psychiatric medic assignment in a MASH unit complete, as Biafra remembers it, with “bloodsoaked floors.” Dying soldiers dictated to Stan their last letters home to their mothers. Biafra recalls that long before the escalation of the Vietnam War, his father once told him that the worst day of his life was the day he went into the Army, and the best day of his life was the day he got out. “That took,” Biafra says, and it never let go.9 At the same time, in the late 1960s, Virginia Boucher, who came to Colorado from South Haven, Michigan, and joined her husband in his mountaineering adventures, ran the interlibrary loan department at the University of Colorado library. Her student workers were, of course, draft age, and in those years, the specter of the draft—ever present and circling like a shark around a raft— instilled a sense of foreboding and paranoia in all young men. Some 16 million men reached draft age during the Vietnam War, and in a college town like Boulder, draft counselors were ever-present, advising men on ways to legally avoid being drafted, while others considered fleeing to Canada and elsewhere (estimates vary, but some 30–60,000 draft-age men emigrated rather than face the draft or the $10,000 fines and five-year prison sentences handed down for draft law violations). It was a topic of constant conversation, and Biafra heard much of it first hand. He has vivid memories of two of his mother’s student workers choosing to resist or evade the draft. “I went through the arrest of one and then another one coming to the house, panicking, [looking for my mother] and he’d been running and stuff,” Biafra remembers, “and I was the only one home.” Being witness to that kind of existential peril made a deep impression 21

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on a boy who would grow up to write a song called “When Ya Get Drafted.”10 Ultimately, thanks to his parents, Biafra grew up with a clearereyed understanding of American life than most kids his age. Maybe it had something to do with his father reading Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology to him, or driving him through the slums of Detroit on the eve of the 1967 riots, or his parents’ open disgust with the Vietnam War, or their mountaineers’ devotion to protecting the environment, but he seemed immune, from an early age, to the standard American exceptionalist propaganda fed to kids in school in those days. There were frequent run-ins with teachers, including, at an early age, being held after class to write “I will not laugh during flag pledge” on the chalkboard over and over again. In sixth grade young Eric had a series of battles with his teacher, Mrs. Lefferdink, who made every effort to indoctrinate her pupils with conservative values. When she praised police, Eric would ask her about Chicago. When she bad-mouthed the Chicago 7 defendants—on trial for conspiracy to incite a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention—Eric stood up and defended them. Foolishly, Mrs. Lefferdink invited a student teacher’s Air Force pilot boyfriend to visit the class, and Eric asked him “what he thought about bombing children in Vietnam.” The day after Ohio National Guardsmen shot and killed four students at Kent State University, Mrs. Lefferdink’s criticism of the student protesters and praise for the Guardsmen upset Biafra. “Something inside me snapped,” he later said. Later lessons in junior high and high school presented Soviet propaganda as controlling the media and rewriting history, the same things he saw at work in the American media and school books. When his ninth-grade government class covered lobbying and pressure groups, a film showed government officials walking a gauntlet of lobbyists trying to press different issues. Biafra’s first thought was “wait a minute, they’re all bribing this guy!” Even as a kid, he later said, “my cynicism ran pretty deep.” 22

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Biafra may have felt like his was a minority view in his classroom, but from the time he was nine or ten years old, he saw strength in numbers every day as protest swept through the University of Colorado and Boulder. A vigorous local antiwar movement and counterculture showed that it was possible to stand up to illegitimate authority, to challenge the hegemony of mainstream politics and culture. He remembers hippies arriving in Boulder in droves in 1968, the same summer that street battles between protesters and police in Chicago dominated the news. “The antiwar sentiment on that campus was fierce,” he recalls, “and right across the street was my elementary school,” which, thanks to its location in a scientific research community, was home to lots of “weird, smart, and rebellious kids.”11 Observing radicals, pranksters and hippies at both the local and national level did a lot to shape how Eric the hippie would become Jello the punk. Not least was the influence of the Yippies, two of whom, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, were among the Chicago 7 defendants championed by Biafra in Mrs. Lefferdink’s classroom. In one of their earliest stunts, Hoffman and Rubin led a group of Yippies in bringing trading on the New York Stock Exchange to a screeching halt by dropping hundreds of dollar bills from the viewing gallery onto the trading floor. As traders knocked each other over to scoop up as much money as they could, Rubin and Hoffman shouted “This is what it’s all about, real live money! Real dollar bills! People are starving in Biafra!”* As Rubin later wrote, “we

*

Biafra, a region in Nigeria, declared independence in 1967, and thus prompted a threeyear civil war. When Nigerian forces laid siege to Biafra, a humanitarian crisis unfolded on the world stage. Images of starving Biafrans became commonplace in European and American newspapers as critics accused the Nigerian government of genocide. By January 1970, the Nigerian military finished off the Biafran uprising, but in the late 1970s, when Jello Biafra chose his stage name, as discussed in the next chapter, the famine associated with the war lingered in the public’s memory.

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introduce[d] a little reality into their fantasy lives.”12 Other actions included threatening to levitate the Pentagon to shake out the evil spirits and hosting a “Festival of Life” in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, a conference of death being held by the party responsible for the Vietnam War. Hoffman and Rubin promised to drop LSD in the city’s water supply, date delegates’ daughters, and run a pig for president on the Youth International Party ticket. Serious politicos were somewhat dismissive of the Yippies, but they had a knack for manipulating the media through their pranks into reporting serious antiwar arguments that the rest of the movement lacked. It is important not to overstate the Yippie influence on Biafra. Although he has said that, as a kid, he admired Hoffman and that he “would have made a great punk rocker,” he also notes that he “never knew that much specifically about him except that he annoyed all the people that annoyed me, and was very skillful at it.” Still, as we will see, the pranks that Biafra and Dead Kennedys carried out in the late 1970s owe a lot to a satirical tradition in American politics that extended from Charlie Chaplin, Lenny Bruce, and the Yippies through Biafra to The Onion and Billionaires for Bush. David Spaner, a Vancouver Yippie who worked with Hoffman in New York and later managed the Canadian anarchopunk band Subhumans, reminds us that Yippies “invented political pie-throwing.” That is as good a name as any for the kind of satirical politics Dead Kennedys would deliver, under Biafra’s direction, on their first 45s and on Fresh Fruit.13 At the same time, Biafra’s developing political sensibility was very much intertwined with his zeal for, and knowledge of, rock and roll. To this day, in almost every instance in which he discusses outlaw politics in the Sixties and Seventies, he talks about his obsession with outlaw music, too. When the hippies came to Boulder, he notes, “I was fascinated because I associated it with counterculture, and I associated counterculture with cool music.” 24

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From the age of seven, his passion had been rock and roll, through sixth grade, when he grew his hair long—another slap at Mrs. Lefferdink’s conservatism—and into high school, when he famously became an avid record collector, he gravitated to “the heavy stuff,” Sixties garage rock. Trade-a-Tape and Records in Boulder stood down the street from Biafra’s high school, so he would go there every day “and take every single record out of the ‘Free’ box.” Other LPs, like the Stooges’ Fun House and the MC5’s Kick Out the Jams went home with him for pocket change. It is not hard to imagine him as a stand-in for Jack Black’s character in the film version of High Fidelity—an obsessive, unfiltered vinyl junkie, chattering nonstop about the finer details of every record he picks up. Faced with “serious teenage depression” anything that “could get the adrenaline back,” that could “bring some kind of joy through rock power,” he says now, “was very important.”14 By the time he was in high school, Biafra knew enough about rock and roll to analyze the dismal state of the American music industry and see the role it played in sedating the public into not only accepting disco and bland adult rock, but in undercutting any culture of rebellion. It helped that in ninth grade, he discovered Frank Zappa, who “did the best social satire,” making fun of “exactly the kind of people” who dominated Boulder High School. Unfortunately, by the time he could really start to immerse himself in the counterculture and its critique of American society, “the culture was gone.” He and his friends soon realized “how stupid and boring it was to be eighteen in 1975.” Rebellion had dried up, “the music was much more salable, respectable, and had been slowed down and watered down.” The Minutemen’s Mike Watt, a few years younger than Biafra, agrees: “Can you imagine the frustration when it’s gonna be my turn, and you get there, and it’s Peter Frampton’s ‘Do You Feel Like I Do?’—and he’s in a kimono? No.” As Biafra now tells it, Denver and Boulder were ground zero for the testing of soft rock, complete with hyping the Eagles as a Colorado band “because 25

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they had slummed it in Aspen for awhile.” Firefall, a second-rate version of the Eagles “ruled” Boulder in those years. Live music in Colorado and all over the country was “for special people, beautiful people with connections, who’d ‘paid their dues’ and who all could play as good as Jimmy . . . (Buffett)” In effect, mainstream music became a form of adult lullabies, smoothing the rough edges from the culture, rocking the public to sleep just as the country went through the darkest days. “Something drastic had to be done,” and, as Biafra discovered, it was already happening in San Francisco, where he later met up with East Bay Ray and Klaus Flouride.15 Both Ray and Klaus are older than Biafra by a decade and came from different parts of the country, but their experience through the Sixties is equally important to understanding Dead Kennedys’ origins. Klaus, born as Geoffrey Lyall in Detroit in 1949, grew up in the Detroit suburbs of St. Clair Shores and Grosse Pointe. His father, by all appearances an architect (and a Republican) in the 1950s, had, in fact, been a communist in the 1920s and 30s. Klaus and his siblings did not learn of this until 1982 or so, but he now has a New York Times photo of his father leading a May Day parade. Thanks to McCarthyism, Klaus says, his father “thought that if it was ever found out that he had been a communist, he just would have been blackballed.” Consequently, he spent the Grosse Pointe years posing as a Republican. Klaus’s mother was more “apolitical,” but her father had been a Baptist missionary in South Asia and knew either Gandhi or Nehru (he does not remember which).16 And although the first Kennedy assassination hit the family hard—Klaus remembers watching Oswald “get shot live and felt like I got punched in the stomach (because it wasn’t TV acting)”—civil rights and the war did more to shape his political leanings. “I didn’t know from conservative to liberal,” Klaus later recalled. “I didn’t follow politics that much in high school except for racial politics that were going down, and I didn’t agree with all the white people, basically.” Racism “just didn’t make any sense.” When Klaus was 26

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younger, his mother sometimes hired a black woman named Clara to babysit him and do some cleaning. She and Klaus bonded over his 45 collection. These were his earliest stints as a DJ, playing records when she was there, looking for her approval. “I’d put on something, and she’d look up and say ‘that’s rockin.’ ” If he played some of the music favored by his mother—Pat Boone or Georgia Gibbs—Clara would spit on the kitchen floor and say “it needs some shining up there.” Even at age six or seven, a family friend who worked at the Wood Street Television shop, which sold televisions and records, first introduced him to Fats Domino, Ray Charles, and Little Richard.17 The Lyalls moved to Grosse Pointe just so they could get young Geoffrey into a better high school, but it turned out to be a pretty parochial place. The school was entirely white at the time. In the midst of the civil rights movement, Klaus’s civics teacher gave simplistic lessons on Martin Luther King being basically good— presumably because he was not so very threatening—and Malcolm X was bad—because he was so very threatening. The teacher then asked the class, “honestly,” even with King’s more positive approach to civil rights, “how many of us would want one of our brothers or sisters to marry one of those?” Only Klaus and two others raised their hands. For Klaus, it was a stupid question; he loved Little Richard, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and his father had a collection of 78s, most of which were recorded by black artists. “Well, that’s all very big-hearted of you,” the teacher said to the three, as if they had lost touch with reality. The following year, Klaus had a job driving a Mercury Comet station wagon, making deliveries for a liquor store owned by the Grosse Pointe chief of police. As Detroit burned during the riots, he drove a car full of the best booze to the Ford mansion and got a $200 tip for his trouble. Later that night, police stopped him as he tried to cross the city line into Detroit with another delivery. The cop, Klaus remembers, gave him “a reasonable dose of mace to turn me around.” Boundaries—racial 27

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and geographic—were rigidly enforced. Meanwhile, despite pretending to be Republicans, his parents were becoming more open about expressing their support for civil rights and their opposition to the Vietnam War.18 As Klaus neared draft age, his father pressed him to apply for conscientious objector status, which was usually granted only in cases in which a young man had been raised in an historically pacifist religious denomination. Having rarely set foot in a church, Klaus knew the draft board was bound to turn him down. So, after barely graduating from high school, he made his way to Boston to attend Cambridge School of Business to study radio broadcasting— he had already done some pirate radio in Detroit and would again in Boston—and managed to hold a student deferment for a while. When Nixon introduced the lottery in 1969, Klaus’s birthday came up seventy-sixth—a lock for being drafted. In the previous years, though, he became politicized by reading Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird (1965) and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (1969), both grim portrayals of the savagery of World War II. In Boston, Klaus collected literature from the draft resistance movement, participated in demonstrations, and read the underground press, so he was acquainted with the various ways of resisting the draft, legally and illegally. The Selective Service had a hard time tracking him down because he was then playing in a few bands, shuttling between his sister’s place in New York and his own in Boston. When he could no longer avoid his call for a pre-induction physical, he decided to do an Alice’s Restaurant-style performance piece that would, he hoped, make him ineligible for service. In the end, it was probably not his coloring in his file in crayons or his lack of underwear that got him a 1-Y (eligible only in a national emergency), but rather that he was seriously (and legitimately) underweight.19 In the meantime, Klaus had become a versatile and in-demand musician. Back in Detroit, he had played mostly in cover bands, and still loved R&B (the original R&B, with gospel, blues, and jazz 28

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influences) and had an extensive collection of 78s, but he was also lucky enough to meet bouncers at the Grande Ballroom who let him in (with a tape recorder) to see the MC5 and the Stooges, the Gold Brothers, and the Amboy Dukes. In Boston, he landed in a short-lived band called Magic Terry and the Universe (which featured Billy Squier on guitar, long before he dragged rock ’n’ roll to a new low with “The Stroke” and “Lonely Is the Night”) that spent some time in Andy Warhol’s orbit in New York.* But for most of the late 1960s and much of the 1970s, he played regularly in house R&B and blues bands. He was still into Tower of Power when he bought the first Ramones record off a guy in Harvard Square. Although he laughed at the record “all the way through” on first listen, by the next morning the songs were still running through his head. He soon realized that the Ramones were putting danger back into rock and roll; instead of following the adult rock format that, in a few short years, gave us corporate arena rock stars like Boston, Journey and Styx, the Ramones offered something more elemental. “I realized that this punk stuff was just what excited me about rock to begin with,” Klaus says now. Just as Little Richard, Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis “scared the shit out of my parents” and were not acceptable to the mainstream (“especially in Grosse Pointe”), punk was “basic, sure, but it wasn’t stupid. It was funny but it wasn’t stupid.” Rather, it was mainstream rock and roll in the Seventies that had morphed into mindless “easy listening music.” Over the years, Klaus has famously had a two word answer to the question of why he moved from R&B to punk: “the Eagles.”20 It is worth noting that Biafra had a similar experience upon first listening to and seeing the Ramones in Colorado: When he heard * When Klaus first met Biafra, he played him some Magic Terry and the Universe. Biafra was blown away. “Next to the Screamers, they were the best band I’ve ever heard that never put out their own record . . . It was unclassifiable. It rocked, but it didn’t sound like anything else.” They’re a “great lost demented band of the Sixties.”

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the first Ramones LP, he was “more amused than blown away.” But the short, topical songs stuck with him. Although the Ramones “always denied they were a political band,” Biafra argues that “just talking about this shit was a political act.” Trying to turn a trick at 53rd and 3rd “was not something that Aerosmith was going to sing about. And of course the lyrics that name-dropped Vietnam, and was very unusual, and had a kind of gallows humor going on . . . This was an eye-opener.” And then when he saw the Ramones live in Denver, “they just blew me through the wall.” Devo was an important influence, too, particularly in the early Search & Destroy interviews in which they discussed subliminal advertising and mind control of consumers.21 Before moving from Boston to San Francisco in 1977 Klaus lived for a while with his sister, Priscilla, and her husband John Hartung, who wound up being a bit of a political mentor. Although Priscilla leaned left, John was a Republican who took to keeping Klaus up drinking and playing cards, teaching him how to argue his points. “He made me not only form my political views, but also to try to argue them to people” who did not share those views. The key was to be able to back up his arguments with evidence. Not long after arriving in San Francisco, Klaus started to accumulate some pretty alarming evidence of government and corporate malfeasance. Working as a temp in the Telex department at Bank of America, he saw contracts between American corporations and repressive governments in Central and South America, including loans at very low interest rates. “Why would we do that for 1 percent?” he wondered. “Something doesn’t add up. They’re a bank—their whole thing is to make money.” As a result, by the time he co-founded Dead Kennedys with Biafra and East Bay Ray, Klaus saw the band as a vehicle for getting people to think about important issues, locally and nationally. Although Ray says that politics was not part of his original vision for the band—“my goal was really just to have the best punk 30

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band in San Francisco”—he came to punk with a complete political education courtesy of his parents and their engagement with the politics of race and class in the Fifties and Sixties. In fact, despite all the bad blood between them in recent years, Biafra describes Ray as “politically astute . . . by far the most educated, and probably the most well-read” member of the band. “He’s more of a Clinton Democrat, shall we say, but he does have depth of knowledge on how things are run.” It is a fair description of a guy born into an archetypal mid-century liberal home. Ray Pepperell grew up in Castro Valley, a prosperous “garden suburb,” an enclave to professionals who worked in San Francisco and Oakland. He is at least a third generation Californian—his maternal grandmother was born in the foothills to descendants of 49ers—and the son of a Kaiser Aluminum executive father and librarian mother who met as English majors at UC Berkeley (in the same class as actor Gregory Peck). At Kaiser, Ray’s father worked in operations planning, “looking into the building of new plants, their feasibility, etc.,” and liaising between the engineers and management. But he was also a sculptor, working primarily in wood in the kind of mid-century modern style associated mostly with Charles and Ray Eames and Danish modern design. In Castro Valley, the Pepperells and two other families put on art shows at the tennis courts in the neighborhood, while at Kaiser headquarters in Oakland, Ray’s father convinced management to install a ground floor art gallery that featured California artists in exhibits that he curated. In the meantime, Ray’s mother worked as a homemaker while her children were young, but then returned to school to become a librarian. By the time Ray was in high school, he would spend the afternoons when he wasn’t playing guitar at the Alameda County Public Library where she worked. Both of his parents listened to music: his mother favored folk, and especially Pete Seeger and the Weavers, while his father leaned more toward jazz—Duke Ellington and Count Basie— and country blues. Once they were old enough, Ray and his brother 31

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went with their father to see Count Basie, Lightning Hopkins, and, later, the Rolling Stones.22 Beyond this grounding in the arts, Ray’s parents provided concrete models of political engagement. They were plainly liberals who believed in public service and social justice. “My parents were, for suburbanites, very active,” and seemingly responsive to John F. Kennedy’s call to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” In the East Bay in those years, as the historian Robert Self has shown, cities and suburbs competed for tax revenues in a racially-charged atmosphere. Communities like San Leandro, which lay between Oakland and Castro Valley, developed practices in coordination with real estate agents and insurance companies to build exclusivity and, effectively, segregate themselves from urban (read: nonwhite) populations. Ray’s parents joined other liberal professionals in opposing the then-common practice of redlining—when banks and insurance companies artificially jacked up lending and insurance costs in black neighborhoods, effectively denying financing to those areas—and did not shy from discussing these issues with the children at the dinner table. They attended fundraisers for these causes and brought Ray and his siblings to demonstrations. His mother also joined the League of Women Voters, while his father was elected to the local school board.23 Like his parents, Ray did not then (and does not now) embrace radical political action. His parents admired President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and like Biafra, Ray has vivid memories of how upset his parents were when Kennedy was killed. For Ray, King’s approach is the one to follow. “Politics is about changing other people’s minds, not preaching to the choir,” not merely airing grievances the way one might at the barricades. Even as he grew up in an era of urban unrest and race riots, a time when city dwellers especially had many legitimate reasons to express their grievances, Ray echoes Biafra’s lyrics in “Riot” (from Dead Kennedys’ Plastic 32

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Surgery Disasters LP): “tomorrow you’re homeless, tonight it’s a blast.” Ray argues that “rioting is one of the most selfish political acts . . . in the sense that it’s all about hitting your adrenaline rush.” That’s why “Martin Luther King was an idol of mine,” he says. “Because he was able to get the majority of the white people to change their thinking,” to support the end of segregation. At the same time, Ray has been remarkably consistent, over the years, in saying “I’m more into personal politics.” That is a term coined by feminists, of course, but for Ray it has meant that “change doesn’t come from the top down.” Rather “it comes in how you treat your friends, and your family, and the people you work with . . .” In this way, he echoes social movement scholars who have written about “prefigurative politics,” building smaller models of what one wants the larger society to look like. Unlike what they considered to be a naïve and maybe delusional Sixties counterculture, many punks considered their more local approach—building a scene, a community—to be more pragmatic and a prerequisite for changing the world. “When we started [the band], we would hook up with people, drive to LA, stay at their house, and it was a very communal effort, with nobody trying to organize it,” Ray recalls. Everyone worked together “without being told to.” The goal is a revolution in human relations, Ray says, but “if you cannot do it at this [personal] level, you ain’t gonna do it at any other level.” Later, with Dead Kennedys, that meant not trying to lead a political movement, but, rather, thinking about “how we can change people we come in contact with” on a personal level.24 Not unlike Klaus, Ray’s musical tastes were influenced by his parents’ but he was also drawn to the rock and roll that seemed threatening for the day, from Elvis through psychedelia. And he learned to play all of it on guitar, trained at first by Lee Howard, a Tennessee “good old boy” who ran the ABC Music Store in Castro Valley after getting out of prison for writing bad checks. “He had photos of himself in various Grand Ole Opry bands where they 33

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wore tan suits with piping along the seams and matching cowboy hats,” Ray remembers. In high school, Ray played in various cover bands with his brother on drums. After attending Chabot College and transferring to Berkeley, where he earned a degree in mathematics, Ray wound up playing in a Fifties doo-wop band, complete with a singer who would do Elvis impersonations. Although he was at first, like Biafra, attracted to the counterculture “as an experiment in changing society’s paradigms,” he had no patience for it when it “got into decadence—you know, hot tubs, peacock feathers, and stuff.” By early 1978, punk was calling him. He missed the Sex Pistols at Winterland, but later, when he wandered into the Mabuhay Gardens, ground zero for San Francisco punk, to see local act Leila and the Snakes, it was the opening band from LA, the Weirdos, tearing it up, that changed everything for Ray. “The little hairs on the back of my neck stood on end!,” he remembers. At last, a return to real rock and roll. “This is what I want to do.”25 *

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Looking back now, it is easier to see that by the time Eric Boucher and Geoffrey Lyall reached San Francisco and met Ray Pepperell, the dreadful state of both the nation and American music— particularly compared to when they were younger—played an important role in shaping the thinking of the three main architects of Dead Kennedys. Unlike many artists, each came from comfortable, loving, middle-class homes. Their parents’ varied political engagement reminds us that a progressive culture thrived in the middle of the century. But by the late 1970s, it was under assault. Consequently, Biafra, Ray, and Klaus found themselves embracing punk not because of their family experience but because of their experiences as children of the spoiling American dream. By 1978, they shared a frustration, if not a contempt, for the failings of the American state as well as for the Sixties political and cultural rebels who they once hoped to join. Even the Yippies seemed to have less 34

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to offer: Abbie Hoffman was on the run as a drug fugitive and, worse, Jerry Rubin had gone Wall Street.26 Punk opened new possibilities for music and for youth politics, and that was nothing to sneeze at. A passion for the music—for “the wildest sides of rock and roll,” in Biafra’s words—brought punks together, and provided a foundation on which a new society could be built. “To my mind,” Brad Lapin, editor of the influential punk zine, Damage, wrote, “the greatest value this scene can have is in offering an obvious and clear alternative to the muck and ruin of mainstream society.” That meant contributing to the building of a community, prefigurative or not, that was committed to exposing lies and, by offering a truer alternative, overcoming the despair that seemed to define the age. Maybe that sounds utopian, but as Rebecca Solnit notes, “violence and negativity were all around us, and the task was to name it and then maybe tame it.”27 No easy task in California in 1978.

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2 Mellow Out or You Will Pay To be in California was to braid together various possibilities and to unravel the main thread. — Rebecca Solnit In the summer of 1978 Dead Kennedys formed in California, the former Promised Land, a state that no longer seemed so Golden. Where did it all go wrong? For over a century, California enjoyed a popular perception as a land of hope and dreams. More than any other state, California received migrants from other parts of the country as if it were a microcosm of the United States receiving immigrants from all over the world. Think of the enduring images of California’s allure—the glitter and sparkle of the gold rush and Hollywood, the verdant citrus groves that welcomed Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl, the shiny silver aircraft built by Rosie the Riveter during the war, the majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge matching the state’s natural wonder—and it is no wonder that Americans flocked by the millions to the Golden State to build a better life. It was the place where anything seemed possible. If earlier migrants came for the land and agriculture, advances in technology later made California the leading state of innovation, the place where jets, rockets, and computers would be built. Big thinkers and big dreamers built state of the art infrastructure and the best public schools and universities in the country. Forget earthquakes: it was

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the weight of all these new citizens that seemed poised to snap California off the edge of the continent and plunge it into the sea. Of course, by the 1960s, thanks to the Cold War and the industries that supported it, California also became disproportionately associated with the military-industrial complex—both the armed services and the companies that built bombs and created napalm— and suburban sprawl. Particularly around the major metropolitan areas, the state morphed from Promised Land into the “industrial garden,” and that fueled fierce political reaction on the left and right. Both campus radicals and suburban conservatives felt alienated by the dominance of big institutions—government, universities, corporations—and began to organize around alternate visions for California’s future. Suburbanites gathered in “coffee klatches” to support anti-big government candidates like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, while Black Power advocates sought community control of schools and other local government services. Meanwhile, the counterculture swept through the state with its demands for all sorts of liberation, personal, sexual, political, and otherwise. By the 1970s, no state was more associated with the extremes of American politics and culture than California. Outside of the state, skeptics across the country took to calling California “the land of fruits and nuts,” a homophobic dig, on the one hand, and a dismissal of hippies, on the other. In some ways, this reaction was cousin to the frustration that young punks felt at the counterculture for turning into what Biafra later described as “these hanging-plant pot people telling us that the way we expressed ourselves was too harsh and that we should mellow out.” Mellowing out, to Biafra, “was a one-way ticket to apathy and fascism.”1 Many Americans stopped taking California seriously even as it became a deadly serious place. By 1978, in fact, the state seemed to be home to a disproportionate number of both psychopaths and venal politicians—the kind who later became grist for Biafra’s lyrical mill. 38

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For one thing, the nation’s fascination with assassins and serial killers—devouring the journalistic and pulp paperback recountings of those mass murderers—seemed to focus more on California than anywhere else. Maybe it was Sirhan Sirhan’s fault, or Charles Manson’s. Sirhan’s 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy and the murders carried out by the Manson “family” in 1969—crimes committed in Los Angeles—were followed by mass marketed books that helped crystalize a new True Crime genre in publishing. With economic woes and a slide in global prestige as proof of America in decline, now came new evidence of sick American minds and the violence they birthed. In Santa Cruz County alone, over a thirty-month period, from 1970 to 1973, one mass murderer, John Linley Frazier, and two serial killers, Edmund Kemper and Herbert Mullin, brutally murdered a total of twenty-seven people, earning Santa Cruz an unwelcome “Murder Capital” nickname. When two would-be assassins tried to kill President Ford in the same month in 1975, it somehow made sense that both incidents occurred in California.* It is not entirely fair to single out California, of course. After all, the nation’s most notorious serial killers—Ted Bundy (who kidnapped, raped, and killed at least thirty women between 1974 and 1978), the Son of Sam (who killed six and wounded seven others with his .44 caliber handgun between July 1976 and July 1977), and John Wayne Gacy (who buried under his floorboards nearly thirty boys or young men he had raped and killed until he was caught in December 1978) carried out their evil deeds elsewhere. And although one had only to read Truman Capote to know that psychotic, inexplicable violence occurred elsewhere and before the 1970s, it was clear that by 1978 Americans were living *

First, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a former Manson family member tried to take a shot at him in Sacramento, and then Sara Jane Moore, with ties to the by-then defunct Symbionese Liberation Army, tried to get him in San Francisco seventeen days later.

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through, as Al Ennis of Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll put it, “the golden age of serial killers.”2 The number of serial killings in California in a very short period between 1977 and 1978 was truly shocking, however, and did a lot to add to what one historian calls the public’s perception of a “national threat.”3 Only months after David Berkowitz, the perpetrator of the Son of Sam killings (and inspiration for the Talking Heads song “Psycho Killer”), was caught in New York, women and girls as young as twelve started turning up dead in the Glendale hills near Los Angeles. The Hillside Strangler (who turned out to be two men, cousins) ultimately killed ten women between October 1977 and February 1978. Then, in Sacramento at nearly the same time, the “Vampire killings” left six people, including two children, dead. With a few of the victims, the killer, Richard Chase, committed necrophilia and cannibalism, including drinking some of their blood. Finally, eclipsing the combined body count of both the Hillside Strangler and the Vampire killer, over forty young men were killed and dumped beside California freeways between 1976 and 1980. The Freeway killers (the press reported it as one killer, but it turned out to be two, working independently) were active, therefore, just as punk bands shuttled up and down the I-5 between gigs in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Punks looked on these events with morbid fascination, seeing in the insanity of the perpetrators not only a larger American sickness but also a social and cultural force that, like punk, made mainstream America nervous. Americans from all walks of life asked themselves: how could our society produce this? Beyond the relatively tame “Psycho Killer” sung by Talking Heads, New York’s The Chain Gang recorded “Son of Sam,” and LA punks Black Randy and the Metrosquad wrote “I Wanna Jam with Son of Sam” (also before he was caught), both the Hollywood Squares and F-Word wrote songs called “Hillside Strangler,” and The Mentally Ill recorded “Gacy’s Place.” Biafra may not have had any of these crimes in mind when 40

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he later wrote “I Kill Children” or “Funland at the Beach,” but this backdrop of American insanity was part of the reason those songs, replete with unsettling imagery, resonated with punks tired of the American Dream lie. As if it was not enough to live through the darkness of serial killings in 1978, Californians also lived under the threat of a coterie of shifty-eyed, unprincipled political figures. It was an election year, and for many citizens, especially younger Californians, it seemed as though the political process had been hijacked by right-wing wackos like anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis and anti-gay state senator John Briggs and, as we will see in the next chapter, an authoritarian San Francisco mayor posing as a liberal, Dianne Feinstein. Meanwhile, to many, it seemed hopeless to try to pin down the governor, Jerry Brown, on any key issue. When Walter Cronkite introduced Brown during a 1976 television interview, he said: “In the age of anti-politics, Jerry Brown is the consummate antipolitician. He’s impossible to classify—a mixture of liberalism, conservatism, populism, existentialism, Zen Buddhism, Puritanism.” The son of former governor Pat Brown, Jerry Brown had been a Jesuit seminarian and had a degree from Yale School of Law. He had marched with Cesar Chavez and served as California secretary of state. When he was elected governor, he chose to live in a modest apartment instead of the governor’s mansion and eschewed limousines for walking or driving his own car. But he came to office in the midst of the nation’s economic crisis and, in words uncharacteristic of a Democrat, spoke frequently of working in “an era of limits” and of intentionally defying easy categorization by moving “left and right at the same time.” A 1976 book by J. D. Lorenz, a disgruntled former Brown aide, alleged that the governor had once linked this kind of deliberate shape-shifting to achieving total power. “Politics is a jungle and it is getting worse,” Lorenz quotes Brown as saying. “People want a dictator these days, a man on a 41

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white horse. They’re looking for a man on a white horse to ride in and tell them what to do. A politician can do anything he wants so long as he manipulates the right symbols.” At first Lorenz thought that Brown was issuing a warning about the state of American politics, but he later concluded that Brown saw himself as the man on the white horse.4 Jello Biafra, among others, took note. One might have expected punks to find Brown more tolerable than his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, but in many ways it made sense for Biafra and Dead Kennedys to target him in their first single, “California Über Alles.” Across 1978, Brown either prevaricated on the three biggest political issues facing the state or he managed his response to them (and the public’s perception of his response) brilliantly—and, critically, Californians let him get away with it. First, he came out strongly against Proposition 13, a referendum designed to drastically cut property taxes. The campaign in favor of Prop 13 was led by Paul Gann and Howard Jarvis, whom one journalist referred to as “the last angry man.” A former appliance factory owner, Jarvis came across as a buffoon, calling his opponents “liars,” “dummies, goons, cannibals or big mouths.” Brown, who generally came across as humorless, could not combat Jarvis’s populist appeal nor convince the public that the simplistic Prop 13 would bankrupt local communities and the state.5 In early June 1978, just weeks before Dead Kennedys played their first gig, Californians voted 2 to 1 in favor of Proposition 13, marking, in retrospect, what many pundits see as the dawn of the anti-government Reagan “revolution.” Although Brown had been outspoken in his opposition to the referendum, he moved swiftly to drastically cut social services. When liberal leaders met with Brown to criticize the cuts, he told them they should “abandon the rhetoric of the 60s in the light of the realities of the 80s.” To this day, few politicians have had the guts to buck the trend Brown started and raise taxes—even to save the public schools. Dead Kennedys came into existence, then, at the dawn of a new era in American selfishness 42

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and political cowardice, when lower taxes became more important than higher quality public services.6 No sooner had Proposition 13 passed than Californians were faced with another controversial ballot referendum, Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative. The ballot question, which aimed to bar homosexuals from teaching in California’s public schools, was authored by John Briggs, a Republican state senator from Fullerton, the heart of right-wing, segregated Orange County. Briggs had gubernatorial ambitions and thought there were votes in attacking the Sixties (the decade, he seemed to suggest, that gave us gay people). Mimicking Anita Bryant (who had succeeded in campaigning to roll back a gay rights ordinance in Miami, Florida in 1977), Briggs cast homosexuals as vampires out to get your children. Like pornographers and “dope addicts,” he said, “homosexuals want your children” because “they don’t have any children of their own . . . [they] have no means of replenishing.” Such arguments seem ludicrous now, but in the summer of 1978, polls showed 75 percent of Californians supporting the initiative. Among the 25 percent opposed were the state’s punks, no small number of whom were gay. Throughout that summer, as Dead Kennedys played their first shows and wrote their early songs, the most prominent leader of the “No on 6” campaign was the highest ranking openly gay elected public official in the country: San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk. In public debates, Milk mocked Briggs for ignoring the overwhelming evidence that children were much more likely to be physically and sexually abused in heterosexual families, and he laughed at the notion that gays recruited children at school. “If it were true that children mimicked their teachers,” Milk told Briggs, “you’d sure have a helluva lot more nuns running around.”7 Going into the autumn, Milk had pulled the polls closer, and with the help of punks. On September 11, Milk played MC at the Mabuhay Gardens’ “Nix on 6: Save the Homos Benefit,” featuring 43

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Crime, the Offs, the Readymades, and several other bands. “New Wave Against Oppression” the flyers read (when the terms “new wave” and “punk” were still used interchangeably). Jerry Brown, running for reelection, remained largely quiet on Briggs, waiting until late in the campaign to come out against it. It took former governor Ronald Reagan opposing Question 6 to tip the balance, saying that “whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like measles.” On November 7, Californians voted No on 6 by a 59 to 41 percent tally.8 Just as Jerry Brown hedged on Proposition 13 and the Briggs Initiative, he spoke out of both sides of his mouth regarding battles over nuclear power—the third major battle to dominate California political news in 1978. On the one hand, he opposed nuclear power, calling it “the next Vietnam,” but on the other, he cracked down on the “No Nukes” movement. When more than 3,000 citizens turned out for a demonstration organized by the Abalone Alliance at Diablo Canyon—halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco and less than three miles from the Hosgri Fault (where experts predicted an earthquake as high as 7.5 on the Richter scale could one day hit.)—police arrested 487 for marching on the construction site. Rather than go easy on those with whom he was seemingly allied, Brown let prosecutors throw the book at the people arrested. All 487 received sentences of fifteen days in jail and $300 in fines. To those who thought the governor was on their side, it seemed like a betrayal.* Jerry Brown seemed beholden to no principles save the advancement of his own political career.9 *

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* The following June, after Brown had been reelected, and in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, the governor returned to describing the Abalone Alliance as “a growing force to protect the earth.” But two years later, when the NRC approved Diablo Canyon’s operating license, Brown sent the National Guard to help police arrest nearly 2,000 protesters over several weeks.

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This year marked by psychopathic serial killers and amoral politicians provided the backdrop for the formation of Dead Kennedys, a band that shied away from neither subject. In spite of the tarnish on California’s Promised Land crown, the state still attracted many young people, including Eric Boucher and Geoffrey Lyall. The story of the band’s somewhat unlikely origins is wellknown to punk fans: Ray Pepperell, fresh from seeing the Weirdos at the Mabuhay Gardens, posted an ad seeking musicians interested in forming a punk band. Boucher saw the ad in Aquarius Records, an independent shop that specialized in punk, located in the Castro (next door to where Harvey Milk’s camera shop had been until an unscrupulous landlord doubled his rent a few months earlier, forcing him out); Lyall saw Ray’s ad in, of all places, Bay Area Music (BAM) magazine. BAM made a lame attempt to fill the hole left by Rolling Stone when it moved from San Francisco to New York, and mostly fawned over the likes of Santana and Jefferson Starship; although the magazine showed little interest in punk, punks read it, if only to see Mabuhay Gardens’ listings and to scorn whichever Marin County artist graced the cover. The BAM ad said “East Bay, Ray,” but Lyall, who was still getting the lay of the land in the Bay area, “didn’t know if it was his name or if it meant to go there or he still lives in the East Bay or what,” so he played it safe and called, asking for Ray. For a while, as each member tried out new punk names, Ray went by Ray Valium or Ray Glasser, but thanks to this story, soon became known as East Bay Ray. Ray and Klaus were not really punks, but Biafra was already a fixture in the San Francisco punk scene. He had started going to the city to see punk shows at the Mabuhay while he was a student at UC Santa Cruz, a place he soon found to be just “another Boulder.” He dropped out after one quarter, and following a brief retreat home, scraped together the money to get to San Francisco for good. Even before starting college, Biafra harbored dreams of being in a band, but, he says, “it seemed utterly impossible until punk.” On his first 45

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visit to the Mabuhay Gardens, a friend introduced Biafra to a guy named Russell Wilkinson who had just changed his name to Will Shatter. Shatter told him that he had been playing bass for only a couple of days and was already in a band. “That was the spirit of punk in San Francisco at that time,” Biafra remembers, “and no one was more extreme and boisterous and vivacious with it than Will.” But more than that, Shatter, who later formed Negative Trend and Flipper, “emphasized the importance that bands should be political,” and told Biafra to come back the next night when one of the city’s really political bands, the Avengers, would be playing. Klaus remembers Ray saying at their first meeting, “we got this guy named Eric who is nineteen and seems to be really having his thumb on the pulse of the music scene,” As early as their second practice, they started pulling together the song that became “Holiday in Cambodia.”10 The band’s name took a few days longer. Biafra remembers Ray and Klaus being so “vehemently opposed” to Dead Kennedys—a name first suggested to him by two friends when he still lived in Boulder—that he had to go around telling members of other San Francisco bands about it, just to help it stick. “It wasn’t that we didn’t like it, but we were nervous about it,” Klaus recalls. “We all sort of squirmed a bit,” but “I remember us thinking about it and deciding, what the fuck . . . We had to out-outrage ‘Sex Pistols,’ but we didn’t want to do shock for shock sake, so there had to be a reason for the name.” Most people, even their friends and fans thought that, on some level, they did pick the name simply for shock’s sake. “I just remember the first time I read their name in the Chronicle,” says Jim Keylor who later recorded “California Über Alles,” “and I thought ‘Oh my God, how could a band call themselves the Dead Kennedys?’ ” Some punks, like Mickey Sampson (who eventually went by Mickey Creep and was Biafra’s roommate for five years) actually avoided the band at first because of the name. When he first heard of a band called Dead Kennedys, Sampson thought it was the “most stupid and deliberate and obvious name, and that it was like an attempt to 46

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be those things that the people who hated us thought we were: offensive for the sake of being offensive.” But for others, such as Search & Destroy publisher Vale, even though it was “so outrageous then,” it “was the best name anybody’d ever come up with.” And Michael Reid, who came to San Francisco from London in 1979, confirmed that “Dead Kennedys was probably the most inflammatory name since the Sex Pistols—which, at the time, was considered obscene.” With a name like that, Reid said, the Kennedys had to know they were “going to upset polite society.”11 Before Dead Kennedys had even played a show, Biafra and his friend Carlos Cadona impressed Geza X, himself a punk musician, sound technician, and budding producer from LA. At the time, Geza, who later recorded “Holiday in Cambodia,” was in San Francisco to do sound for the Screamers, the criminally underrecorded Los Angeles band, and to work on a video shoot they were doing with Joe Rees for Target Video. Biafra and Cadona invited Geza to Zim’s, a coffee shop, to tell him about this band that they were starting called Dead Kennedys. Geza found Biafra to be a “very entertaining storyteller,” but he wondered “if these guys can actually live up to this name.”12 That encounter included one of the two other members of the newly formed Dead Kennedys about whom much less is known, both in terms of their politics, and in general. Carlos Cadona was already a guitarist in a band called Mailman when he met Biafra at the Mabuhay. When Dead Kennedys put together the required three-song demo tape and 8 x 10 glossy photograph to satisfy Mabuhay promoter Dirk Dirksen’s rules, Biafra recruited Cadona to pose as their drummer. A few days later, Bruce Slesinger became the band’s actual drummer, but then Mailman broke up, so Cadona was invited to play guitar along with Ray. According to Biafra, Cadona came from a born-again Christian background, “pushing Jack T. Chick comics on people,” but gave that up for punk (and, in fact, wrote “Religious Vomit” in the short time he was in the band). By all 47

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accounts, he was an incredibly nice guy even if he had a devotion to prog rock that his punk friends found nauseating. Jane Weems, aka Insane Jane, who was the first drummer for the all-women band, Vs., and was used to being told that she played drums well “for a girl,” remembers that Carlos would go out of his way to say “You don’t play drums like a girl: you play drums like a drummer!” Weems also had a musician friend who, down on her luck and strung out on drugs, started turning tricks to make money, only to encounter Carlos one night. Jane’s friend told her that Cadona was so distraught at seeing her working the corner, he asked her how much she usually got paid, and then paid to take her to a hotel room to talk music all night. It was “a mini-musical intervention” aimed at getting her off the streets, off drugs, and back into making music. Whether by design or not, Cadona was practicing the kind of personal politics (to use Ray’s phrase), made up of countless small acts, that punctuated the punk scene, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.13 Carlos, who chose “6025” as his punk name from a clothing inspection ticket (“Inspected by 6025”) he found on the street, stayed in the band only about eight months. Biafra says that 6025 may have been “the best all-around musician in the band” and brought in songs that were fully-formed, including “Forward to Death” and “Ill in the Head,” both of which made it on to Fresh Fruit, as well as “Gaslight,” “Short Songs,” “Religious Vomit,” and the music for “Straight A’s.” “He was very talented and he had a very off-thewall avant garde musical viewpoint which we incorporated into our thing,” Ray recounts. But his love of Captain Beefheart and prog eventually led to artistic differences. At one point he brought in a long prog instrumental piece called “Dance of the Laughing Death Angel,” which, according to Biafra, took “Ill in the Head” “many, many steps further” in terms of complexity, but no one else in the band liked it. Apparently, that very same piece of music had led to the end of Mailman, too.14 48

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Beyond that, not much is known about 6025’s background, and the same is true of drummer Bruce Slesinger. 6025 rarely spoke to interviewers during his time in the band, and although Slesinger, who went by the punk stage name “Ted,” was interviewed at the time and since (but did not want to be interviewed for this book), interviewers have not been interested in his background or his politics. What we know is that Slesinger grew up in New York and had sufficient artistic skills to get himself into Rhode Island School of Design and, later, the Pratt Institute, where he studied architecture. Along the way, he became a very good drummer, playing at various clubs in New York, including Greenwich Village institution, Café Wha? According to Biafra, even though Ted “seemed a bit straighter than everybody else,” he got the Kennedys gig because he was “really good.” Klaus always makes a point of saying that Ted was the first one to actually rush him and Ray. Once formed with all five members, the band had about a week to rehearse before their first show at the Mabuhay.15 Dead Kennedys were still a work-in-progress, but the progress was rapid, and politics was at the forefront of much of their thinking. Although Geoffrey Lyall took the name Klaus Flouride mostly on a lark (as they rode around in Biafra’s Ford Capri)—“I had settled on Floss Cloride, and then my dyslexia just flipped it, and I thought ‘even better, Klaus Flouride’ because of the Kraftwerk-y sort of Germanic sort of thing and Flouride . . . was sort of taking the piss out of Johnny Rotten [for] having just one yellow tooth . . .”—Eric Boucher now took the name Jello Biafra for purely political purposes. He liked the way the brand name for the “ultimate plastic, useless, sugary American product” collided with “the worldwide symbol of the worst kind of genocide and starvation . . .”16 They played their first show in support of The Offs and several other bands at the Mabuhay on July 19, 1978 and were so wired with excitement they raced through their entire set in somewhere between eleven and fifteen minutes. But they were called back for an 49

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encore and played “Man with the Dogs,” a song that described a guy Biafra used to see in Boulder who would, as he walked his dogs, make a point of just staring at people, making them uneasy. “It’s just one more very subtle way of ungluing people’s minds,” Biafra told Search & Destroy. By “generally just not behaving according to ‘normal’ patterns” one caused a disruption, but “without blowing up buildings or people or anything else.” The interest in shattering social conventions in “Man with the Dogs” later escalated to fullblown shock value with “I Kill Children,” “Funland at the Beach,” “Too Drunk to Fuck,” and others. As we will see, some of these songs were widely misunderstood outside of the scene, but as Al Ennis notes, if a band put an image of a napalmed baby on its flyer, it was not supporting the use of napalm; it was a shock tactic used to get people’s attention. “The first part of a revolution is just the anger coming out,” said Ennis, “and then, from the anger, you build something positive, of thinking about ways to channel that anger and try to better your situation.”17 Biafra’s subjects and brazenly warped lyrics resonated perfectly with California’s psychic landscape, populated by slimy politicians and demented serial killers. The key to their effectiveness lay not only in the selection of unusual subjects, but in the gallows humor he applied to things like chemical contamination, kidnapping, and Jerry Brown. In “Kepone Kids” (which became “Kepone Factory,” released on the In God We Trust EP) Biafra wrote about Hopewell, a Virginia factory that dumped toxic waste from the production of the pesticide Kepone into the James River, which runs to the Chesapeake Bay. Not only did the contamination lead authorities to ban fishing in the James River for nearly fifteen years, but workers at the plant breathed the Kepone dust into their lungs, developing involuntary shaking, swollen joints, and a rare neurological disorder called opsoclonus—a jiggling of the eyes that follows motion. In the song, Biafra likened the Kepone poisoning to Minamata disease (named for the Japanese village where corporate chemical dumping 50

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into an adjacent bay that led to high levels of mercury in the village food supply—locally caught fish and shellfish) and “turning people into Bonsai trees.” It is a grim topic, and one not likely to have been encountered by most of his audience (who remembers Minamata disease today?) but, writing from the perspective of a factory worker, he walks a tightrope of rage and humor as he describes shoving Kepone down a plant manager’s throat even as he offers to buy the employee off with a new Trans Am.18 Other early songs such as “Kidnap” and “Dreadlocks of the Suburbs” never made it to vinyl, but showed Biafra experimenting with the two-pronged attack of shock and humor. In “Kidnap,” he seemingly plays the role of a revolutionary, maybe of the Red Brigades or Red Army Faction variety (Search & Destroy covered both groups with fascination) or of the Symbionese Liberation Army that kidnapped Patty Hearst. The narrator-revolutionary fantasizes about the liberating potential of kidnapping celebrities and contemporary public figures. Among others, the song’s protagonist calls for kidnapping John Wayne, Debbie Boone, John Travolta, and Amy Carter—the kind of people who, let’s face it, most punks would be happy to see erased from popular culture. But the song also veers toward the more menacing when the narrator raises the stakes to, for example, not only kidnap “Rockefeller wives and kids,” but to hold a “People’s trial for what their husbands did.” Or “Kidnap Richard Nixon and watch him die.” Both lines mark a subtle switch that takes us beyond the thrill of kidnapping the celebrities who annoy us to something far more grave. The song’s most notorious line—“kidnap Donny and rape Marie”—targeted Donny and Marie Osmond, the brother-sister television variety show act then appearing every week on ABC. On the one hand, any punk alienated by mainstream culture would laugh out loud at the thought of kidnapping the Osmonds, who were the same age as most punks but represented a kind of squeaky clean mainstream television millionaire (who sang god-awful music) they would have 51

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abhorred. But then there’s that line in which the revolutionary narrator gets carried away and also instructs to “rape Marie.” It is the kind of line that most anyone outside of punk (and plenty inside, too) would find completely offensive and tasteless, but that would miss the point. The song suggests that all of this kidnapping is done in the name of “Liberation for today!” but then rhymes it with “Plenty money to be made.” In this way, Biafra is equally derisive of the revolutionary poser who is, in fact, just as violent and greedy as the mainstream culture he attacks. In criticizing both vapid popular culture—in the form of the Osmond television show—and the would-be rapist revolutionary, Biafra showed signs that his gallows humor not only had an agit-prop edge but also possessed an uncommon level of insight into political cultures.19 Here again, the Yippie tradition shows up in the mix of an outrageous performance with a biting critique. It marked a departure from the kind of political punk practiced by bands like the Dils, who were equally fierce but regarded as almost completely humorless. If DKs “was just a cut and dry political band,” Klaus later remarked, “then I wouldn’t have been interested.” The mix of politics with “the sense of humor throughout” as well as good melodies, made it worthwhile for him. In many ways, this approach mirrored that of Robert Arneson, the Bay Area sculptor whose work was often highly political. Arneson was older, but his work blossomed in the 1970s, in part because of his attraction to what he said artists typically could not do: “to mix humor and fine art.” “I think humor is very serious,” Arneson said. “It points out the fallacies of our existence.” Biafra could not have said it better. He mixed humor not with fine art but with blunt art and he did it devastatingly well.20 The balance of humor and outrage extended to the earliest Dead Kennedys performances, too. The pressure to be unique in a diverse San Francisco punk scene was great, and in the late 1970s’ age of extremes, the band was in equal parts thrilling and threatening. Part of it was Biafra’s sense of theater and admiration for the most 52

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Figure 2.1 Equal parts thrilling and threatening: Biafra and Ray engage the Mabuhay Gardens crowd, 1980. Photo by Chester Simpson, used by permission. 53

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extreme performers in the punk scene, and part of it was the driving attack of the music, complete with Ray’s sinister guitar sound. From the start, Biafra distinguished himself as a front man. As Klaus tells it, at their very first show, opening for several other bands, including Negative Trend and the Offs, in front of a modest crowd, “Biafra just went berserk, he went running around the tables,” confronting the audience. Dennis Kernohan of The Liars said that Biafra “just kicked everybody’s ass. It was ingenious, I’m telling you.” Challenging the audience may not seem so novel now, but with the exception of the Germs’ Darby Crash and Negative Trend’s Rozz Rezabeck, few others dived from the stage so recklessly, or ran through the audience, knocking over chairs. Biafra liked that Darby and Rozz broke down “the bullshit barrier between ‘artist’ and ‘audience.’ ” In 1978, that approach was “just flat mind-blowing,” says John Marr of Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll. “Bands didn’t do stuff like that.” Biafra had also seen the Dead Boys play at the Old Waldorf in 1977 where Stiv Bators made an impression by crawling around the stage miming like he was throwing up. That was “the first time I ever saw anything like that”—“careful notes were taken.” From a very early date, people in the audience, including those who were apparently Biafra’s friends, would try to tear his clothes off at every show. Usually he lost his shirts, but Jane Weems, who co-organized the Kennedys’ third show, at the Gay Community Center at 330 Grove Street, and basically worked security on one side of the stage, remembers Biafra being pulled into the mass of people, holding on to Jane as she put her hands through his belt loops. “I thwarted his friends’ pants-pulling frenzy,” she says.21 The sense that this was a band careening out of control came not only from its front man but from the roar of the music. Geza X, who wondered if a band called Dead Kennedys could live up to its name, unexpectedly saw them perform their fourth or fifth gig that summer. “I realized that this was the Dead Kennedys that he [Biafra] had been telling me about, and I was hearing this just thunder 54

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Figure 2.2 “Breaking down the bullshit barrier between artist and audience”: Biafra on stage at the Mab, 1979. Photo by Richard McCaffrey, used by permission.

coming out of the speaker—just thunder,” Geza later recalled. “It was the heaviest, hardest impact because Ray Pepperell, the guitar player, he uses this Echoplex . . . in punk rock that was a no-no to have any kind of effects like that. He used it so masterfully that it became the Dead Kennedys sound.” Echoplex is the brand name for an analog tape unit—the kind favored by guitar gods like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page—that Ray had had for years and that he liked because the moveable tape heads made it possible to produce a deep, eerie echo, which makes the guitar noisier and more raw. That is important, not only because Ray was fashioning a distinctive sound for punk guitar, but because that sound, too, captured the dark American mood. That guitar was a perfect match for Biafra’s macabre lyrics because it sounded alternately sinister, disturbing, 55

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and deadly—and Ray played it over Klaus’s dark and ominous bass riffs. “These guys [were] playing their fucking asses off!” Geza continues. In fact, he thinks that in addition to channeling Darby Crash and Rozz, Biafra also co-opted many of Tomata du Plenty’s moves, too—which made sense given how much Biafra revered the Screamers, the highly theatrical and confrontational LA band—but “it looked fresh and original—it was a totally new thing . . . an amazing, stellar performance.”22 And that was just at the beginning. The manic performances and early songs—both of which brought serious political messaging behind the sudden slap in the face designed to get your attention—brought bigger and bigger crowds and, soon, recording opportunities. Dead Kennedys impressed immediately people like Vale from Search & Destroy and Bruce Conner, the photographer and filmmaker associated with the Beats. Both worked to promote the Kennedys from the start. “I said, sure, I want to give more political instigators a voice,” Vale recalls, remembering that Biafra was the first person he had ever interviewed who arrived with a notebook full of points he wanted to make. “No one else did that. They weren’t as thoughtful as him.” Vale was especially impressed with Biafra’s critique of corporate America at a time when far fewer citizens worried about corporations than do today. Conner, who had previously published iconic photos of Devo and Negative Trend playing the Mabuhay in Search & Destroy, became a devoted Kennedys fan. Thanks to Conner’s prominence and a deal he worked out with Patrick Gleason, owner of Different Fur studios, in which he would trade art for studio time, Conner brought Dead Kennedys into the studio for the first time. They recorded four or five songs, but the whole project broke down over fierce disagreements between the band and their first-time producer. No one in the band liked the mix, and Ray remembers Conner “actually rolling on the floor, pounding it, saying he was right.” That partnership ended abruptly.23 56

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Ultimately, the Kennedys recorded their first single, “California Über Alles,” in the spring of 1979, and although it had as much to do with Biafra’s observations of Boulder as anything, audiences saw in it a brilliant critique of both an untrustworthy politician and an apathetic public. After the Different Fur difficulties, the band turned to Jim Keylor and his basement studio at 4326 Army Street, where the Offs had recorded “Johnny Too Bad.” Keylor moved to San Francisco in 1966 from Davis, California, where he had played with a garage rock band that is now regarded as pretty legendary, Oxford Circle (some of whose members went on to form Blue Cheer, the band in which Vale later played, too). By the time Dead Kennedys came to him, he had been doing sound at the Mabuhay and had also done live recordings at the Savoy Tivoli and the Deaf Club, the latter of which had become as important to the punk scene as the Mabuhay. “The session went really smoothly because they were tight, well-rehearsed, good players,” Keylor remembers. “I remember they loved this UA limiter that I had, that was an old tube limiter . . . and it gave—you can hear it on his vocal—it gives it that sort of 50s or 60s radio kind of tonality. They loved that.” The band appreciated that, unlike Conner, Keylor listened to what they wanted. When they did not like Keylor’s early “rock and roll mix” he changed it. “I was coming from your normal rock and roll musician, audio kind of guy, trying to get a balance, so they taught me a lot.”24 In the year and a half after “California Über Alles” came out first as a single and later on the Fresh Fruit LP, Biafra offered consistent interpretations of the song as being focused primarily on a recklessly passive American public. Although his experience with latter-day Boulder ex-hippies informed much of the lyrics—the first draft of which was written by his Boulder friend, John Greenway, who also came up with the title—the song has always been associated with its namesake state and the grim mood there in the late 1970s. In the same way that he inhabited the guise of a revolutionary in “Kidnap,” Biafra plays the role of a dictatorial Jerry Brown in “California Über 57

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Alles.” But just as “Kidnap” investigates not only kidnapping but the mind of the kidnapper, “California Über Alles” examines not only the man who will be “Führer one day,” but especially those he would “command” and “control.” Biafra’s primary concern, he told multiple interviewers, was the “Me generation,” the self-centered Americans who, in the Sixties, rebelled, but by the mid-Seventies were drifting. “People seemed to be wanting to be told what to do,” which is how one could explain, he said, “more people turning to totalitarian mindfuck organizations” like EST, the Naropa Institute, and the Moonies. “This kind of placid attitude was the sort of thing that leads to fascist takeovers,” he told Search & Destroy. “People don’t bother to get up and stop it; it just sort of happens.” That is where Jerry Brown comes in.25 For many people, targeting Jerry Brown and his “zen fascists” for commanding a “suede/denim secret police” seemed written for purely comedic purposes, but, following the Yippie formula of delivering a serious message via slapstick, Biafra was not joking. He cited the J. D. Lorenz revelation of Brown talking about the American people needing a man on a big white horse to lead them (“Big bro on his white horse is near,” he sings), and that only seemed more possible given the state of political passivity he was observing among his fellow citizens. “He’s extremely clever,” Biafra said of Brown at the time. “Look how he straddled the fence on Proposition 13 . . .” He had a point. One only had to look back on the previous year’s political battles—over Proposition 13, Diablo Canyon, and the Briggs Initiative—to see a peculiar brand of leadership.* More than that, the numbers of Californians who stood up to Brown’s weathervane governing were few. By Biafra’s estimation, the public needed to reject complacency and their passive acceptance of all *

Biafra later acknowledged that his pet conspiracy theory about Brown was wrong and that, in fact, Ronald Reagan posed a greater threat. Hence, the reworked version, “We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now,” that came out on the In God We Trust EP.

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the New Agey bullshit of the day—from meditation to jogging— that made them so easily manipulated and, ultimately, repressed. “Mellow out or you will pay!,” the song’s Brown commands ominously.26 In some interviews, Biafra asserted that the governor had the same “lust for power” as Nixon and Hitler, which seems like a deliberate overstatement designed to draw in the listener.27 Some people did not get it. New York Rocker named Dead Kennedys the “best of the worst” West Coast bands known for “tastlessness and excess,” and mocked “California Über Alles” for its “cute” lyrics and “predictable” music. But Slash in Los Angeles responded with that line that Dead Kennedys, despite their “gimmick record” (“California Über Alles”) were not merely a “political gimmick joke band,” but possibly “one of the most important bands to come out of this scene.” As Search & Destroy photographer Ruby Ray later said, “you can’t beat that song! . . . that was a daring idea. They really knew how to push buttons in the right way. It’s Biafra’s genius.”28 In the meantime, reviewers paid little attention to the B-side, “Man with the Dogs,” and its unsettling warning about those who Biafra called “vacant strangers.” These were the strange people, the ones who seem normal for years, but then participate in some shocking act with the potential to “unglue people’s minds.” That was what America needed to shake it out of its complacent slumber, to wake up the nation and point citizens back toward the barricades left dormant since the Sixties. In San Francisco, the end of 1978 would see a lot of ungluing, but maybe not the kind for which Biafra hoped.

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3 The Sun Beams Down on a Brand New Day It’s not the kook capital of the world; it’s a beautiful, diverse, open, tolerant city. — Dianne Feinstein, March 1979 The Summer of Love blossomed in San Francisco in 1967, and ten years later came the Summer of Hate. Actually, it is hard to get a straight answer on which summer was the Summer of Hate; just as a publisher brings out a popular book in new and expanded revised editions, San Francisco seemed to produce new and expanded Summers of Hate in 1977, ’78 and ’79. With each passing year, life in the city seemed to go from bad to worse. If the country, and the state of California, seemed to be in decline, San Francisco suffered at the hands of real estate interests, their political enforcers, and a handful of psychos. These are the years that are at the heart of a decade in the city’s history that San Franciscan and Salon.com founder David Talbot calls the “Season of the Witch.”1 With the Seventies came a particularly dark turn for a city known as a laboratory for countercultures and radical politics. Americans thought of San Francisco as spiritual home to the Beats, many of whom still lingered in or near the North Beach neighborhood anchored by City Lights bookstore, as well as the Sixties counterculture still identified primarily with the Haight. And the city had also been

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home to New Left and Black Power uprisings. In 1960, the House Un-American Activities Committee faced its fiercest protests from San Francisco State and Berkeley students during hearings held inside San Francisco’s City Hall; police used fire hoses inside the rotunda to wash the protesters down the stairs and ultimately arrested sixty-four people. San Francisco State, meanwhile, brought together the city’s antiwar and civil rights organizations, culminating in a 1968 student strike that led to the formation of the nation’s first Black Studies department. And that is just scratching the surface. By the mid-1970s, however, that ship of liberal goodwill that tolerated and even sustained those political and cultural movements crashed on the rocks of new economic realities and seemed to sink in a sea of despair and defeatism. Between 1960 and 1980, the Bay Area was, according to the art historian Kristine Stiles, the “site of rapidly altering beliefs.” In her view, “the pessimism, anger, and rejection of mainstream American culture smoldering in the Beats skipped a generation to become punk abnegation, while hippie entrepreneurial impulses morphed into the upwardly mobile professionalism of yuppies.”2 But that is pure overstatement; there were plenty in the counterculture—like the Diggers and the Yippies—who nurtured that Beat anger through the Sixties and passed it on to their younger brothers and sisters in punk. And the gay liberation movement, with its organizational base in the Castro, grew directly out of the liberation movements of the Sixties. But Stiles’s interpretation is otherwise on the mark, and it dovetails with Jello Biafra’s assessment of many from the Sixties generation giving up Molotov cocktails for patchouli candles. It is, therefore, worth considering the place of the city of San Francisco in the making of Dead Kennedys and Fresh Fruit. As important as the national and California political context are to understanding Fresh Fruit and the way it was received, examining the San Francisco that produced what was arguably the most political punk scene in the United States is essential. 62

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Even in the late 1970s, as tourists gravitated to North Beach, to Café Trieste, looking for stray Beats, or rolled through the intersection at Haight and Ashbury hoping to see Jerry Garcia, memories of countercultures recent and more distant lingered among young San Franciscans. Punks may have come from the city or from afar, but it was not difficult to meet someone just a bit older, someone straddling the generations, who could speak with some authority about the contributions of the city’s cultural radicals of the Fifties and Sixties. Maybe most important for punks was that in addition to those rebels mentioned above, the counterculture offered models of do-ityourself organizing that became woven into the fabric of the city. Shelters like Huckleberry House, which took in runaways, and health care offered by the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, stood as concrete alternatives to official incompetence or mainstream indifference regarding the needy. And even the mainstream was not entirely indifferent. As David Talbot suggests, the San Francisco Chronicle all but rolled out the red carpet for the hippies and anyone else attracted to the city. “Editorially, I have always felt that everyone should be free to express himself without any particular restraint as long as he doesn’t bother the neighbors,” the paper’s editor, Scott Newhall, said. Talbot argues persuasively that “by setting a tone of tolerance toward the hippies,” the Chronicle “played a critical role in shaping the broader community’s views.”3 Years later, however, the Chronicle seemed to have run out of patience with subcultures. Punks enjoyed no such welcome. Although the paper’s music critic, Joel Selvin, grudgingly praised the Sex Pistols for their “hour long blitz of hard driving rock” when they played their last show at Winterland in January 1978, he also dismissed them as a cleverly crafted media product. And that was about the nicest thing anyone at the Chronicle had to say. In the wake of that concert, any stories published about punk could only be described as sneering. A week later, another reporter mocked 63

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that the Winterland show promised “to be the most degenerate, disgusting, delinquent night this city has ever seen—and everyone who was no one turned out to prove it.” The elitist, dismissive tone of “everyone who was no one” is impossible to miss. Only the most debauched, the lowest class—economic or otherwise—of people, the article suggested, would have been interested in seeing the Sex Pistols. The accompanying photographs included a guy with a jock strap on his face, another with a noose around his neck, and a woman whose ripped shirt exposed—shock of shocks—her left nipple.4 Obviously, something had shifted. It was not so much that Chronicle writers became prudes, but that the whole narrative of the city slouched toward ugliness: the immoral underside of the counterculture matched with urban decay in dark economic times, it seemed as though the mainstream press saw San Francisco through the eyes of Dirty Harry. “The city was overrun with false prophets and savage messiahs, as well as double agents and police informers,” Talbot observes. “The sacraments of blood and guns replaced peace and love.”5 By the mid-1970s, crime and counterculture seemed to conflate in the minds of city’s political establishment. For one thing, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the New World Liberation Front hijacked the word “liberation” in service of an array of half-assed “revolutionary” acts. Even among the city’s radicals—that is, among those who truly wanted to bring about the revolution, political, social, and cultural—few would have agreed with the SLA’s or NWLF’s tactics. One does not build a revolution by kidnaping heiresses or blowing up city supervisors, but that’s what they tried to do. The SLA captivated the nation’s headline writers for eighteen months by kidnapping Patty Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, and heiress to what must have been San Francisco’s biggest fortune at the time. They demanded, as ransom, that Randolph Hearst, Patty’s father, provide 64

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$70 worth of food to all Californians with “welfare cards, Social Security pension cards, food-stamp cards, disabled veteran cards, medical cards, parole or probation papers, and jail- or bail-release slips.” The total bill came to $6 million, and it provided food, through scrambling chaos at various distribution centers, to tens of thousands of poor people. The SLA followed up with armed robberies before most of them died in a fiery shootout in Los Angeles. In the tastiest plot twist, Hearst allegedly joined her captors and participated in some of their crimes. The NWLF, meanwhile, ran up a string of nearly fifty bombings in and around the city, attacking power plants, police stations, corporate offices and political figures. A favorite tactic involved planting a bomb inside a box of See’s candy and sending it to a prominent politician. One such bomb blew open the front of Mayor Joseph Alioto’s house; in 1976, two others were delivered to the homes of city supervisors John Barbagelata and Quentin Kopp, both men with mayoral aspirations. Kopp realized it was a bomb before it detonated and called Barbagelata’s home before anyone got hurt. In the winter of 1977, bombers—most likely the NWLF— targeted supervisor Dianne Feinstein’s house in Pacific Heights and sent yet another to Barbagelata.6 Both groups were made up of the kind of misguided politicos who gave radicalism a bad name—the kind Biafra wrote about in “Kidnap.”7 The San Francisco Police Department generally responded to the rash of gunfire and bank robberies the way Dirty Harry would have wanted it to—to repress any apparent deviant first and ask questions (maybe) later. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, under the direction of Mayor Alioto, the SFPD’s tactical squad, in particular, earned a reputation for brutality, “chasing down student protesters at San Francisco State and Haight hippies and beating them at will.” The SFPD had little tolerance for deviance; one’s physical appearance could be enough to attract their attention and maybe a smackdown. The Los Angeles Police Department was almost certainly more 65

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violent, but even after Mayor George Moscone brought in a reformist police chief in the mid-1970s, San Francisco cops gave the LAPD a run for their money.8 Police were not the only force of repression in the city. Indeed, one could make a pretty convincing case that the fiercest struggles in San Francisco in the 1970s were between ordinary residents and the city’s housing authorities—and landlords. Dating to the 1950s and 1960s when, in the name of urban renewal, the city displaced upwards of 38,000 African Americans from the Fillmore neighborhood, transforming Geary Street into an eight-lane highway (so that commuters from white west-side neighborhoods “could hurtle directly [downtown] through the Fillmore without stopping”), no one felt safe.9 By the 1970s, developers and their allies in City Hall were not only systematically razing blocks of housing on Market Street to make way for more corporate tenants, but landlords were capitalizing on the massive housing shortage by raising rents and evicting tenants so they could convert their units into lucrative condominiums. For a major American city, San Francisco is small—forty-nine square miles—and hemmed in on three sides by water. Where municipal governments let many portions of other major American cities go derelict in the 1970s, San Francisco flattened neighborhoods the way an earthquake would and rebuilt them.10 San Francisco punk was born in 1977 on the edge of Manilatown, one neighborhood facing the wrecking ball. At the corner of Kearny and Jackson, two blocks from the Mabuhay Gardens, stood the International Hotel, the Lexington and Concord of the city’s housing war. A residential hotel that housed maybe 200 elderly Asian tenants (mostly Filipino and some Chinese), who paid less than $80 a month for their rooms, the “I Hotel” was purchased by successive developers with other plans for the valuable real estate on which it stood. Despite protests from the tenants and local community organizers, the new owner got his eviction order and forced out 66

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most of the residents, but there were some forty holdouts. On August 4, 1977, the SFPD arrived in the wee hours of the morning sporting riot gear. Thousands of protesters were waiting for them, but they were no match for the Robocops who plowed through them before the television cameras and mounted what appeared to be a tactical military assault on the building. They smashed through windows and doors, and after marching their prisoners of war—the elderly tenants—out to the street, went back in to bust up the rooms so badly that they could not be reoccupied. Although the building’s demolition order was challenged, it finally made it through the courts a couple of years later, and the building came down. According to David Talbot, “the demolition of the I-Hotel was the last stand of old Manilatown, once home to thousands of Filipino farmworkers, cannery workers, houseboys, and sailors—like the hotel’s elderly tenants, most of whom never married because of antimiscegenation laws and restrictive immigration policies.” It was a fucking disgrace, and everyone knew it. Among those few thousand who tried to stop it were the city’s punks, who quickly developed a reputation for making common cause with anyone else in the city who was being oppressed. Over the next couple of years, as evictions and abuse of renters intensified, so, too, did punks’ disdain for the landlords and city officials responsible. Punks did not often take the lead in organizing the campaigns against the moneyed assault on the city’s neighborhoods, but they could be found on the front lines of the resistance.11 It is remarkable, in fact, that, in spite (or because) of all of this ugliness—with life in the city dominated by a combination of cartoon political rebels, repressive cops, and greedy developers— the punk community grew and thrived. Many punks came from elsewhere, but even for those who did not, San Francisco still, in hard times, radiated as a place of possibilities. When Oliver DiCicco, the engineer who later recorded Fresh Fruit, got to the city from New York in the mid-1970s, “the Summer of Love was over, and the 67

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Haight was full of junkies, and it was really seedy.” But there was something timeless about the city: “the air had a softness to it, everything was green . . . the city had something about it that was really kind of enchanting,” DiCicco says. “It felt very freeing.” It may not have been a city for old people (as the residential hotel struggles showed), but young people, more willing to live in lesser accommodations, to double and triple up on a place, could weather the economic crises.12 More than that, the infrastructure of the burgeoning punk scene seemed to offer creative outlets for anyone who wanted them. “The idea of the ethical worth of an artist penetrated deep in the psyche of Bay Area artists,” art historian Kristine Stiles writes, “from the Beats to the punks, passing from generation to generation in various iterations through a host of great artist/teachers . . .” That description certainly fits punk, which had people like Bruce Conner and V. Vale (who started Search & Destroy with $100 donations from both Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti). In addition to the bands and the venues at the center of the scene, there were zines and radio shows and visual art (from photography to gig flyers), record stores and clothing shops; the punk community created an environment in which Damage editor Brad Lapin said “anything and everything is possible.” Punks inspired each other to create their own art, writing, and way of living, says Mickey Sampson, editor of CREEP and Biafra’s roommate. “It was liberating like that.”13 By all accounts, San Francisco punk was born at the Mabuhay Gardens. Dirk Dirksen, a former television show producer who had also worked as a touring producer for the likes of Ray Charles, The Supremes, Iron Butterfly, and The Doors, first began staging a range of theatrical productions at the Mabuhay: Les Nickelettes, “a feminist guerrilla comedy group,” Straight People’s Theater, George Shearing, etc. And then came Mary Monday, the Nuns, and Crime— and so did audiences. By 1977, Dirksen, who claimed to be a grandnephew of Senator Everett Dirksen, had gone from booking shows 68

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only on Monday nights to putting three bands, mostly punk, on every night of the week. He dreamed that he would one day build on the success of the Mabuhay to create an independent television show that could showcase not only the punk bands that played there, but also the photographers, video and filmmakers, and writers coming out of the scene. That dream went unrealized, but in the meantime he became a central figure in San Francisco’s punk scene; a San Francisco Examiner weekend profile called him the “Pope of Punk.”14 Punks either loved or hated Dirksen. There is no disagreement, even among his friends, that he could be caustic and even dishonest. His critics blamed him for ripping off both bands (skimping on their cut from the door) and fans (when he raised prices above $3.00). Part of his act included provoking and insulting the crowd between sets and especially at the end of the night when he told them to get out. But for every story about what a prick he could be, there is another about his not infrequent generous gestures. But no one could argue with the Mabuhay experience. It would be easy to fill a book just with testimonials to the transformative experience of going to all of those early shows. The adjective that gets used most is “exhilarating.” “You wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” remembers Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll ’s Al Ennis. “And if you ever had to miss it for some reason, it would just gnaw at you.” According to Jello Biafra, “it meant the world” that one could go to shows at the Mab basically every night. “It meant seeing some of the greatest music you’ll ever see in your life, blisteringly loud, three feet away from you, and you can watch the sweat drip off the guitar strings while you bounce off of people . . . that was a big adrenaline rush, just all of the people bouncing off of each other.” And beyond the adrenaline rush, Biafra remembers, the experience was “consciousness-raising,” too, “because a lot of the lyrics—simplistic or non-simplistic—were saying things [like] we can do things better than the way corporate suburban robots want us to do things.” For 69

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Penelope Houston, lead singer and main lyricist for The Avengers, the Mabuhay was a place where “we were all joined together as punks.” “I just registered that I was punk in a world that wasn’t punk . . . Whether we were male or female, black or white or Mexican or queer or Asian or whatever, we were all just punks, and we were all joined together in that way. There was this great feeling musically, as well as how you looked, you could do whatever you wanted. You just made it up.”15 As Biafra and Houston suggest, the other side of the exhilaration and equality that so many felt at Mab shows was confrontation, a challenge to the mainstream. “I was joining a group of like-minded people,” Mickey Sampson recalls, who understood “that the world needed changing, who believed that they could change the world, who believed at least in some ways what that change should look like, who were against the same shit I was against.” A deep sense of solidarity formed, the way it might in a labor union local or among activists facing down police executing an eviction order. Sampson says that it bears repeating: “I believed we were going to change the world.”16 By the time Dead Kennedys started playing the Mabuhay in the summer of 1978, San Francisco had established itself as home to the most political punk scene in the country. Brad Lapin, who, as editor of Damage, covered punk all over the United States, thought then and thinks to this day that the San Francisco scene was unquestionably the “most self-consciously political . . . San Francisco was ridiculously political,” he says. “It was hysterically political!” No other scene saw punks joining with other activist groups to fight evictions of people who were decidedly not punks. No other scene saw punks holding benefits for striking Kentucky miners, striking railroad workers, falsely convicted Black Panther Geronimo Pratt, the “No on 6” campaign, the city’s Gay Day Parade, or Dessie Woods, a woman sentenced to twenty-two years in prison for killing her rapist with his own gun. No other scene had the concentration of 70

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bands that seemed to specialize in political critiques and anthems: Negative Trend, the Dils, the Avengers, UXA, Dead Kennedys—hell, even the Nuns and the Mutants wrote some political songs.17 But it was not merely that punks in San Francisco were political, it was also that the city itself made them political, forced them into political contests with those in power, and that was a climate in which Dead Kennedys thrived. It started with the dual stupidity of Proposition 13 and the Briggs Initiative. The success of the so-called tax revolt soon forced the city to cut costs, closing twenty-six schools and laying off 1,200 teachers. In the same season, before it was clear that the Briggs Initiative would be voted down, it seemed that scores of additional teachers would lose their livelihoods. Add the strain of the housing wars and, in 1978, it started to feel as though an unknown executioner was pulling taught an already tight noose. And then, in November, just days after the Briggs Initiative was voted down, actual executioners went to work. Amid reports that city supervisor Dan White had resigned and then reconsidered, word came in from South America that a local congressman, Leo Ryan, had been killed in Guyana. The next day, the city learned that hundreds of members of the People’s Temple, a cult-like religious community until recently based in San Francisco, had committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Congressman Ryan had, in fact, gone to Jonestown, Guyana, with a group of journalists and concerned relatives to investigate claims that the Reverend Jim Jones, spiritual leader of the People’s Temple, had been holding members against their will in his jungle utopia. Day after day, one grisly account of the scene after another came in, as San Franciscans swayed in disbelief. The death count eventually hit 913. In the meantime, former city supervisor Dan White lobbied, with the backing of the Police Officers Association and the Board of Realtors, to be reinstated on the board of supervisors by Mayor George Moscone. White, a former cop and fireman, had resigned impulsively owing to family financial pressures, but had been 71

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persuaded by his police and realtor supporters that he needed to get back to work on the Board of Supervisors. Moscone seemed open to the idea at first, but supervisor Harvey Milk, a Moscone ally who was tired of losing votes on the Board by one vote, convinced Moscone to exercise the power granted to him under the city charter to appoint someone new. On Monday morning, November 27, as the city was still absorbing the shock of Jonestown, Dan White responded to the mayor’s equivocation by climbing through a window at City Hall and shooting to death both Moscone and Milk in separate close-range shootings, minutes apart. He fled the scene, but later turned himself in to police. The Chronicle’s afternoon headline read: “City Hall Murders: MOSCONE, MILK SLAIN— DAN WHITE IS HELD.” Citizens stood motionless on the sidewalks, clutching the paper as they read the utterly bizarre news. That night, in a moving tribute to Milk and Moscone, some 40,000 San Franciscans marched in silence in a candlelit procession from the predominantly gay Castro neighborhood to City Hall.18 San Francisco seemed to have fallen through a trapdoor into hell. People interviewed on the street struggled to make sense of it all. “You think you’ve heard the worst of it, with the Guyana thing,” one woman told a reporter, “and the following week there’s this. My family lives in Europe and they’ll all be telling me how violent Americans are.” Herb Caen, the venerated Chronicle columnist wondered what it was about November, the month in which JFK had been killed, that now visited this horror on San Francisco. He challenged characterizations of San Francisco as “the kook capital,” but could not quite convince himself. “We who have lived here a long time resist that description,” Caen wrote. “What others call ‘kooks’ we look upon as characters in a charade we smile at. We think we understand the show, having played our own roles for so many years. Maybe we are wrong.”19 As we will see, the city’s slide in perception toward “kook capital” set the table, in more ways than one, for Dead Kennedys. In fact, one 72

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could be forgiven for associating the band with this bizarre period in the city’s history thanks to Dirk Dirksen scheduling DKs to play the Mab just days after the Jonestown massacre and just days before the City Hall murders. Herb Caen, writing the day before Jonestown, sparked controversy when he commented on the tastelessness of a band called Dead Kennedys playing on November 22, the fifteenth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In fact, Caen had it wrong: Dirksen had already dropped the Kennedys in favor of a rare appearance by space jazz pioneer Sun Ra and his Arkestra. But in the uproar that followed Caen’s column, Dirksen felt he had to put the band back on the 22nd, to come on after Sun Ra’s set, and to play for free. The show went on without any weirdness—except maybe the Kennedys’ sonic assault scaring some of Sun Ra’s audience out of the building. Five days later, Dan White killed the mayor and his rival supervisor, and the fact that Dead Kennedys played a gig on November 22 suddenly seemed unimportant. But White, the murderer, ushered in a new phase in San Francisco’s political history that made the band more relevant than ever. Some have called the Moscone and Milk murders a “right-wing coup.” That might be overstating it a bit. On the other hand, it did result in the president of the Board of Supervisors, Dianne Feinstein, taking over as mayor. To anyone wary of cops, real estate developers, or landlords, Feinstein was their worst nightmare. Unlike the reformers Moscone and Milk, who shared a vision of building a patchwork multicultural coalition to lead the city toward tolerance, justice, and prosperity, Feinstein, herself a landlord, plainly sided with downtown business interests and developers as charting the way forward. She had lost two prior campaigns for mayor and, before the assassinations, seemed content to push her agenda from her powerful seat on the Board of Supervisors. She was a major booster of the redevelopment of Pier 39 into one of those insipid soulless waterfront malls designed to attract tourists—like Boston’s Quincy Market, New York’s South Street Seaport, Baltimore’s Inner 73

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Harbor, etc.—instead of doing something significant for the neglected neighborhoods inhabited by ordinary San Franciscans. And she made no secret of her hope to “clean up Market Street” by building one high rise after another in order to attract big business to downtown. For punks, Feinstein’s rise to power amounted to a rude awakening. Mayor Moscone and his reformist police chief Charles Gain had generally tolerated the punks gathering at their usual hangouts: the Bagel on Polk Street, the Broadway Hotel, the Mabuhay and elsewhere. In fact, one of the mayor’s daughters frequented the Mab to see punk shows. But less than a week after Feinstein assumed power, the police started cracking down on the punk community. On December 1, they arrested Mabuhay owner Ness Aquino for “maintaining a house where narcotics are sold and used,” as well as the bartenders for “contributing to the delinquency of minors.” They also arrested random punks that night, including members of the headlining band, KGB. And that was just the start of what seemed like nightly harassment. It certainly did not seem like a coincidence. In February, police shut down an Avengers and Mutants show at the Art Institute before it could even start—they chained the door closed—allegedly because Feinstein found the flyer advertising the show (which featured nudity and hints of bondage) offensive. First Amendment protection of free expression, whether in musical form or in a flyer, did not matter. A few months later, Feinstein reassured the San Francisco business community that the city was on the comeback trail. “San Francisco is now in the process of rising once again,” she said. “It’s not the kook capital of the world; it’s a beautiful, diverse, open, tolerant city.” But just in case she was getting ahead of herself, she announced she would be putting more cops on the street than ever before.20 And then, the night of the Dan White verdict, the barricades went up and, for one night, it seemed like the revolution had arrived. To the shock of almost all San Franciscans, the jury accepted the 74

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“diminished capacity” defense presented by White’s lawyers and convicted him only of voluntary manslaughter, not first degree murder, for which the maximum penalty was eight years in prison; with good behavior, he could be out in five. An ex-cop who had executed a liberal mayor and supervisor got a slap on the wrist all because he claimed to have fallen into such a deep depression—as evidenced by his consumption of junk food, including Twinkies (leading critics to label this the “Twinkie Defense”)—that he had lost touch with reality. The jury, some of whom wept as they listened to his taped confession, believed him and, critically, believed that the killings of Moscone and Milk were not premeditated. “As far as I’m concerned, these were two murders,” Mayor Feinstein remarked to reporters fifteen minutes after the verdict came down. “Dan White has gotten away with murder,” an angry supervisor Carol Ruth Silver, a Milk ally, said. “It’s as simple as that.” Cleve Jones, a close friend of Milk’s, said the verdict meant that “in America, it’s alright to kill faggots.” The only people who seemed to disagree were the cops and firemen who wore “Free Dan White” t-shirts under their uniforms, who raised $100,000 for his defense, and who arranged for him to get special restaurant meals while he was in jail awaiting trial.21 It seemed like war had been declared. For punks, the weak verdict was the logical outcome of putting an ex-cop and “real estate puppet” on trial. Like many other citizens, they raised legitimate questions about whether the prosecution had “thrown or blown” the trial. As San Francisco Examiner columnist Warren Hinckle later noted, the prosecution had made no effort to reveal White’s hatred of gays, or of the police force’s hatred of Moscone, or of the Police Officers Association’s campaigning for White’s election. To those who saw a right-wing coup at work, the City Hall murders were not criminal acts, but political ones, committed on behalf of a runaway police force. Police had all the power and, as Mickey Sampson noted in the first issue of CREEP, “the cops in this city have consistently 75

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shown themselves to be anti-gay, anti-punk, and anti-minority,” and in all of that they had been supported by Mayor Feinstein.22 In reaction to the verdict, thousands of protesters marched spontaneously on City Hall, turning all of Civic Center Plaza into what Chronicle reporters called a “battlefield, lit by the eerie, smoky fires of trash barrels.” Protesters tore up the ornate grillwork around City Hall and used it to smash City Hall’s doors; like Parisians tearing up paving stones, they ripped rocks out of the aggregate trash cans recently installed all over the city, and threw them through countless windows, including the ones in the mayor’s office. When Feinstein later gave a press conference from her office, reporters noted the shattered glass all over the carpet. Meanwhile, demonstrators went after symbols of the repressive police force, and set ablaze at least sixteen squad cars and several police scooters. When Carol Ruth Silver came out to try to calm the crowd, she caught a bottle in the face, and had to go to the hospital for stitches in her lip. “Where’s Dianne?,” the crowd chanted. “Dump Dianne, Dump Dianne!” “Take City Hall, Take City Hall!” The police, dressed in riot gear, responded with characteristic ferocity, rushing into the crowd in waves, swinging batons indiscriminately. Journalists reported holding up their press cards, but being beaten anyway. Only after calling in reinforcements from the suburbs did police finally succeed, well after midnight, in running the protesters off. Away from City Hall, the retreating demonstrators trashed six banks; the police, meanwhile, went into the Castro, destroyed gayowned businesses and beat the shit out of countless gay people in retaliation for the riot.23 Starting the next day, the media referred to the battle for City Hall as a “gay riot,” even though it was really a populist uprising. San Franciscans of nearly all walks of life (maybe not bankers or realtors) took part in the protest. And punks? “Punks were all over that riot,” Mickey Sampson remembers. As he wrote at the time, “what happened that night was an uprising against increasingly 76

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fascistic authority represented most visibly by a police force of Dan White sympathizers, and the anti-punk mayor who was the chief beneficiary of the actions of the police-trained assassin. This uprising was carried out by many sectors of oppressed men and women, including gays, punks, and Third Worlders . . .” The gay community was very well represented among San Francisco punks, and punks—straight and gay—were well represented among riot participants. Years later, Sampson described it as “a very powerful night.” There is something liberating about participating in a riot, and even if some of that is “probably pathological and immature,” most of it is driven by a sense that “we can be pushed so far, but no further.” Peter Plate, who was among the punks arrested that night made no apologies. “Our anger was justifiable and continues to be so.” The verdict, he said, “is very much, in a symbolic sense, a representation of the justice that exists in this society.”24 Punks were both outraged with the verdict, but also delighted at their participation in the fight for City Hall. Londoner Michael Reid had witnessed the Brixton riots depicted on the back of the first Clash album, and arrived to see “all these gays and punks running” and to his pleasant surprise, they were “actually burning cop cars!” According to Sampson, punks felt just as they did in defending the International Hotel—that they had done something powerful. The mainstream press often dismissed punk as being only about a transgressive pose, but punks took pride in their deeds in the heart of the city. As another summer of hate seemed to be approaching, punks anticipated more riots. “That riot was not an isolated incident,” Peter Plate said. “We may be prosecuted, we may be locked up, but there are hundreds and thousands of other people who won’t stand for the shit no more.”25 The White Night riot seemed to mark a tipping point, alright, but mostly in unleashing the police on punks and in a closing of ranks among real estate interests who stepped up evictions, jacked up rent, and shot down rent control. First, over the summer, rank-and-file 77

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police pressured Feinstein to get rid of Chief Gain, the reformer hired by Moscone. The impression was that she, like the cops on the beat (the Dan White supporters), thought the police were not forceful enough during the riots, that Gain held them back. When the mayor acted, the city’s political establishment, including the newspapers, backed her. A new era of cracking down had arrived, and among Feinstein’s targets were the city’s punks.26 The main punk storyline in the summer of 1979, in fact, centered on police harassment and the resulting lack of places to play. Although the Mabuhay continued to face police pressure, Dirk Dirksen somehow kept the place open, partly by being stricter about the no one under-eighteen after 11 p.m. rule. Still the cops repeatedly raided 330 Grove Street, shutting the place down for violation of an arcane dance permit infraction (i.e., organizations needed to get a specific permit from the city for any event they might host at which attendees might dance). Same thing at the Deaf Club, on Valencia Street, the favored punk venue of the previous six months. An actual club for deaf people, it started hosting shows organized by Robert Hanrahan (who would briefly manage Dead Kennedys) in December 1978. Punks, many of whom lived nearby in the Mission District, loved the place as an alternative to the Mabuhay. But once police figured out the club was hosting shows, they raided it constantly, often shutting it down mid-performance. According to Sadie Deeks, who was a fixture on the scene, “the crackdowns were just alarming.” Police would repeatedly come into the Deaf Club and just push everyone out, like “squeezing us out of a tube of toothpaste.” Anyone who resisted got hauled away. Citations from the Fire Department (called in by the police) closed the Deaf Club for a long stretch in the summer. It reopened in August, but soon fell victim to the same dance permit nonsense that shuttered 330 Grove. Meanwhile, smaller venues like Loma Linda, in a Mexican restaurant, opened and closed in less than a year in part because of the steady attention of the SFPD.27 78

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At the same time, the pace of evictions increased over the summer and fall. In June, an apparent repeat of the International Hotel raid took place, though on a much smaller scale, on an apartment house at 1531 Sutter Street in Japantown. Tactical police brandishing clubs pushed away a tiny contingent of demonstrators. Meanwhile, a real estate speculator named Gerald Dowd, who bought the Hotel Argyle on McAllister Street in 1977, sent eviction notices to 120 elderly tenants in September 1979 so that he could convert the building into a higher-earning tourist hotel. Some of the residents had lived in the hotel for nearly fifty years; they were elderly and poor, and they had nowhere else to go. Despite the Examiner’s Warren Hinckle doing his best to cast the landlord as the worst in the city, Dowd took cover behind the fact that Mayor Feinstein was, at the same time, in the process of converting the residential hotel that she owned, the Hotel Carlton, into a tourist hotel, with 50 percent of the rooms for residents and 50 percent for tourists. In fact, Hinckle revealed that Feinstein had informed her residents of a rent increase on the very day that the supposed tax savings from Proposition 13 were to go into effect (the next time Feinstein saw Hinckle, at a cocktail reception, she tried to dump a drink on him). With aspirations of winning a mayoral term in her own right, Feinstein turned over the management of the hotel to her real estate developer fiancée Richard Blum.28 What could Dead Kennedys offer, in this time of venality and injustice, to the bulldozed, fed-up residents of San Francisco? What could any group of young people offer at a time when the president seemed unable to figure out the economy (let alone Rhodesia), the governor seemed more interested in his political career than in principles, and the mayor was both a cop fetishist and real estate profiteer?* It would be cheesy to suggest that they offered hope. It *

When former Sheriff Richard Hongisto later served on the Board of Supervisors, he reportedly called Feinstein a “cop groupie.”

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would also be wrong. But, contrary to common portrayals of punks in the media, neither did they offer violence or nihilism. Despite their reputation as a fiercely political band, Dead Kennedys did not traffic in dogma, either. Other bands had that covered (in the UK, think of Crass, and in San Francisco, the Dils and Negative Trend sometimes got dogmatic). Rather, Biafra thought in terms of “creative complaining.” “You can only be real dogmatic and moralistic for so long,” he told an interviewer. “People sooner or later should be convinced that bringing down the government and anarchy in general is fun, and as soon as a lot of Americans see the word ‘fun’ flashing on and off, they’ll go, ‘Oh, I want to be an anarchist, too.”’ Even if he did not do so deliberately, Biafra essentially articulated the classic Yippie strategy: to reel people in with some imaginative fun, delivered in a kind of vacuum where lies and bullshit could not survive.29 By the middle of 1979, in San Francisco (if not on the East Coast), Dead Kennedys audiences filled venues to capacity to both vent their rage, to have their collective consciousness raised, and to be carried through the cynicism and sense of powerlessness that characterized life in 1970s America. The band’s audiences gathered, as theater scholar Jill Dolan has suggested in a different context, to see and hear the band, “hoping, perhaps, for moments of transformation that might let them reconsider and change the world outside.” That desire to be “part of the intense present” of a throbbing, pulsating, sweaty crowd at the Mab or the Deaf Club, offered the audience “if not expressly political then usefully emotional, expressions of what utopia might feel like.” Dolan calls these flashes of experience that performance provides the “utopian performative.” In making her case, Dolan finds Roland Schaer’s definition of utopia to be the most compelling: “Utopia, one might say, is the measure of how far a society can retreat from itself when it wants to feign what it would like to become.” So, to apply Dolan’s utopian performative analysis to punk and specifically to Dead 80

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Kennedys, we have to accept her notion that “to enact an ideal future, a culture has to move farther and farther away from the real into a kind of performative.” Maybe that performance did not necessarily bring about the desired utopia, but it “inspire[d] perhaps other more local ‘doings’ that sketch[ed] out the potential in those feignings.” Certainly, Dead Kennedys had been inspired by San Francisco’s earlier punk bands and were, by 1979, inspiring “other more local ‘doings.”’30 Again, it is important not to overstate the case. It is true that Dead Kennedys did not offer some systematic vision of what a utopian America might look like—they were not a punk version of Students for a Democratic Society writing a new Port Huron Statement—but the music central to their set in the third Summer of Hate provided a chance to think through the ills ailing America— to process the injustices afflicting San Francisco—to talk it out the way one might with a therapist, with all the anger, sadness, pathos, humor, and exhilaration that flowed naturally. The utopia the Dead Kennedys were slinging was a place of truth. It was a place where beasts (in the form of illegitimate authority) doing wrong were named, a place where not only the band, but you—the fan, the peer, the fellow critic—cut through the “bullshit” that seemed to dominate American life. One could argue for a New Left lineage—Paul Potter of SDS naming “the System” at the first major demonstration against the Vietnam War in 1965, for example—and a Yippie style that wrapped a political message in satire, but what was different was the combination of message and music, lifting the audience through headphones or live performance to moments marked by possibility. The descriptions of Kennedys’ live shows are notably consistent for emphasizing the sonic attack, the quality of the songs, and the performance of the front man, which included “involving” the audience. All of these qualities were in evidence when the band first started playing the previous summer, but now they were headliners, packing in audiences at every show. Michael Reid, the tall Londoner 81

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who always stood at the back, vividly remembers seeing the “steam rising” from “waves and waves of bobbing heads . . . and you’d see Jello from the shoulders up, entreating the crowd, and there’d be this wall of feedback, the noise . . . but the whole place was electric with energy and magic.” Public Enema lead singer Barry Lazarus appreciated the “power and the energy,” of Dead Kennedys’ performances, too, but “the edginess” of the mood of their shows set them apart. It felt dangerous, “like the whole crowd was on the brink of a riot the entire time—and I loved it!” Joe Rees from Target Video agrees that shows could feel “threatening,” “intense,” and “in your face.” The energy and emotion “was so full-steam,” Rees says, “it was very moving.” And “there were so many songs that were powerful, had statements,” Rees recalls. “He wrote songs about things that were affecting people in the scene.”31 Biafra’s acting background shaped his stage presence. He had done repertory theatre in high school as well as some acting during his brief stint at UC Santa Cruz, and he soon took his performances beyond the kind of stage diving that Darby Crash or Rozz from Negative Trend did to a more theatrical approach to the band’s songs. A loose form of miming, Biafra interpreted the substance of his songs by inhabiting their characters even as he sang. Even if the sound was shitty, one could pick out which song they were playing by the way Biafra started to act it out on stage. And he never lost that edge, the diabolical look that challenged and provoked the audience, a constant reminder that he might dive into the crowd at any moment. The combination of the sound, the acting, and the songs—all in the atmosphere that Biafra himself prized, with everyone bouncing off each other—formed the crucible for transformation. Geza X, who was so blown away the first time he heard the DKs, said that Biafra’s and the band’s politics made all the difference for him. “I grew up in the Sixties: politics was extremely important to me,” Geza said years later. “When I met Biafra and I heard the songs, I 82

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Figure 3.1 Biafra’s theatrical background informed his interpretation of his song’s characters and often challenged the audience. Photo by Richard McCaffrey, used by permission.

just got such a rush of happiness because I realized that here’s a person who is looking at the news and really thinking about what it means, and making just amazing songs about it.” He wrote songs that “just sound so good as songs” but then the lyrics were unconventional and funny. Geza remembers thinking “Holy shit! He’s making a hit song out of Cambodia? . . . Really?” And that was the key: that Biafra wrote lyrics that were accessible and could be understood by a “mass audience” in large part because of the gallows humor. “I was so excited to know that might be possible because that’s what I’d always hoped to be able to do,” Geza says now. “I got into music, really, because I hoped to change the world,” and here were the Kennedys showing a way to do it. David Spaner, the Vancouver Yippie who managed the Subhumans, agreed. It was the combination of “being exceptional musically and lyrically,” but also 83

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that the band clearly “had a real passion for what they were talking about in the politics of punk,” capped with “an incredible stage charisma, especially Jello.” Although one could expect that mix of passion, politics and fierce stage presence from a number of San Francisco punk bands, the Yippie-like mix of shock and humor put the DKs in their own category.32 By the late summer of 1979, Dead Kennedys fans churned and bounced to any number of favorite songs, including “Let’s Lynch the Landlord.” Given the context of the time and place, though, it might as well have been called “Let’s Lynch the Mayor.” On the one hand, the song, which grew directly out of experiences Biafra and Klaus had with a landlord when they lived together, provides a description of living in an apartment where nothing works—not the water, the heat, the oven—where the ceiling leaks, there are roaches and some asshole is “blasting disco down below.” On the other hand, it is not a stretch to imagine the mayor lurking in the lyrics as Biafra sings “I’m doubling the rent . . . you’re gonna help me buy City Hall.” The chorus about lynching the landlord is, therefore, both transgressive and cathartic, particularly if the landlord might have been Dianne Feinstein. In the wake of her brutal crackdowns on punks and open shilling on behalf of real estate interests (including her own), playing a song like that provided a momentary sense of freedom from the kind of cynical, corrupt, and sclerotic political system the mayor represented. That may not have been a utopian vision, exactly, but it was a start. And if a song was not enough, maybe the next step had to be a campaign.

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4 It’s Time to Taste What You Most Fear A small wrench is often enough to shut down an enormous machine—what counts is: disrupting the flow of the work force on the anthill. — Jello Biafra In the summer of 1979, in the wake of the White Night riot and amidst the sustained dual assault of cops and real estate speculators, Damage magazine published its first issue with a cover portrait of Jello Biafra. Based in San Francisco, Damage specialized, like Slash in Los Angeles, in West Coast punk news and features, but soon enjoyed a national audience. In an apparent acknowledgment of Biafra’s and Dead Kennedys’ rising prominence in the West Coast punk scene, editor Brad Lapin not only put Biafra on the cover, but gave him a column. Biafra’s first piece for Damage could have been written ten years earlier by Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin, when they were still Yippies. He chose “Creative Crime for the Sober Seventies” as his topic, and proceeded to both itemize a list of recent criminal stunts—from a guy who left a hotel without paying for his massive room service bill to Italy’s revolutionary Red Brigades who had become so good at efficient bombing and kidnapping “and their classy trademark, kneecapping,” that corporate and government officials now lived “in constant fear of their lives.” In turn, Biafra

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urged readers to come up with their own crimes. In addition to making a case for crime as both art and adventure, Biafra argued for crime as a form of empowerment and self-liberation. “The more you fuck with society,” he wrote, “the less society controls you.” There is no mistaking the central argument: to shake things up, to leave mainstream society feeling unsettled, is not only fun but fulfilling. “Everyone is fed up with being a corporate robot,” Biafra concluded. “We are all time bombs waiting to go off. An explosion a day and self-respect is on the way.”1 Much of the next year in the life of Dead Kennedys, through the 1980 recording and release of Fresh Fruit, can be charted by a series of creative crimes, all designed in some way to fuck with some segment of society. No one was off-limits: not the mayor, not the music industry, not punks. In their first East Coast tour, where the Kennedys played to either small or indifferent crowds, they turned clubs upside down. In New York, where, Biafra said, audiences would “rather analyze and smoke cigarettes” than bounce off of one another, he knocked over tables and dumped drinks, turning Max’s Kansas City into a “beer-drenched hurricane alley.” The show at the Rat in Boston’s Kenmore Square became legendary—“a free-for-all, one of the wildest nights of my life,” Biafra told an interviewer. In the city where John F. Kennedy was born, Dead Kennedys found few signs of welcome; gig flyers were stripped from telephone poles, and some of the small number of people who turned up at the Rat that night were openly hostile to the band. Biafra did not hesitate to provoke them. “People were throwing glasses at us; we were throwing them back, a couple of people threw chairs, I threw them back too and in the end there was a mass of bodies wrestling on the floor.” The best evidence of the band’s success in unsettling their punk audience came from a Rat bouncer who told Biafra, “If I hadn’t been working outside, I’d have beaten the fuck out of you.” By age twenty-one, Biafra had developed a talent for getting under people’s skin that 86

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further set the context for the excitement that attended the release of Fresh Fruit a year later.2 Most notoriously, Biafra, the creative crime advocate, got himself on the November ballot as candidate for mayor of San Francisco. Many observers—from some punks to the Chronicle—dismissed it as a publicity stunt. But just as Jerry Rubin once ran for mayor of Berkeley, initially as a prank and then more seriously, Biafra’s joke turned out to be, even as political theater, as serious as a heart attack. It was also another example of the utopian performative, puncturing elaborate lies with comedic needles of truth. The two leading mayoral candidates, incumbent Dianne Feinstein and supervisor Quentin Kopp, as well as media-anointed alternative candidate, David Scott, all had real estate connections. For punks, as well as for many other marginalized constituencies, there seemed little difference between the two frontrunners, especially, and not much distinguished Scott from the other two except that he was gay. Voting for any of those three seemed sure to be seen as a vote in favor of the status quo: yay to tourists, carte blanche for developers, all with police on hand to crush dissent. The cover page of Biafra’s photocopied campaign leaflet captured his surprisingly sincere response to such an apocalyptic vision. It laid out its central theme: San Francisco’s spirit must not be crushed in the name of law and order and tourist dollars. The current administration has stepped up what they call a “cleanup” of the city. They give big business a free hand while the creative forces that make our city tick see a steady rise in harassment by the law. Should San Francisco lose its face and become just another cold, efficient American city? Not if the city fathers hear a loud enough NO.

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The last line is a clear indication that although Biafra could not expect to win the election, he hoped he might just muster a sufficient protest vote to make a difference in the life of the city.3 The story of Biafra’s snap decision to enter the mayoral race is well known to Dead Kennedys fans and is recounted in some detail on his spoken word album, I Blow Minds for a Living. The idea came to him when he, Klaus, and Ted were driving to a Pere Ubu show, and Ted said something to the effect of: Biafra, you’re such a big mouth, why don’t you run for mayor? “You could just see him light up,” Klaus later recalled. It was a concept to which Biafra was perhaps uniquely able to relate since he had grown up in Boulder, which had a long history of people running for office on a whim or as a prank. His most direct inspiration came from John Davenport, an “independently wealthy hippie,” who would submit a photo of himself dressed as a pirate, complete with eye patch, to the newspapers for their candidate profiles. At the Pere Ubu gig, Biafra spent part of the night scribbling out a campaign platform on a napkin, while the hulking David Thomas performed just steps away.4 Anyone over the age of eighteen, who collected the signatures of 5,000 registered voters, could get themselves on the ballot. Biafra initially signed up only about 500. “It hasn’t been an easy task,” Ginger Coyote, editor of Punk Globe and a campaign staffer, wrote at the time. “The system is set up to thwart the efforts of the individual, and for this and other obvious reasons, Biafra’s potential supporters haven’t bothered to register . . .” Even so, Coyote noted, “corruption still reigns supreme in the City by the Bay,” and one could pay the equivalent of 25¢ per missing signature to get on the ballot. Consequently, Dirk Dirksen hosted a “Biafra for Mayor” benefit on September 3, and raised the necessary $1,125 in filing fees.5 Consistent with the punk ethos, the volunteers who made up the campaign staff ran it as an entirely DIY affair. Dirk Dirksen, Brad Lapin, Ginger Coyote, Mickey Creep, Joe Target Rees, Klaus Flouride 88

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and plenty of others held meetings at Target Studios on South Van Ness (the building also housed Damage) to plot strategy. The actual campaign events were few, but got plenty of media attention. A “whistle-stop tour,” for example, started with a rally at City Hall, followed by stops along the BART line down Market Street. Kathy “Chi Chi” Penick, Dead Kennedys’ new manager, carried a sign that said “If He Doesn’t Win, I’ll Kill Myself.” Other inspiring placard slogans included “Apocalypse Now,” and “What if He Wins?” Biafra, led the procession, “kissing hands and shaking babies.”6 Although such events undoubtedly led some to regard Biafra’s candidacy as a joke, his platform addressed important issues, even if he couched his solutions in humor. Regarding the recent history of police abusing their power, Biafra proposed, on the one hand, to rebuild community spirit by erecting statues of Dan White around

Figure 4.1 Running for mayor: Biafra and supporters at a City Hall rally, October 1979. Photograph by Stefano Paolillo, courtesy of Krista Brady.

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the city so that residents could vent their frustrations by throwing things at them. On the other hand, more seriously, he called for requiring cops to run for election every four years, with half the force subject to yes or no confidence votes by the residents of the neighborhoods they patrolled. Similarly, he suggested that “too much time and money is being wasted on outdated laws and victimless crimes.” Police, he argued, should crack down on organized crime and white collar crime, and focus less on “nightclub raids, petty drug busts, prostitution, etc.” The vice squad, he said, should be eliminated altogether. Most important, as part of a proposal to establish a board of bribery that would “set fair standard rates for liquor licenses, building code exemptions, [and] police protection,” he made sure to add “and protection from the police.” In the same way, Biafra aimed a number of his platform planks at the equally powerful real estate interests which had been causing so much grief in the city. He claimed to be keen to clean up Market Street, too, but at the opposite end from the Tenderloin, in the part of town where Bank of America and Bechtel, among other corporations, kept their headquarters. There, he said, “those who maintain offices . . . should wear clown suits from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.” He also proposed that, to do away with urban blight, the city should start with the newly opened Pier 39 complex. “It should be condemned as a public nuisance and torn down by the public on a specially declared holiday.” More soberly, he responded to the housing crisis by proposing that squatting be legalized for lowincome San Franciscans in vacant buildings then being used as tax write-offs by their owners. “In San Francisco, land of the homeless,” he later said, “there are so many buildings left empty . . . it’s obscene.” And, if elected, he would roll all rents “back to their pre-Proposition 13 levels” minus another 10 percent to make up for the money paid to landlords when they raised their rents in spite of the passage of Proposition 13 (a rent control initiative, Proposition R, would also appear on the ballot in November). Finally, since Proposition 13 had 90

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led to funding shortfalls that resulted in 7,000 city workers being laid off, Biafra proposed hiring them back as panhandlers, at a 50 percent commission, with instructions to concentrate on rich neighborhoods and ritzy department stores.7 Such a platform demonstrated that Biafra’s campaign was, as his leaflet said, “no more a joke and no less a joke” than any of the other candidates. For every proposal that mainstream voters would likely have regarded as preposterous—moving the city jail to the Sunol Valley Golf Club so all prisoners could get the same treatment as Dan White and the Watergate criminals—there was another— banning private automobiles from the city (inspired by John Davenport’s Boulder campaign)—that made good sense. His campaign technique was to “take a particular issue and illustrate it in the most maniacally graphic way possible and let the people decide for themselves what they want to do about it.” Punk Globe’s Ginger Coyote told her readers that although some saw Biafra’s mayoral ambitions as a joke, “he is quite serious about getting elected.” Predicting that Feinstein’s support did not run deep, and that all of the other challengers save for Biafra were offering “politics as usual,” she suggested that “anything’s possible.”8 While Feinstein and Kopp focused on the campaign, Biafra had to work his day job, too, including three Dead Kennedys performances at the Western Front Festival, a ten-day showcase of California punk. The festival began on October 6, 1979 with two of LA’s best bands, the Bags and the Alley Cats, opening for Dead Kennedys at 1839 Geary Street, in a former synagogue sometimes called the “Temple Beautiful,” that stood sandwiched between the Fillmore Auditorium and the former People’s Temple. According to one observer, a “shouting, stomping crowd” carried their mayoral candidate, Jello Biafra, over their heads to the stage for the start of the Kennedys set. Four days later they played the Mabuhay with the Feederz and Black Flag (in the latter’s first show outside of Southern California), and on October 15, they opened for the Cramps and the 91

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Clash at Kezar Pavilion, in an infamous performance in which Biafra was stripped nearly bare. Bill Graham, the legendary concert promoter who had little use for punk, fumed offstage as Biafra completed the set with, as New York Rocker reported, “his genitals hanging in view of some 4,000 people.” No other mayoral candidate could claim to be hiding less from prospective voters.9 Predictably, the city’s political establishment actively minimized Biafra’s campaign and especially the issues he raised. The Chronicle and the Examiner, which had a joint publishing arrangement (the Chronicle came out in the morning, the Examiner in the afternoon, with a combined edition on Sundays), split their endorsement, with the Chronicle supporting Kopp and the Examiner supporting Feinstein. Supporters praised Kopp for his financial acumen, while others thought Feinstein the better manager. A story aimed at informing voters of where the two leading candidates stood on the most pressing issues proved to be tone deaf on issues important to anyone below middle class. For example, the discussion of Kopp’s and Feinstein’s housing proposals focused only on building more houses and said nothing about poor people, rental units, or rent control. And in a profile of “mayoral also-rans” (note the past tense, even though the election was two weeks away), in which the Chronicle gave the most attention to Biafra as “the most colorful in this year’s crop of minor candidates for mayor,” the paper mocked his “classic Goodwill suits” and implied that all he cared about was “being outrageous.”10 Dianne Feinstein told Brad Lapin that Biafra’s platform had “nothing to do with the real issues,” but the media’s attention and the candidates’ forums showed otherwise. When Feinstein made a show of taking a broom to Market Street, to demonstrate her intention to clean it up, Biafra responded by dressing in a boiler suit and bringing a Shop-Vac to Feinstein’s neighborhood, Pacific Heights, where he pretended to vacuum the street, sidewalk, and lawn in front of the mayor’s house (which, he suggested, she did not know were such a 92

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mess because she never set foot there—since she spent her nights at Richard Blum’s house in Marin). As a campaign stunt, it seemed no more or less ridiculous than Feinstein’s sweeping of Market Street. Moreover, as Mickey Sampson pointed out, the candidate’s forums were the most illuminating because “there was Biafra, who was both more serious than any of them [the frontrunners], but also less so.” Feinstein grudgingly acknowledged that Biafra had “made the race more interesting,” but more important, it became clear that plenty of non-punks took him seriously and actually saw something worth supporting in his campaign.11 On election day, Biafra polled fourth, with nearly 4 percent of the vote (6,591 votes total) in a city where punks numbered in the lower hundreds. Most important, the combined tally for Biafra and third-place David Scott forced Feinstein into a run-off with Kopp. In what the Chronicle called a “night of surprises,” the run-off was the biggest. “It wasn’t [just] the punk population of San Francisco that voted for him,” Klaus told an interviewer. There were not enough punks, particularly given how young most punks were and how many were unlikely to be registered voters. “It was more of a cross-section of people.” One letter to the editor warned the Chronicle and its readers that the rock and roll vote would only grow as kids reached voting age.12 There is no question that Biafra’s campaign inspired most of the city’s punks. The “finesse” with which he “balanced form and content, lunacy and illumination” during the campaign, Brad Lapin wrote in Damage, showed that he was serious and, therefore, attracted “hopeless idealists and hardened cynics from punks to high school teachers.” Maybe they saw it as a protest vote or maybe they bought into the campaign platform. Long before Americans elected bodybuilders and professional wrestlers to public office, a lead singer for a punk band winning 4 percent of the vote for mayor in a major American city was, as Michael Reid later said, “an amazing fucking achievement!” Like a lot of people, Reid at first thought the 93

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campaign was a publicity stunt, but came around to believe that Biafra “really did want to change things.” Looking back, some veteran punks almost cannot believe it happened. For one thing, as Vale reminds us, Biafra was both “so young,” and his campaign “so outrageous,” that the fourth place finish seems incomprehensible now. “We all loved that he ran for mayor,” Ruby Ray now recalls. “It was just so crazy that he did it and that he went through with it.”13 At the same time, in the diverse punk community, Biafra’s mayoral campaign found its critics. More often than not, just as occurred in the movements of the Sixties, the negative reviews revealed divergent philosophies about political change: politicos vs. Yippies, “serious” organizing vs. satire. The criticism one hears the most is that the campaign was merely “political theatre.”14 The serious proposals in Biafra’s platform seem to have been obscured by the ruses about businessmen in clown suits and citizens venting frustration at statues of Dan White. Hugh Patterson (née Johnny Genocide of No Alternative), who “grew up in a house where politics was serious business” (his mother worked in city politics and was in City Hall during the White Night riot) thought Biafra’s campaign was a great “publicity stunt,” but, he said later, “c’mon, if you’re going to run for office, run for office: have a serious platform.” Similarly, Ted Falconi of Flipper laments that Biafra, despite having the attention of the city “was more into the comic element of the whole thing than really putting forth any kind of political point of view.” Even some who acknowledge that Biafra grounded his campaign in a substantive analysis of San Francisco’s woes found fault with the gallows humor. “The problem with taking the approach of satire,” Peter Urban later said, is that “people can stand there and they can laugh at it, and they can walk away with the same ideas they had when they came up.” So, even if the core political analysis is there, it is being conveyed “in a way in which they don’t have to take it seriously.”15 These kinds of disagreements over strategy and tactics date back to at least the French Revolution, if not earlier, whether they take 94

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place in an anarchic subculture or in an organized social movement. Hardcore organizers in the New Left and the antiwar movement could point to the successful precedent set by “serious” civil rights activists, while the Yippies could take credit for capturing the national media’s attention so completely in their Pentagon protest and at the Chicago Festival of Life. Indeed, Jerry Rubin labeled one of the chapters in Do It!, his movement memoir/Yippie manifesto, “Revolution is Theatre-in-the-Streets.” For him, writing in 1970, “the goal is to turn on everybody who can be turned on and turn off everybody else.” In that regard, Biafra’s mayoral bid seemed to have succeeded. The key to the Yippie political tradition, the Canadian Yippie and Subhumans manager David Spaner pointed out recently, was to be “part black bloc and part borscht belt” because “if someone’s laughing with you, it’s hard for them to hate you . . . there’s a certain bond being formed.” Besides, as Biafra himself suggested a few years after the campaign, “historically, the ‘Merry Prankster’ has had a lot more to look forward to than the humorless politico who sits around moaning about the ‘struggle.’ What better way to survive our anthill society than by abusing the very mass media that sedates the public?” It all goes back to asserting some self-empowerment— and maybe having some fun—by fucking with society.16 The weekend before the election, rent control activists pulled their own Biafra-like prank on a convention of landlords. About three dozen members of San Franciscans for Affordable Housing crashed a meeting of the California Apartment Association, circling a “No on R” exhibit booth and handing out mock eviction notices to the landlords. SFAH was a coalition of thirty-five different tenant, civil rights, gay rights, labor, senior citizen, and church groups – the public face of Proposition R, a ballot initiative aimed primarily at keeping rents affordable, limiting evictions, demolitions, and condo conversions. Polls taken two weeks before the vote showed that Proposition R would pass, but then the landlords outspent SFAH by $600,000 to $45,000 in media buys and direct mail—mostly ads 95

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predicting the Bronxification of San Francisco if the proposition passed. On election day, the landlords won fifty-nine to forty-one, in a city in which 70 percent of the households were rental units. The mock eviction action at the conference had been a last-minute desperation tactic to get media attention, but the Chronicle gave it only four paragraphs on page sixteen, next to the weather forecast. According to the Chronicle, only residents of “the Mission, Potrero Hill, the Fillmore, the Tenderloin, and Haight-Ashbury,” favored rent control. The initiative “lost big” in “St. Francis Wood, Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, North Beach, and Castro districts.” Sound organizing, wrapped in a prank or not, could not overcome the power of an entrenched business-political establishment.17 The Feinstein regime ruled over San Francisco for ten years, and in the year following the election, the landlord-in-chief continued to both fight rent control efforts and unleash her police force to clean up the city. First, she rubbed her triumph in the face of her critics by marrying her real estate baron husband in her City Hall office before holding a reception in the rotunda for 400 guests, complete with a seven-layered, three-flavored wedding cake; instead of throwing white rice, guests showered the bride and groom in Rice-a-Roni, “the San Francisco Treat” (made in San Leandro). Then, against the backdrop of increased evictions across the city— including some at the Christmas and New Year’s holidays— Feinstein, often likened by punks to Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, vetoed strict rent control provisions approved by the Board of Supervisors in favor of a mild ordinance that set a limit on rent increases to 7 percent but that allowed landlords total discretion on setting rent for vacated apartments (landlords, therefore, evicted tenants at every opportunity, in order to raise rents more than 7 percent). She defended her veto by referring to the “the majority of San Franciscans”’ vote against Proposition R, as if supporters had not been outspent twelve to one. Harry Britt, who replaced Harvey Milk on the Board of Supervisors, explained her actions more 96

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bluntly: “The mayor is a landlord, and there is nothing in her history that would lead us to expect any real support for tenants.” In many ways, as the poor and working class have been steadily pushed out of San Francisco, it is clear that the city never recovered from that veto.18 In the meantime, Feinstein’s inauguration led her to implement her promise to “clean up the city,” mostly via the police force. By May 1980, Brad Lapin complained that the election of “Ayatollah Feinstein” brought a drastic increase in police harassment of “punks and underrepresented communities in the city.” He accused the mayor of using a “determined program of pushing out the poor and anybody else who doesn’t fit into the picturesque, post card image the mayor and her big business cronies have in mind for the city.” Repeat harassment finally shut down the Deaf Club as a punk venue for good, and several crackdowns at the Target studio for having after-hours parties resulted in multiple arrests. For the punks, it seemed clear that the new hardline police chief, Cornelius Murphy, on instructions from the mayor, wanted to eliminate punks altogether. The mayor seemed to view punks in the same category as pornographers, whom she also targeted. Some years later, when Chronicle columnist Warren Hinckle criticized Feinstein and the police for sending a team of thirty cops to arrest a porn star at the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre (three blocks from Feinstein’s Hotel Carlton), he was coincidentally soon thrown in jail for walking his dog without a leash.19 By the time Dead Kennedys recorded and released Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables the political climate in San Francisco seemed dark and oppressive, indeed. In the months between the mayoral campaign and the recording of Fresh Fruit the band really hit its prankster stride. The success of the Western Front gigs had erased the bad memories of the poorlyattended East Coast shows, and after election day, the band toured the West Coast, including Canada. And for the second year in a row, they were slated to play on November 22. In Vancouver, Yippie 97

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David Spaner, who not only managed Subhumans but had his own production company called Ed Sullivan Productions, slapped posters all over the city announcing in huge bold type: “Ed Sullivan Presents: NOV 22: Dead Kennedys.” Years later, Spaner remembered, that the poster “really had a dramatic effect on people.” In those days, the cultural references of both “Ed Sullivan” and “Nov 22” resonated with Americans and Canadians in a way that they would not today. Rather than run from the possibility of offending the majority, Spaner and the band ran toward it. It was a classic Yippie prank in keeping with Rubin’s code: to turn on everybody who can be turned on and turn off everybody else.20 The other guys in Dead Kennedys almost certainly would not have agreed with Biafra’s later claim that “our band itself was started as a prank.”21 They were all good musicians who wanted the band to be successful—if not “rock star” successful, to have the respect of their peers and to make a living at their art. Still, when the time came to pull one of their best conceived pranks, targeting a music industry more bloated and stupid than Meatloaf, they cheerfully joined together. This, at a time when major labels were courting them, offering contracts if they would just change the band’s name. Sometimes a gift just falls into your lap. In preparation for the third annual Bay Area Music Awards, the “Bammies” (sponsored by the same BAM that ran East Bay Ray’s original wanted ad) organizers decided they needed to recruit some new wave bands to play at the live awards show at the 2,300-seat Warfield Theater downtown. They invited two bands, the Mutants and Dead Kennedys, that were hardly representative of the skinny-tie, watered down pop version of punk then branded “new wave” (and as embodied by such schlock artists as the Knack). Whoever suggested getting the Kennedys either had an ulterior motive or knew little about a band best known for confrontation—for a blistering critique of all things “mellow” in “California Über Alles” and for running its lead singer for mayor. 98

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Figure 4.2 On the sixteenth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, Dead Kennedys played Vancouver. Flyer by Bob Mercer, used by permission. 99

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Dead Kennedys showed up for rehearsal and played a “light hearted parody of California Über Alles,” but they had other plans for the live show, which was being simulcast by radio station KMEL, a hip, commercial top 40 station on the AM band. Imagine the scene, set for sabotage: an audience filled with music luminaries and other celebrities such as Carlos Santana, Boz Skaggs, Van Morrison, Taj Mahal, Greg Kihn, Eddie Money, Ronnie Montrose, Bill Graham, David Bromberg, Francis Ford Coppola, quarterback Joe Montana, and local arena rock titans Journey, sitting in a venue that was the furthest thing from the Mabuhay or the Deaf Club. Thousands of fans of insipid mainstream dreck filled the rest of the seats, hoping to see their favorite FM radio artists hoist a trophy or perhaps play a song. Over the course of the evening, Journey’s Evolution won Best Album and the band’s singer, Steve Perry, was named Best Male Vocalist; Bill Graham won the Public Service Award, and Jerry Garcia was named Bay Area Musician of the Year. Local new wave act, Pearl Harbor and the Explosions, picked up two awards as best club band and for best independent label single, a clear indication of the organizers’ shallow knowledge of city’s underground music scene. Subsequent accounts in the punk press did not do justice to the quality of the DK prank; to fully get it, one needs to listen to the recording (on the compilation record, Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death). In terms of confrontation, it nearly rises to the level of the 1966 Royal Albert Hall recording of Dylan responding to cries of “Judas!” by turning to his band and saying “play fucking loud!” In the middle of this stilted Bammies production, Dead Kennedys came out, each member dressed alike in a dark raincoat, black trousers and, barely visible, a white-collared shirt with a large ‘S’ spray-painted across the chest. Bill Graham must have wondered what they were up to. Ted kicked off “California Über Alles” with its characteristic drum attack, and Klaus followed with the bass line. But just after Ray comes in on guitar, Biafra waves the band off, 100

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shouting “Hold it!” “We’ve gotta prove we’re adults now,” he says to the audience. “We’re not a punk rock band, we’re a new wave band.” They then dropped their raincoats to reveal that they were wearing skinny new wave ties, alright, but each hung down over the spraypainted ‘S’, making four big dollar signs. The band then broke into a simple Knack-like new wave riff (composed by Ted) as Biafra started singing about selling his soul to become a “prefab superstar.” Biafra wrote the lyrics to this previously unheard song, “Pull My Strings,” just for this occasion, and thanks to the high-end sound system in a theater with excellent acoustics, the industry audience members could understand every insult aimed directly at them. The song has two choruses, one which is played over the melody for the “My Sharona” chorus but substitutes the words “My Payola.” The pièce de résistance came in the second chorus, when Biafra’s character, worried, sang “Is my cock big enough, is my brain small enough, for you to make me a star?” while custom-themed video provided courtesy of Joe Target played on the screens on either side of the stage. This chorus, like the rest of the performance, went out live over the KMEL airwaves, along with titters from the audience and a handful of cheers. Ray then launched into an obnoxiously long Journey-style, cock-rock guitar solo—showing more skill than most anyone in the audience could have, and even played with his teeth—while Biafra, Klaus, and Ted yawned dramatically. Incredibly, Biafra then got the audience to clap and sing along, “Is my cock big enough, is my brain small enough, for you to make me a star?” When the song ended, Biafra trotted through all of the insincere end-of-show clichés: “Thank you very much ladies and gentleman, we sure do love you, we’ll see you next time, we had such a good time . . .,” shouting “Rock and roll!” as they left the stage. Given the previous run-in with Bill Graham over Biafra performing nude, it is surprising that someone did not shut the Kennedys down and run them off the stage. After all, the song’s line “Fatass bouncers kick the shit out of kids who try to dance” captured, 101

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Figure 4.3 Confronting the music industry: Dead Kennedys play the Bammies, 1980. Photo by Richard McCaffrey, used by permission.

Figure 4.4 Biafra yawns as Ray mimics an arena rock guitar solo at the Bammies. Photo by Richard McCaffrey, used by permission. 102

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for punks, the usual Bill Graham Presents experience. In the recording, it is possible to actually hear confusion in the applause at the end of the song, as if people were asking themselves, “Should I clap for them insulting me like this?” Boz Skaggs and Carlos Santana reportedly walked out in disgust, mid-song, and Francis Ford Coppola allegedly elbowed Ted in the downstairs hallway. Eddie Money and Journey’s drummer, Steve Smith, went up to Biafra later, though, and told him they loved the song (Biafra did not have the heart to tell Money that he was the prefab superstar on whom the song was modeled). As pranks go, it certainly rivals dumping dollar bills on the floor of the Stock Exchange, at least for its success in critiquing an entire industry to its collective face. And, like the mayoral campaign, it offered a utopian performative glimpse of rebellion, of what could be done to those in power if one only dared to confront them.22 Of course, to anyone in the industry, to anyone invested in the mainstream music business, Dead Kennedys’ full frontal assault with a live performance of “Pull My Strings” seemed suicidal. But that is because the two camps applied totally different standards to judge success. A classic interview with Chronicle music critic Joel Selvin, in the second issue of CREEP, made this condition most obvious. Except for his review of the Pistols and one feature on the Dils, there is little evidence that Selvin went to many punk shows before the convergence of Biafra’s mayoral campaign and the Western Front Festival. Even so, he told Mickey Creep in late 1979 that he had not “seen a show yet at the Mabuhay that [he] thought was good.” After praising the Knack’s “My Sharona” as a healthy indication of the public’s expanding music taste, Creep responded by criticizing the sexism rampant in the song and the absence of any message of change. “Change isn’t in right now,” Selvin answered flatly. “The field is to sell records.” The only measure of success known to industry insiders like Selvin, then, was to “make it” commercially. Among new San Francisco bands, he concluded, “it 103

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doesn’t seem to me that there are many musicians who are really making lots of money and experiencing healthy careers and getting proper exposure.”23 In contrast, when Slash asked Biafra if he wanted to “make it commercially,” he replied, “Making it is pretty fucking relative.” As if referring to his character in “Pull My Strings,” he said that he valued “self-respect more than money.” Since he did not expect punk to develop a “huge mass audience,” he hoped it would build a cult following “because cult followings are made up of more intelligent people who had to hunt to find you and that meant they are more interested in finding something good and they’ll stick [with] you longer . . .” This was not the kind of formula for success that either Joel Selvin or the Bammies folks would likely acknowledge.24 The basis of the disagreement between punks like Biafra and non-punks like Selvin grew out of differing conceptions of status. In an age when the Dianne Feinsteins of the world aimed to clean up the city by displacing the diverse poor to make way for white yuppie gentrifiers and tourists, when the Knack and Billy Squier made millions off songs few care to remember today, when the nation’s voters were poised to send Ronald Reagan to the White House, punks were one of the few subsets of young people to reject it all. Status derived from wealth or some other mainstream calculus of success simply did not matter to them. What mattered was truth— being true to oneself, to one’s community and to anyone else who would listen. Sounds hokey, but it is true. Indeed, early that spring, Dead Kennedys released their second single, “Holiday in Cambodia,” which took aim at the status conscious and the arrogant among the youth in America who were not standing up to reject all that had been planned for them. Geza X, who had been so smitten with the band when he saw them open for the Screamers at the Mabuhay, eagerly accepted the invitation to record the song. He remembered hearing “Holiday” at that first show. “I would have practically given up my left nut to record that 104

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song,” he said years later. “I knew that it was going to change the world. I just knew it.” The band went into the sixteen-track Tewksbury Studio in Richmond, only to find the place “a shithole.” Only nine of the tracks worked, and the tape recorder did not even have brakes; every time Geza stopped the tapes, he would have to grab the two-inch high reels with his bare hands to keep them from flying (he ended up with scabs on both hands after a few days). But the studio owner, Dave Alexander, was, according to Geza, “almost like a fetishist for these old tube microphones.” In drawers lined with crushed velvet, the microphones were “laid out like dildos” and when Alexander would discuss them, “he’d get all kind of sexy about it—it was so fucking weird!” Geza used Alexander’s Neumann 47 to record Biafra’s vocals, and it sounded “twice as good as anything you’d hear elsewhere.” He also doubled the guitars and vocals (and actually quadrupled Biafra’s vocals on the chorus)—a tactic generally frowned upon in the punk community for fear of being accused of overproduction. At the end of the mix, Geza says now, “this thing sounded so huge, we couldn’t even believe it ourselves.” The twelve-inch single released on Cherry Red in England is “really big sounding,” because it captures the full bottom end more than other releases.25 The singular power of “Holiday in Cambodia” stems from the mix of the menacing space-punk vibe most notable in the song’s introduction and the blending of a critique of privileged yuppie wannabes with the imagery coming out of killing fields-era Cambodia. The inspiration for the lyrics to “Holiday” grew, like those for “California Über Alles,” out of Biafra’s experience in Boulder. He told Slash that after he got out of high school, he had the sorry experience of regularly delivering pizzas to students at the University of Colorado, once home to the cultural rebels who inspired him as a kid. In 1977, though, he found only “stupid, rich kids” who thought they knew everything. In some ways, the lyrics about a privileged college kid acting like he knows more than he really does recall the 105

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kind of criticisms directed at student protesters in the 1960s. But in that decade cops and “hard hats” thought those students should, as an expression of gratitude for their privileged place in a university, keep their mouths shut. In “Holiday,” however, Biafra implicitly laments the total lack of outrage. He critiques the shallow life the song’s subject leads, where he substitutes “braggin’ that you know how the niggers feel cold and the slum’s got so much soul” for actually doing something about poverty and inequality.* He blasts him for being concerned only with status—likening him to Dr. Seuss’s star-bellied sneeches—and for being so willing to “kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich.” To teach him a lesson, then, Biafra sings to this vacuous rich kid, “it’s time to taste what you most fear”—to be taken from his comfortable pointless life and be sent to Cambodia where, in the context of Khmer Rouge genocidal reeducation policy, he will “work harder with a gun in your back for a bowl of rice a day.” The pure malevolence of the killing fields is conveyed in Klaus’s ominous bass line and the angular bursts of gunfire from Ray’s guitar. If a guitar riff ever succeeded in conveying terror, it is Ray’s on “Holiday.” Combined with the acerbic lyrics, the overall effect is chilling.26 Biafra revisited some of these same themes in “Terminal Preppie” on Plastic Surgery Disasters and in the unrecorded “Dreadlocks of the Suburbs.” In “Terminal Preppie,” his complaint is with the same kind of university students, business majors, who aspire to no more than looking good “on paper” but are mostly interested in getting drunk. The pot-head rich kids in “Dreadlocks of the Suburbs,” a skainflected song that sounds more like something written by The Offs than by Dead Kennedys, are guilty, Biafra told an interviewer, of “relating to how cool it must be to be poor in Jamaica.” Like the students in “Holiday in Cambodia,” they may be ignorant or stupid, *

Biafra thought long and hard about using the N word before deciding, at Geza X’s urging, to leave it in because it better conveyed just “how condescending the subject of the song is to people of lesser means, to people of color . . .”.

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but they are, at a minimum, full of shit. The pretension required for privileged American youth to relate to life in the slums, whether in the US or Jamaica, requires a lot of work, and it is a waste of time when what is needed is a revolution. Thus, in all three songs, Biafra shames his subjects for being at the worst end of the “Me generation” spectrum: they are not even self-seeking; rather, they are selfsatisfied, ignorant, and in “Terminal” and “Holiday” possess a sense of profit-seeking entitlement. Why not send them, then, on a holiday to Cambodia?27 Songs like “Holiday in Cambodia” probably did not reach the kind of self-indulgent university student it parodied until years later (perhaps), but it spoke to those young people who, like Biafra, could not stand that kind of conformist youth culture. If you were in college at the time and feeling trapped on a campus full of ‘terminal preppies,’ you could take comfort from these songs—and maybe even find the inspiration to reject the forces of conformity (a theme revisited in “Halloween,” on Plastic Surgery Disasters, too). For the flip side of “Holiday in Cambodia,” the band recorded “Police Truck.” As we have seen, few subjects seemed more appropriate for analysis in the late 1970s than Dan White-era cops. The lyrics are a good example of Biafra taking the “horror rock” that artists like Alice Cooper pioneered and making it about “real monsters” like the police. When news outlets reported about a group of Oakland police officers who had been abducting prostitutes and raping them in the back of a police van, Biafra had enough to write “Police Truck.” But the song is not merely about that one group of bad Oakland cops. It is about power. “Got a black uniform and a silver badge,” he sings in describing his narrator’s arrogance, his sense that he can get away with anything because he is a cop—a theme Biafra later took up again when he rewrote “I Fought the Law” from Dan White’s perspective. Instead of “I fought the law, and the law won,” Biafra (as White) sings “I fought the law and I won.” Harrowing examples of particular police abuses, therefore, 107

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represented the criminality—the evil—of an institution established to protect its citizens from evil. Other artists might have provoked controversy in ensuing years by fantasizing about killing cops, but Biafra kept the focus on a police culture that made it possible for officers, so drunk on their own power, to commit the very acts they were expected to stop.28 One can draw a clear line from the kind of strategies and tactics deployed in Biafra’s mayoral campaign through the Bammies prank and the writing of “Holiday in Cambodia,” “Police Truck,” and all of the songs on Fresh Fruit. As he said during the campaign, in order to reach the public he took a particular issue and “illustrate[d] it in the most maniacally graphic way possible” so that voters could “decide for themselves what they want to do about it.” “Maniacally graphic” is a pretty good way to describe the lyrics to “Pull My Strings,” “Holiday in Cambodia,” and “Police Truck.” Performing “Pull My Strings” at the Bammies, or “Holiday in Cambodia” effectively held up a mirror to their respective audiences, pushing them to consider their places within a system that privileged profit and power over decency and justice, whereas “Police Truck” pressed listeners to think about a world in which so much everyday power is yielded to cops instead of, say, voting for them every four years. But that six months in the life of Dead Kennedys also established Biafra and the band as gifted in the art of unsettling anyone and everyone. “It’s time to taste what you most fear,” Biafra sang about the obnoxious college student in “Holiday,” but in some ways it summed up the band’s philosophy, its mission to strip away the cocoons in which most Americans hid and expose them to the awful truth. Whether listeners shuddered or thrilled to the challenge said a lot about the way they lived their lives. Were they the type who could imagine possibilities, who could envision dismantling structures of repression in their communities, or were they indifferent, checked out—the rotting vegetables to whom Dead Kennedys would address themselves with their first LP? 108

5 There’s No Way Like the American Way Maybe some people, when they say politics bores them, they don’t get that everything is political but, in fact, if you poke them deep enough, you can find it. — Mickey Creep Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables landed like an indictment handed down by a wickedly demented grand jury. Every song on the record accused the American Dream itself of being a lie. The snake oil salesmen peddling that lie, and the clueless millions who could not see the lie are charged as co-conspirators. As an artistic whole, in fact, it put late 1970s America—and the character of the American people—on trial. For Dead Kennedys, it represented a culmination of a two-year journey, the first LP produced by a single San Francisco punk band, a communiqué from a clear-eyed rebel culture. For its rapidly expanding audience, the record captured the present political and historical age, dissected it and laid it bare. At a time when protest had allegedly gone out of style, when Americans (President Carter said) were suffering a national crisis of confidence, and when young people, in particular, felt screwed, Fresh Fruit dropped some truth and in doing so, offered a flicker of hope. For all of its absurdity and darkness, the album put forward a sane response to a sick social order, the symptoms of which erupted in 109

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concentrated form in San Francisco but could be found all over the United States. It took a combination of good timing, luck, and a tireless work ethic to make a Dead Kennedys LP possible. Biafra, for one, has always been quick to point out the role that “sheer dumb-luck” played in creating the chance to record a full album. “It’s kind of a sick joke that a lot of bands that preceded us never got anything like that, even though their material was on a par with anybody’s in the world.” The fiercest and most talented San Francisco bands—the Avengers, Nuns, Dils, Offs, Negative Trend, UXA, and Sleepers—had been able to release only singles and songs on compilation records (though most managed to release LPs, posthumously); the same was true for some of the best LA bands, too, such as the Screamers, Bags, and Weirdos (Germs released (GI) in 1979 and X released Los Angeles in 1980, just ahead of Fresh Fruit). “We weren’t the biggest band and we weren’t the best,” Biafra acknowledged years later, but DKs caught the unprecedented break of getting “California Über Alles” released in the United Kingdom on Fast Products, a hot label then putting out debut singles by Gang of Four, the Human League, and the Mekons. And then luck begat more luck: the success of “Über Alles” in England led Iain McNay of Cherry Red Records to front $10,000 for the Kennedys to make an LP.1 But the band had also developed a reputation for being, by punk standards, a model of professionalism. One might see them two weeks in a row, but the shows were never the same. Biafra used a variation of William S. Burroughs’s cut-up method—sniffing out the crowd and changing set lists every night. “I was conscious of wanting to be good on stage, of wanting the band to be good,” Biafra confirms, “wanting it to be something that I, coming out of the audience, would want to see from other bands.” As Ray told music writer Alex Ogg, everyone in the band was committed to a “craftsman work ethic.” They showed up on time, did the work, and did it well.2 110

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Maybe it helped that they had been in the studio three times already, so that by the time they recorded Fresh Fruit, they were hitting their stride. Thinking it might be the only record they would ever make, Biafra said, they wanted it “to really blow the doors off of people’s apartments.” Compared to a lot of other punks struggling with drug addiction or bad management, it was a major achievement, in Mia d’Bruzzi’s words, “just to get your shit together enough” to make an album. D’Bruzzi, who moved to San Francisco in 1980 and later formed Frightwig, said “Dead Kennedys just got their shit together (and it was Jello, I know it was): doing it, doing the album . . . making it happen.” Winston Smith, who designed the DK logo and would partner with Biafra on the album art for all of the Kennedys’ records agrees that Biafra, especially, can be very singleminded. “When he needs to get something done, his powers of concentration are formidable.”3 Oliver DiCicco, who engineered Fresh Fruit, said the band showed up in the studio with the songs ready to go. They were good musicians and knew what they were doing. “To have that level of orchestration required some forethought before you came in,” he recalled years later. He also credited Ray for taking care to be constantly refining his signature Echoplex sound. The old saw that punk allowed for anyone with a passion, regardless of skill, to make music did not really apply to the Kennedys.4 DiCicco built Mobius Music, the studio where Fresh Fruit was recorded, in a modest nineteenth-century building on Sanchez near 29th Street in the then working-class neighborhood of Noe Valley. A back building had once been a bakery with an enormous oven; on Thanksgiving, people from the neighborhood would queue around the block to cook their turkeys once the bakers were done making bread for the day. DiCicco lived in the ground floor apartment in the front building and set up the studio in that back building. A small middle building between the other two housed his kitchen; artists had to walk through DiCicco’s living room and kitchen to get 111

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to the studio. By the time the DKs arrived, DiCicco had been running Mobius for less than four years, and “it was still a pretty funky studio,” he said. But it was a two-inch sixteen-track studio, and “that was a pretty big deal at the time.” Biafra really wanted Geza X to produce the LP, but given the limited financing, the band produced it itself, with DiCicco manning the board. Norm, DiCicco’s Siamese cat, got the original production credit.5 Before Dead Kennedys came to Mobius, DiCicco had had no contact with the San Francisco punk scene and did not know what to expect. Mostly, he had been recording R&B bands. “I didn’t realize how big a deal [the Kennedys] were when I first met them,” he recalled years later. He focused on “trying to figure out how to make the sound good going to tape, and dealing with the personalities.” There can be tension when almost any band is in the studio because “it’s a tension-filled environment: you’re trying to get stuff down, money is being spent, and people get anxious at times.” Biafra really knew what he wanted to hear. “He would complain that things were sounding too wimpy, they weren’t fast enough, it sounded too small, and it was kind of a battle to get the things to sound good going to tape . . . to keep dynamics in the music, and get Biafra’s vision across, and his energy.” They spent a lot of time recording and mixing vocals, “comping” different vocal lines from different tracks down to one track. Mickey Creep, Biafra’s roommate, remembers Biafra coming home and playing “a whole bunch of seemingly identical takes of a song,” obsessing about picking the right one. In short, recording the album was a lot of work. Biafra, DiCicco stresses, “had a really strong vision about what he wanted to hear, what he wanted to say,” and it was not easy for him to yield control. “But he was a political activist” who really believed in what he was doing, DiCicco said recently. “I never felt that he was disingenuous at all. I thought he was a pain in the ass at times, but . . . he really believed in what he was saying [and] you have to respect that. The guy had the courage of his convictions.”6 112

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Dead Kennedys’ commitment to sustaining a fiercely political vision came at a time when the San Francisco punk scene found itself guarding against commercialization, cooptation, and attenuation. In fact, some punks had been warning of the scene’s imminent decline since late 1978, before it was even two years old. But starting in the aftermath of the first Western Front Festival, some of the movers and shakers in the city’s punk scene started holding regular summit meetings at Target Studios to organize in defense of all that they had built. Mostly, they worried about two things: first, that some artists might effectively sell out by signing contracts with the kind of big media corporations that would never allow them to maintain their artistic integrity; second, that they might be overrun by an audience of poseurs, suburbanites coming in to see shows dressed as punks as if for Halloween. To that frightening prospect, Brad Lapin wrote in an editorial: “we should make clear by our attitudes, our songs, our music, our venues, our publications, our lives . . . that this scene represents one thing if nothing else: A COMPLETE, A TOTAL REJECTION OF THE MINDLESSNESS OF CONFORMITY AND MASS CULTURE.” Cue Dead Kennedys and Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.7 With Fresh Fruit, the Kennedys carried the torch for everyone else in the scene who took the same uncompromising stand toward the forces of dilution. In doing so, the songs on the record reflect the convergence of each band member’s ideas about what their art could do as a political act. Biafra’s mission to show how “bringing down the government and anarchy, in general, is fun” dovetailed with Klaus’s insistence that, if they were going to be a political band, the message had to be “dripping with sarcasm.” If that mix of politics and humor worked it could, as Ray hoped, affect people on a personal level. For the less open-minded, those least likely to be in on the jokes, the record offered enough unsettling imagery to keep them awake at night. Except for two songs—“Forward to Death” and “Your Emotions”— Biafra wrote the lyrics to all of the original songs on Fresh Fruit. As 113

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with “California Über Alles” and “Holiday in Cambodia,” most of his songs were written during trips back to Boulder, where he could better focus, and “mixed and matched” his Colorado and California experiences. There is a whole lot of death on the record. The first four songs—“Kill the Poor,” “Forward to Death,” “When Ya Get Drafted,” “Let’s Lynch the Landlord”—for example, hit the listener right away with villains large and small, violence real and threatened. “I’m really fascinated by things that are considered by most people to be sick, hideous, evil,” Biafra told Slash that spring. “I look for beauty where there is supposed to be no beauty. I look for ugliness where there is supposed to be beauty—and work from there.” More than that, his acting background led him to take a “you are there” approach, in which he immersed himself in different personalities, including monsters—whether they were serial killers or government officials.8 Most anyone can write a song about the evils of war or, say, the neutron bomb, but it takes another kind of mind—maybe more perceptive, maybe more twisted—to conjure the use of a nuclear weapon for slum clearance. Many reviewers then and since have noted the common theme between “Kill the Poor” and Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, but Biafra, who wanted to write something distinctive about nuclear war, got the idea for the song from an early Search & Destroy interview with Devo, and his friend John Greenway had suggested, “wouldn’t it really freak people out if you wrote a song called ‘Kill the Poor?’ ” As he did with “Holiday in Cambodia” and “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” Biafra began with the song title and built up the song around it. Compared to the Weirdos’ silly lyrics in the already-released “We Got the Neutron Bomb”—“you’re gonna get it on your face”—“Kill the Poor” is considerably more warped. It takes the Carter era anxiety of living in a country openly contemplating the production of a bomb that wipes out people but leaves buildings standing and applies it to stagflation-infected America with its growing hordes of poor, unemployed, and homeless. Common sense says it would be stupid to use the neutron 114

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bomb in war when, really, the point is supposed to be to crush the enemy regardless of the quality of their architecture and infrastructure. No, Biafra writes, it “makes perfect sense at home” to use the bomb to wipe out the “jobless millions,” the victims of deindustrialization watching their jobs get shipped overseas, and relieve the attendant strain on the welfare and criminal justice systems. One could almost imagine the nodding heads around a Dr. Strangelove-looking table at the Pentagon. The very last days of the working-class.9 “When Ya Get Drafted” pursues a similar theme, tying economic recovery to increased tensions in the late Cold War. An earlier version of the song, written in the early months of the band’s life, was called “Rhodesia” and included lines about the Cuban threat and the prospects of being drawn into an African war; Biafra sometimes introduced it from the stage saying “this is a song about where you’re going to go when they bring back the draft.” And then Jimmy Carter made him seem prophetic by resuming draft registration in February 1980. Protests against the draft took place all over the Bay area that spring, and the Kennedys played at least one anti-draft concert in the East Bay (following Angela Davis to the stage). By summer, draft resisters were publicly defying the law and most of the local punk zines were telling young men that “quiet” non-public refusal to register would probably not lead to prosecution.10 Rather than keep singing about Rhodesia—which Negative Trend had covered, anyway, in “Mercenaries”—Biafra rewrote the song with a new focus. He credited Geza X for impressing upon him the importance to “go over lyrics and try to hone them to a finer point,” to make them pack more punch and, therefore, revised the lyrics substantially to focus mostly on the draft itself, against the context of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and oil companies then causing panic at the pump. Compared to the Clash’s ska-inflected “The Call Up,” which was written in response to the same circumstances, but lacked any sense of urgency, “When Ya 115

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Get Drafted” slaps draft-age youth in the face repeatedly over 1 minute and 23 seconds, depicting how those in power casually plan to stock the military with draftees from the slums, knowing— since “kids today just sit on their ass”—there will be little in the way of protest.11 Here again, as in “California Über Alles,” and “Holiday in Cambodia,” the complacent—the ones who by doing nothing or by being so self-involved allow evil to be committed in their names— come in for special ridicule. To understand the “horror of the American lifestyle,” Biafra told Slash that summer, “it’s important to immerse yourself in Hell for a while.” It is clear from many of the Fresh Fruit lyrics that few things were more hellish to him than watching Americans be distracted by their pursuit of self-realization and creature comforts at the expense of the commonweal. In “Drug Me,” Biafra impersonates someone who doesn’t want to think or care by criticizing not their actual drug use so much as all of the security blankets of modern life in which they insulate themselves from the horrors swirling around them: watching television, listening to the stereo, going out with their friends, getting loaded, etc. This is not the same kind of self-medication the Ramones sang about earlier in “I Wanna Be Sedated.” Few songs pitchfork the listener in the ass so directly. It is not imploring them to do better, calling them to fight for a particular cause; it is telling them that they are fucking pathetic for checking out so completely. When Slash asked how long Biafra expected his creativity to last, he replied, “It’s so hard to run out of ideas when people are so stupid. They constantly give me new ideas by their absurd and ridiculous behavior.” Some might think that comes off as pretty arrogant or condescending, but maybe it makes more sense to anyone who has wondered just what it would take to make the American people outraged enough to do something.12 Just as in “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” which precedes “Drug Me” on the UK issue of the LP (the early US releases sandwiched “Police 116

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Truck” between “Landlord” and “Drug Me’), Biafra offers a Yippielike example of what someone less complacent might do to fight this kind of evil in “Chemical Warfare.” Growing up near enough to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal chemical weapons facility, Biafra got thinking about what would happen if the contents of the Arsenal “were just dropped on the Cherry Creek Country Club.” By releasing mustard gas from a tree onto “Saturday golfers,” the song’s narrator aims to hit the kind of people those rich kids from “Holiday in Cambodia” grow up to be. As Biafra argued in his “creative crime” article in Damage the year before, “breaking rules helps you avoid being drugged and caught up as just another cog in the machine.” The victims in “Chemical Warfare” were, like their ilk in “Holiday in Cambodia,” villains because they embraced being cogs in the machine. A Sparks-inspired waltz adds an extra layer of treachery, describing an ugly end for martini-drinking women by the clubhouse pool.13 If country clubs were too far removed from a listener’s experience, polite society could also be fucked with by “Stealing People’s Mail.” The narrators in the song sound like a group of joyriding teens, but with a more menacing edge. They ride around on a Friday night swiping everything, filling grocery bags with money, wedding gifts, tax returns, and checks written to politicians by realtors. The impression is that they are causing a reign of terror, that the public thinks they are crazy, yet when the narrators “read your letters” they wind up “rolling on the floor” laughing. They are so unrepentant, so irreverent, the public regards them as insanely dangerous, and the narrators predict they will, if caught, wind up getting shock treatment in mental institutions. In the heyday of the Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades, both of which had targeted high profile corporate and political leaders (in Germany and Italy, respectively), a chemical weapons attack on a country club and an assault on the mails did not seem wholly implausible, but if they were not sufficiently terrifying, the 117

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record had a whole suite of songs designed to push the boundaries of shocking. The most notoriously named song on the album (the one that got Tipper Gore’s attention when it came time for the Parents Music Resource Council to persecute musicians), “I Kill Children,” originated in a series of prankish exclamations that Biafra and his friends would shout at people from cars. “It’s an art form if you do it right,” he says, leaving mainstream folks visibly shaken. Depending on the target, they might yell “I kill children!” or “You deserve to die!”—the latter was, apparently, most jarring when shouted at a crowd emerging from the opera. The most common misinterpretation of the song—seeing Biafra and the band as advocating the killing of children—missed that he was inhabiting the role of a familiar figure in American life at the time: the serial killer. The point was to confront the listener with the pathologies present in American society. The opening line, “God told me to skin you alive,” came from a Jack T. Chick religious tract and added a layer of complexity, given that the insanity defense so often relied on claiming to hear voices. Manson said the Beatles spoke to him through “Helter Skelter,” so why couldn’t God tell someone to kill children? Two songs later comes “Funland at the Beach,” with images of children mangled beneath a boardwalk rollercoaster sabotaged the previous night. Biafra not only shocks with the horrifying image of “crushed little kids” but also with the perceptive insight that, confronted with this awful event, the amusement park owners are thinking more about a lawsuit than anything else and that witnesses will spend the coming days ogling the horror on television, over and over again. The song did not purport to chronicle a real event, but it perceptively reported on a fictional tragedy in a way that seemed completely realistic and despicable.14 The underlying darkness, the gloom and hopelessness of late 1970s life comes through in a trinity of disturbing songs: “Forward to Death,” “Your Emotions,” and “Ill in the Head.” Each song focuses in some way on mental instability and is truly dark, capturing a 118

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sense of inescapable dread, and with more than a hint of looming violence; indeed, in each song, some kind of breakdown or explosion seems certain to follow the completion of the tune. “Your Emotions,” the only song on the record to which East Bay Ray wrote both the music and lyrics, is accusatory and even dismissive. The song, which Ray says he wrote about someone who worked for the band, repeats how the person’s emotional drama is nothing special. “I’ve heard all this before,” the narrator sings, as if the subject’s coming breakdown was just a boring act. “Forward to Death,” written by 6025, who had left the band a year earlier, mentions life as a bore, too, but it is not dismissive; rather boredom is a precondition to wanting death. Dirk Dirksen was so concerned about the song that he pulled 6025 into his Mabuhay office one day to ask him about it. According to Klaus, 6025 replied that he was often so depressed he was looking forward to death. “OK, that’s pretty clear cut,” Dirksen reportedly responded with a worried look. 6025 also wrote the music to “Ill in the Head,” the most cryptic Biafra composition on the album. It is especially dark, seeming to chronicle a nightmare that, combined with the jagged time signature and angular guitar parts composed by 6025 evokes a feeling of horror-film terror.15 In addition to including “Let’s Lynch the Landlord” and “Police Truck,” both of which still did the job of exposing the dual tyrannies afflicting not only San Francisco but most American cities, the band re-recorded their first two singles, “California Über Alles,” and “Holiday in Cambodia” for the album. Side 2 closes out with “Holiday” followed by Elvis Presley’s classic, “Viva Las Vegas” but with lyrics altered to again critique the self-indulgent who, in juxtaposition with the images of Cambodia that precede it, go to Vegas to pump coke up their nose and blow their cash. “It’s a perfect way of rubbing unpleasant salt in the wound created by ‘Holiday in Cambodia,’ ” Biafra told a British interviewer.16 Taken together, the songs on Fresh Fruit added up to a sustained and trenchant critique of not only the familiar New Left target, “the 119

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System,” but of mainstream culture. The lyrics show no mercy to any aspect of American life—everything is fair game. It is a no bullshit zone, a place where listeners are confronted to consider their own place in a vapid, venal, and violent society and then ask themselves what they are prepared to do. Will they just insulate themselves from the horrors the way the narrator in “Drug Me” does? Or go off the deep end, as in “Forward to Death,” and “Ill in the Head?” Will they stand by while the poor are drafted, the slums cleared, and while Zen fascists command conformity? Or will they fight back, maybe via some creative crime, the way the narrators do in “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” “Chemical Warfare,” “Stealing People’s Mail” and “Holiday in Cambodia”? Even if one took excited satisfaction at the quality of the critique, at the utter derision on display, it is hard to escape the feeling of being put on the spot. The record came in sleeve packaging that likewise combined a mix of political insights, observations on a variety of sicknesses present in American culture, and some warped humor. The album cover is deceptively simple: a single grainy black and white photograph with the only text being the band’s name. The image came from a San Francisco Examiner photo from the White Night riot and shows five of the SFPD patrol cars engulfed in fire beneath billowing plumes of smoke. It is a profoundly frightening image. The flames seem to burn white hot in a line across the entire album cover, looking almost as though they were shot out of a flamethrower. In the foreground, the light of the flames is reflected in shattered glass—a hint that this conflagration is no accident. The smoke clouds seem angry and out of control. The entire composition conveys violence, and in black and white, it recalls the horrific images of Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany. Maybe it is the austere use of an Old English typeface (close enough to the Fraktur typeface favored by the Nazis) to spell out “Dead Kennedys” in combination with the photo that makes it look like something out of the Holocaust. Of course, it is an inversion of sorts: instead of depicting 120

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fascist violence unleashed on a persecuted minority, the photograph shows what happens when the People (including some persecuted minorities) send San Francisco proto-fascists a message. San Francisco record buyers would have recognized the photo immediately, and if others did not, they would have been drawn to it simply because it seemed—in an age of space-agey fantasy album covers—truly dark and foreboding. The name of the album does not even appear on the front cover. Instead, it streams across the back cover in an arc of text made to look as though “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables” is spelled out, in twists and turns, from one long strand of rope. At first glance, it looks like a title meant to evoke the Louisiana Hayride or the Grand Ole Opry. In contrast to the terror evoked on the front cover, the back establishes a theme of down-home good fun furthered by the presence of a photograph of a completely different band that look as though they might have been hired to play the Cherry Creek Country Club. Or maybe they are some kind of hyper-Christian group. Klaus apparently found the photo, which was meant for promotional purposes, at a garage sale; it features five men in tuxedos and a woman with a bouffant hairdo in a slim black dress posing for the photo with the oddest collection of instruments: guitar, bass, and drums, with trumpet, bass saxophone, and an enormous contrabass saxophone. The Kennedys superimposed the DK logo, designed by Winston Smith, onto the face of the kick drum, along with a couple of skull and crossbones on the front of the toms. It turned out that, despite their dated appearance, the band—called the Sounds of Sunshine—were very much an active outfit in 1980, and when they caught wind of the photo being used on the back of a punk album, they sued for the misappropriation of the image. That is too bad because the original effect was hilarious (later pressings featured the same photo but without the musicians’ smiling faces).17 The album title itself had just popped into Biafra’s head one day, and the band used it to 121

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advertise a show at the Temple Beautiful. “My mother thought when I was a teenager that I should go into advertising,” he later remembered. Part of the idea in crafting the outer artwork this way stemmed from Biafra’s own considerable record-buying experience and the times in which he sometimes bought a record solely because of the cover. He tried to create something so that if someone “in some small town music store or some place where they don’t get a lot of cool things” blundered into the record and then looked it over, from art to song titles and thought “this thing looks really warped, I’m taking this home!”—that would be an achievement.18 Inside the album, one found not only the record itself, but an enormous, double-sided collage poster bursting with cut-out images and text, laid out in provocative juxtaposition. It would take a semester of seminar meetings to comb through and try to analyze all of the image collisions and any dialectical magic that might result, but at 22¼ × 32½ inches, it is the right size for hanging on the wall for some voluntary and involuntary daydreaming. In fact, the first thought it might prompt is how much it looks like the trademark wall of a television serial killer’s home—which, given some of the album’s themes, is as good a description as any. Most of the clippings used to make the collage had belonged to Biafra dating to his days in Boulder. He and his friend John Greenway had gotten into hanging dozens of news clippings on their walls, featuring anything from celebrities to politicians to headline text and advertising. Friends would come over and find themselves just staring at the wall. “You cross-reference those pictures, you can’t put into words how it makes your brain spin and you just see the entire world in a more surreal and absurd way,” Biafra later said. “You can’t not react, and you can’t not laugh.” When he left Boulder for San Francisco, he cut down the collage images from his bedroom wall, harvesting many of them, it turned out, for the Fresh Fruit collage.19 122

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By 1980, there were very few such elaborate art projects tucked into punk records, let alone mainstream rock and roll LPs. The Who’s Tommy featured a booklet with fantastical art meant to convey the storyline of the deaf, dumb, and blind pinball wizard, and the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s LP featured a kind of collage image on the cover and an insert. Among punk bands, perhaps the only precedent was Crass, who featured inserts and some modest collages on their LP Stations of the Crass and EP The Feeding of the 5000 (both 1979). Biafra had examined those records closely and got to thinking, “what if Crass was funny?” So he worked through the night over a couple of nights to get it right. According to Winston Smith, who helped with the poster, Biafra obsessed over the placement of images the way he fussed over different takes of the same song. The originals were the same size as the poster inserted inside the LP, and they used glue stick to post everything into place.20 Even though Biafra and Winston Smith came from completely different backgrounds, they shared a political outlook and an iconoclastic approach to their art. Smith grew up in Oklahoma. His mother was a sculptor who trained at the Art Institute of Chicago, but whose wartime work—building aircraft—brought her to Tulsa where she met Smith’s draftee father. In 1969, even before finishing high school, Winston left for Florence where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts just blocks from the Uffizi. He stayed in Italy for seven years. When he came back to the United States in 1976, he felt like Rip van Winkle. “In the old days,” he told one interviewer, “people were rioting in the streets, and when I got back, they were slumped out on television and basically concerned with the ‘me first’ way of thinking.” Like Biafra, who, of course, shared the exact same frustration with Sixties radicals and his complacent contemporaries, Smith channeled that frustration into making art. When a mutual friend introduced them, and Biafra saw the danger and irreverence in Smith’s work, they immediately hit it off.21 123

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Biafra and Smith basically practice an artistic equivalent of Revolutionary era pamphleteering. The objective in Biafra’s lyrics and Smith’s collage is to fire a flair into the sky, to alert the passerby to some emergency. Most people, such as corporate executives or the board members to whom they report, do not want the public to know what they are thinking and consequently conduct their business behind closed doors. If they communicate with the public, they do it through advertising, the original intention of which, Smith argues, was “to lie to you.” In contrast, artists address themselves to topical, social, and political issues openly, out of a “desire to alert the public.” They are the town criers in a village asleep to the perils bearing down on them. “You can’t be too subtle, especially with the American public,” Smith has said. “You’ve gotta hit people over the head. To make a point, you’ve almost got to really exaggerate just so they’ll sit up and listen.” The truth is, however, that neither Smith nor Biafra are so blunt; it is easy enough to do “war is bad” or “Reagan sucks” themed art, but Smith and Biafra deploy irony and humor in ways that are insightful and accessible.22 Although Biafra came to collage independent of meeting Winston Smith, collage had an important intellectual and political provenance. Smith himself cites the influence of German collage artist John Heartfield who, throughout the 1930s basically risked his life by doing many anti-Nazi collage pieces. Smith likes to cite an assessment of collage published in Life magazine in 1943: “Collage is artistic monkey business which is quietly threatening to become a fad. If it succeeds in this it will be, like Dadaism, another harmless little hoax perpetrated upon the art-loving public.” But as Smith points out, collage, used correctly, is more like a photographic version of a political cartoon. And in San Francisco alone, collage and montage had been prized by the Beats (for example, in Bruce Conner’s films) as a visual form of the Dadaists’ cut-up method made popular by William S. Burroughs, and could be seen in Joe Target’s videos and on punk flyers posted all over the city. 124

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Even if the brand of collage practiced by Biafra was more primitive than the work of Heartfield or Smith—both of whom better interweave images (whereas Biafra put images next to and on top of one another)—the Fresh Fruit collage captures the dual ethos of the cover, blending both serious politics and gallows humor. At the bottom of the front side, above the lyrics, for example, an image of 1976 presidential candidate Fred Harris’s campaign Winnebago is placed over an image of the Chappaquidick bridge from which 1980 presidential candidate Senator Ted Kennedy’s car plunged in 1969, killing Mary Jo Kopechne; in the foreground, Biafra glued the image of a hand reaching out of the water. Midway up the collage, a newsclipping reports the arrest of a Vietnam veteran suspected of poisoning San Jose swimming pools with homemade Agent Orange. Across to the left are photos of a department store Santa being frisked by police, a California State Police sign doctored to say “California Police State,” and a group of men who appear to be swearing allegiance to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. By the time one flips the poster over to look at the other side, the message of the famous billboard slogan, “There’s No Way Like the American Way” already seems warped. Nearby images feature Nelson Rockefeller in a Mickey Mouse cap, kids at a picnic table near a nuclear power plant, a bound and hooded man with electrodes connected to his nipples. The American Way, indeed. The Fresh Fruit collage forced the band’s record buyers to contemplate all the ways in which we are all bombarded with messaging every single day (and this is long before street artist Shepard Fairey launched his similarly-themed Obey campaign). Some of the images are cleverly changed to make the message notso-subliminal: a MasterCharge card altered to say “Masterscam,” the “Vicious Circle Credit Card”; presidential candidate Ronald Reagan’s face with “Sex” written all over it, above a clipping of a headline caption that says “I’ll Lead You Astray—and You’ll Like It!”; two versions of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” changed by 125

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Smith to show a mushroom cloud in one and a nuclear power plant in the other; a photo of students in a Free Speech Movement sit-in over a caption, “Berkeley in 1964: Now they scramble for grades”; and a photo of serial killer John Wayne Gacy in his clown outfit with the caption “A Popstar® for the 80s!” over it. The person scanning the poster draws their own conclusions, each undoubtedly different, but there is no question that as a provocative piece of album art, it mixed the political with the surreal. When the album came out in September 1980, the Kennedys made their first tour of the UK—another first for a San Francisco punk band—and the British music press immediately embraced them and the record. An NME review declared Fresh Fruit “full of ferocious power and evil wit,” with music that showed “more invention and originality” than any other band of the moment. Zigzag heartily endorsed buying the record, particularly if readers required “a little more subtlety in their lyrics.” A year later, NME’s enthusiasm had not waned. “There can be no doubting the validity and good sense of The Dead Kennedys as a subversive thorn in the flesh to both American society and its behemothfuelled rock industry.” The reviewer appreciated, especially, the band’s message to both “think for yourself,” and to stand for something.23 Reviews in the American press were more mixed. New York Rocker offered a representative assessment by applauding the Kennedys for “making a sincere attempt to radicalize through outrage,” while dismissing songs like “I Kill Children” and “Funland at the Beach” as “cheap thrills, shock for shock’s sake” and “pointless.” In the end, the reviewer offers a measured endorsement of the band for being “perhaps the least compromising in America.” Since Fresh Fruit was at first available only in the US as an import, the catalogue for Bomp Records, based in Los Angeles, described it as “the ultimate American album that America won’t release.” Biafra, today, smiles and says “I always liked that.”24 126

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Looking back over more than thirty years, the importance of Fresh Fruit, particularly to the San Francisco punk community, seems obvious. The record’s “landmark” status derives not only from being the first LP by a single band from the scene, but because, as Frightwig’s Mia d’Bruzzi notes, “their songs were so on point.” The city’s punks had heard all of the songs on the album, of course, over many Dead Kennedys performances in clubs small and large, but the record, Mickey Sampson says, “made us official . . . it was like a document of us.” Particularly because Fresh Fruit came out on a British label, there was a sense of reach. “They really broke San Francisco punk in Europe and in the rest of the United States,” punk photographer extraordinaire Ruby Ray said later. Sampson agrees: it felt like, “the world can see this!” and “it was real and it was permanent.” But more than that, he says, it brought a message of “being against the shit we were against to a lot of people” who thought the movements of the Sixties had won “because Jerry Brown was governor,” or “who thought that the [Vietnam] War was a single incident rather than a manifestation of political, economic, and social stuff that continues to this day.” By issuing this communiqué in LP form, the Kennedys came, like returning urban guerrillas, to remind the world that those movements had not won, and that in San Francisco, at least, there were plenty of like-minded revolutionaries gearing up for the next campaign.25 At the time that they were in the studio making the album, the Kennedys did not know what to expect. On the one hand, Biafra was very particular about what he wanted in part because he did not know if they would have a chance to make another LP; on the other hand, they held some songs aside—such as “Kepone Factory,” “Bleed for Me,” “Halloween,” and “Moon over Marin”—because they thought they just might make a second record. According to Klaus, they all hoped Fresh Fruit would be special. “We didn’t know if it was going to be historic, at least I didn’t,” he says. “I just knew it was a whole album of our stuff, and it was different than any stuff I’d 127

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played up until then, and it was the first full album I’d made . . .” Biafra has mixed feelings. “I like [Fresh Fruit], and I’m grateful people still do, but I like Plastic Surgery Disasters the best in the end” because, he says, it is “darker and more unique and more us.” Fresh Fruit is made up of early songs on which the band honed its craft on the way to making, in Biafra’s view, a better second full-length album.26 Some in the punk community, in San Francisco and beyond, blame the album for ushering in hardcore punk, with its more monochromatic and aggressive sound and style, as well as for bringing in the suburban male jock crowd. Songs like “Drug Me” and “Chemical Warfare,” parts of which were played at lightning speed compared to other punk songs at the time, marked, for some, the start of hardcore bands just trying to play faster and faster. The rise of the faster music accompanied the expansion of the punk audience. Although one could almost certainly argue for a “utopian performative” hardcore experience, as a new wave of punk, it found many critics in the existing scene who found fault particularly with the overly macho and frequently violent audience. Dead Kennedys shows got really crowded, drawing a lot of non-punks looking for the shock-value experience, and the sense of being part of a tight community started to recede. But one cannot have it both ways. If Fresh Fruit documented a scene and presented it to the world, it made sense that the world would want to come to the scene.27 And even if dumb jocks made up a significant proportion of the newer, bigger audience, Biafra later told an interviewer, “it’s much more fun and much more important to confront people with themselves. This is a volatile form of education and even journalism in some cases.” Some fans seemed receptive. “Jello Biafra has all the answers,” a writer from the San Jose zine Ripper wrote in a review of Fresh Fruit. “He’s seething and reeking with new and different political suggestions.” Mike Watt felt similarly when he saw the Kennedys in LA. Even though he thought Dead Kennedys were 128

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outrageous, doing “an overblown cartoon thing,” he saw that the songs were also about “real people,” and found them “very motivating, inspiring.” Far from nihilism, with the Kennedys, Watt remembers, “in a lot of ways, it was ‘do! do! do!’ ”28 The other side of that punk-as-education sword, however, is that some fans did not like being told what to do. It did not take long for Biafra to start fielding criticisms that, on the one hand, he offered only complaints and no solutions, and on the other hand, that he had, by lecturing fans in lyrics and performance, become just another authority figure. To take one example, in a letter to New York Rocker, a guy named Patrick Albino condemned Biafra for substituting bitterness for ideas. He thought the critique of “smug preppies” in “Holiday in Cambodia” unfair. “Anyone whose future isn’t guaranteed by daddy’s business has known the feelings of bewilderment and frustration that come with confronting modern society,” Albino wrote, but, in a reference to “California Über Alles,” he said, “taking it out on joggers hardly seems to be contemplative thinking.” What Biafra lacked, he said, was the capacity for offering “an alternative to hate” that one could find in the work of Bob Marley and the Clash.29 Biafra rejected both characterizations. Neither he nor the band were guilty of preaching, he said. “We’re expressing a strongly felt opinion and if someone else has a better opinion we’d be happy to hear it, but until they do, they better think about what we’re saying.” To the charge that they did not offer solutions, he responded that “the first thing we’ve got to do is quit lying to each other . . . quit treating people like dirt.” Maybe such sentiment was harder to convey in song. “The truth is,” he told one interviewer, “that human beings stink and so maybe it’s time we learned how to clean up the mess and get on with it, instead of polishing the same side of the windshield for four or five generations.”30 Maybe most important is that it is not hard to find punks who really valued the political education they got from the Kennedys. 129

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For some, the music and lyrics prompted them to think about issues that, for a variety of factors—from ignorance to cynicism—they would not have otherwise considered. “I was as dumbshit kid, I didn’t think about anything political, I wouldn’t think about what’s going on about Cambodia or whatever,” remembered Sergie Loobkoff, who later played guitar in Samiam. Barry Lazarus, once the lead singer of Public Enema and now owner of Red Devil Records in San Raphael, thinks punks picked on Biafra just because the Kennedys got so big. “Punks wanted a reason to hate before they wanted a reason to like,” he remembered. He appreciated Biafra’s “raps.” Others “called them preachy, [but] I thought they were fresh and current and poignant, and I loved them.” Same goes for Frank Portman, who was in high school in the Fresh Fruit years, before he went on to form Mr. T Experience: Biafra, Portman told an interviewer, “was speaking to me at that particular time . . . you realize, whoa, he wasn’t kidding. He really thinks Jerry Brown is a fascist dictator, and he really thinks that everybody is Zen fascists . . . It’s all down to politics.”31 In the United States in 1980, when most American youth were still listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bachman Turner Overdrive, or Olivia Newton John, punk—despite its prevalence in certain parts of the country—remained a relatively small phenomenon. The historical significance of an album called Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by a band called Dead Kennedys would have been obvious to very few people. To that overwhelming majority of nonpunks, the record—if it even came across their radar screens— would probably have been dismissed as shock for shock’s sake. But to the minority who already knew of Dead Kennedys or were willing to give them a chance, Fresh Fruit brought outrage and caustic analysis in equal measure, anger, insult, and gallows humor, all wrapped in a distinctive sonic attack. For kids born in the late 1950s and beyond, who felt they had been robbed of the American Dream and abandoned by the people who last went to the cultural 130

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barricades, Fresh Fruit actually offered hope. Here was a statement by young people, for young people—an honest assessment of the state of the union, free of the bullshit and lies that defined mainstream American political culture. It was a complete package with which one could spend a lot of time, perusing the lyrics and album art endlessly while absorbing the new sound of protest. If the music press dwelled too much on the band’s sardonic approach, Biafra pulled them up short. “Just because we have a sense of humor doesn’t mean we don’t also have a sense of rage,” he reminded NME. “I’ve had that rage since I was very small and I want to keep it in the music.” For any listeners who felt a similar sense of rage, and for similar reasons, that made perfect sense.32

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Acknowledgments

It may be a little book, but somehow I have incurred a great many debts in the course of writing it. Biafra, Ray, and Klaus have been incredibly generous with their time and interest in the project, sitting for lengthy interviews and answering numerous follow-up questions by email. I simply could not have written the book I set out to write without their help and support. Thanks, too, to everyone else who agreed to be interviewed: Mia d’Bruzzi, Oliver DiCicco, Al Ennis, Ted Falconi, Craig Gray, Penelope Houston, Jim Keylor, Brad Lapin, Barry Lazarus, Sadie McFarlane, Hugh Patterson, Ruby Ray, Joe Rees, Michael Reid, Mickey Sampson, Winston Smith, David Spaner, Peter Urban, V. Vale, Mike Watt, Jane Weems, Geza X. And the help of Alan Schneider and Dominic Davi has been invaluable on all fronts. I am grateful to Mickey Sampson for putting me in touch with a lot of key people and for sharing some of his massive personal archive. Vale, too, hooked me up with indispensable resources and so did the great punk historian Dewar MacLeod. Thanks to Kyle Kubiak for scanning a ton of Dewar’s zine archive. Greg Langston and Eric Lenchner graciously provided copies of flyers from their personal collections that I could find nowhere else. Thanks to Penelope Houston for walking me through the relevant archives at the San Francisco History Center in the city’s main library, and to Steve Viaduct for his encyclopedic knowledge of SF punk.

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I am grateful to David Barker and Ally Jane Grossan for accepting my 33‒ proposal and for all of their support over the life of the project. Bloomsbury may give new meaning to Biafra’s “you’ll work harder with a gun in your back” line from “Holiday in Cambodia,” but Ally Jane, who took over from David early on, has managed to maintain a human touch. Thanks, too, to editorial assistant Michelle Chen and copy editor Jon Ingoldby. Many thanks to Richard McCaffrey, Chester Simpson, and Bob Mercer for granting permission to publish their photographs and art. Thank you, Krista Baker, for making the late Stefano Paolillo’s photos available to me. Over the years, I have been fortunate to talk music and politics with Dave Rick, Brendan O’Malley, Daniel Kane, Eithne Quinn, Jonathan Stewart, Lucy Robinson, Gary Rivett, Matt Daloisio, Charlie Hattman, Jeremy Varon, and John McMillian, among others. I have learned so much from all of them and look forward to many more conversations. Mickey Sampson read the entire first draft and offered really valuable feedback. So did my Boston/Brooklyn Irish brother, Brendan O’Malley, who was once an editor and is now a historian (and still a punk); he pressed me to sharpen my ideas and arguments and otherwise helped me immensely as I revised the manuscript. Any remaining flaws are mine alone. My actual brothers, Tony Foley and Kurt Foley, lived in San Francisco in the late 1970s, and although they were not punks, they helped me get the lay of the land. On several research trips, I have been so fortunate to have Stew Ellington, Dana Towsey, and their boy Felix as amazing East Bay hosts. They have not only given me a comfortable base from which to work, but they have fed me, loaned me their car, and been enthusiastic supporters of the project; they even opened their home for an all-night interview with Biafra. I don’t know how I would have done the research without their help. Thanks, too, to Erik Goldner and 134

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Juliet Nussbaum for hosting me in LA and to Erik for introducing me to Stew and Dana. I am lucky to have colleagues at the University of Groningen who think it is perfectly legitimate to do research on punk politics, and who have given me the time and space to work on this book. Thanks, too, to the Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture for helping to offset some of my research travel costs. This entire book was written at the Biotoop, a kind of managed squat in an old University of Groningen scientific research complex. There, among dozens of artists, I found a quiet productive DIY work environment—the place is the embodiment of punk, and I thank Wouter Nijland and Nikki van der Horst for setting me up with the ideal writing space. Thanks, too, to fellow Biotoopers Paul DeBie, Roland Wisselink, and Steffi Tatzik for their support. But I am most deeply in debt to Kathy Dale and our daughters, Emma, Hattie, and Ophelia who have not only tolerated my lengthy research trips to California and my general inattention as I daydream about San Francisco punk, but were robbed of a summer vacation as I raced to meet my deadline. Through it all, they have listened to Fresh Fruit more times than we can count—the girls seem to have a special appreciation for “Let’s Lynch the Landlord”— and been totally supportive. If we are lucky, they’ll grow up to be proper punk politicos who know when to make fun and when to hit the barricades. I dedicate the book to them.

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Introduction 1. Peter Belsito and Bob Davis, California Hardcore: A History of Punk and New Wave (San Francisco: Last Gasp, 1983), p. 68. 2. George Ypsilantis interview with Jello Biafra, Bay Area Music, 10 April 1981; “Dead Kennedys: Disease with a Bullet,” Sounds 3 Nov. 1979, p. 11. 3. Bruce Schulman is the most influential purveyor of the negative stereotype, even claiming that American punk lacked English punk’s “political edge”; see Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (De Capo Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002), p. 153. Of all the major recent histories of the 1970s and 1980s—and it is a booming field—only Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working-Class mentions punk, but he does so only to point out that Dead Kennedys did not critique America from a class perspective. Otherwise, see, for example, Schulman and Zelizer, Rightward Bound; Hodgson, More Equal than Others; Perlstein, Nixonland; Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge; Wilentz, The Age of Reagan; Patterson, Restless Giant; Stein, Pivotal Decade; Berkowitz, Something Happened; Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares; Sandbrook, Mad as Hell; Bailey and Farber, eds., America in the Seventies. These historians fail to see punk because they examine only mainstream politics, and primarily with regard to major national

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questions. The result has been a narrative that limits discussion of politics to explaining the rise of conservatism, and an attendant retreat from activism after the Sixties. For recent challenges to this approach to American political culture, see: Cowie, Stayin’ Alive; Self, All in the Family; Foley, Front Porch Politics. 4. Schulman, The Seventies, p. 153. 5. Those same cultural studies scholars tend to overstate the impossibility of political protest in this period (when, in fact, the nation saw far more grassroots protest than is usually acknowledged), but they are right about the perception of political impotence among young people, especially punks. See, for example, Michael Nevin Willard, “Cutback: Skate and Punk at the Far End of the American Century,” in Bailey and Farber, eds., America in the Seventies; Dewar MacLeod, Kids of the Black Hole: Punk Rock in Postsuburban California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010). For more on the diversity of grassroots protest in the 1970s and 1980s, see Foley, Front Porch Politics; Simon Hall, American Patriotism, American Protest: Social Movements since the Sixties (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); and Dan Berger, ed., The Hidden 1970s: Essays in Radicalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010). 6. Slash, Los Angeles, October 1979. 7. Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form (London: Routledge, 1953), p. 27. Quoted in John Street, Music and Politics (Cambridge, Polity, 2012), p. 173. 8. John Street, Music and Politics (Cambridge, Polity, 2012), p. 173. 9. Dick Hebdige famously called punk “an oblique challenge to hegemony” in 1979; Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979), p. 132. See also Paul Willis, Profane Culture (London: Routlege, 1978). 10. V. Vale, interview with author, 12 Jan 2013; “Dead Kennedys,” Search & Destroy No. 9 1978, p. 4. 11. Winston Smith, interview with Josh Hooten, in Daniel Sinker, ed., We Owe You Nothing—Punk Planet: the Collected Interviews, New York: Akashic Books, 2001 p. 161.

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12. See Michael Stewart Foley, “A Politics of Empathy: Johnny Cash, the Vietnam War, and the ‘Walking Contradiction’ Myth Dismantled,” Popular Music and Society Vol. 37, No. 3 (May 2014), pp. 338–59; Michael Stewart Foley, “Black Power Jazz: Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the Jazz and People’s Movement, and the Politics of ‘Black Classical Music,’ ” in progress at this writing.

1 I Don’t Need This Fucking World 1. Rebecca Solnit, “Rattlesnake in the Mailbox: The Great Unraveling (and a Little Braiding Together),” in Lisa Gabrielle Mark and Paul Schimmel, eds., Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–1981 (New York: Prestel, 2011), p. 90. 2. Jello Biafra, “Make No Mistake, the 70s Sucked,” in Bryan Ray Turcotte and Christopher T. Miller, Fucked Up and Photocopied: Instant Art of the Punk Rock Movement (Corte Madera: Gingko Press, 1999), p. 8. 3. Al Ennis, interview with author, June 1, 2013; Joe Rees, interview with author, May 27, 2013; Ted Falconi, interview with author, January 10, 2014. 4. One can always find exceptions to such generalizations, but if the Seventies marked, in the words of historian Jefferson Cowie, “the last days of the working-class,” we have more recently seen the arrival of the last days of the middle class. Cowie, Stayin’ Alive. 5. I’m grateful to David Spaner, Peter Urban, and Geza X for sharing their ideas about different ends of the baby boom generation, subgenerations and all things demographic in American punk. 6. Peter Urban, interview with author, May 31, 2013. 7. Jello Biafra, interview with author, 23 September 2013; Jello Biafra, “Eric Meets the Moose Diarrhea Salesman,” Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police, CD, Alternative Tentacles, 1994. 8. Biafra interview; Biafra, “Eric Meets the Moose Diarrhea Salesman.” 9. Biafra interview.

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10. Biafra interview; on the draft, see Lawrence M. Baskir and Willim A. Strauss, Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation (New York: Knopf, 1978), and Michael Stewart Foley, Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance during the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003). 11. Biafra, “Eric Meets the Moose Diarrhea Salesman”; Biafra, telephone interview with author, September 18, 2014. 12. Jerry Rubin, Do It! Scenarios of the Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), p. 117. 13. Biafra interview; David Spaner, interview with author, July 2, 2014. 14. Biafra interview. 15. Jello Biafra, interview with V. Vale, Incredibly Strange Music: Volume II (San Francisco: RE/Search Publications, 1994), p. 9; Biafra interview; Mike Watt, interview with author, March 7, 2013; Biafra, “Eric Meets the Moose Diarrhea Salesman”; Jello Biafra, “Make No Mistake, the 70s Sucked”, p. 8. 16. Klaus Flouride, interview with author, January 9, 2014. 17. Flouride interview. 18. Flouride interview. 19. Flouride interview. 20. Flouride interview; Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, Gimme Something Better, p. xvi. 21. Biafra interview; Biafra telephone interview. 22. East Bay Ray, interview with author, January 9, 2014. East Bay Ray, email to author, August 6, 2014. 23. East Bay Ray interview; Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 24. East Bay Ray interview; “Riot,” Plastic Surgery Disasters LP. Alternative Tentacles, 1982; “2 Dead Kennedys Already,” CREEP , No. 3, p. 9; on prefigurative politics, see Winifred Breines, Community Organization

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and the New Left 1962–1968: The Great Refusal (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989). 25. East Bay Ray interview; “2 Dead Kennedys Already,” CREEP, No. 3, p. 9; Ogg, pp. 12–13. 26. See Rubin’s disgraceful attempt at mainstream redemption: Jerry Rubin, Growing (Up) at 37 (New York: Evans, 1976). 27. Brad L., editorial, Damage No. 9, September/October 1980, p. 5; Solnit, “Rattlesnake in the Mailbox,” p. 92.

2 Mellow Out or You Will Pay 1. Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs (New York: Faber & Faber, 2010), p. 405. 2. Ennis interview. 3. Philip Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America (New York: Oxford, 2006), p. 143. 4. Jonathan Bell, California Crucible: The Forging of Modern American Liberalism (Penn, 2012), p. 267; J. D. Lorenz, Jerry Brown: The Man on the White Horse (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), p. 142. 5. Foley, Front Porch Politics, pp. 238–40. 6. Brown’s seemed like a shameless effort to appease the voters who would decide on his reelection in the coming months, even though, as the journalist Robert Kuttner showed at the time, public opinion polls showed that, except for welfare programs, “California voters did not want to see public services reduced.” Still, Brown embraced slashing budgets so enthusiastically after Prop 13 that Howard Jarvis cut a television spot that was widely seen as endorsing Brown for reelection. Kuttner, Revolt of the Haves, 94. “Lowell Students Demonstrate,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 1979, p. 4; “Peppy S.F. Rally to Fight School Cuts,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1979, p. 4; Bell, California Crucible, p. 277. 7. Rob Epstein, dir., The Times of Harvey Milk, DVD (Criterion, 2011).

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8. Foley, Front Porch Politics, pp. 89–92; “Nix on Six” flyer, Eric Lenchner personal collection, copy in author’s possession. 9. Foley, Front Porch Politics, pp. 137–9, 143–4. 10. Biafra interview; Flouride interview. 11. Biafra interview; Flouride interview; Jim Keylor, interview with author, January 10, 2014; D. Mickey Sampson, interview with author, January 12, 2013; Michael Reid, interview with author, May 29, 2013. 12. Geza X, interview with author, June 9, 2014. 13. Biafra interview; Jane Weems, interview with author, June 19, 2014. 14. Biafra interview; East Bay Ray interview. 15. Alex Ogg, Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, The Early Years (Oakland: PM Press, 2014), p. 33; Biafra interview; Flouride interview. 16. Flouride interview; Boulware and Tudor, Gimme Something Better, p. 65 17. Biafra interview; “Dead Kennedys,” Search & Destroy, No. 9, pp. 3–5; Ennis interview. 18. Biafra gives remarkably consistent interpretations of the early and final version of the song in “Dead Kennedys!” Search & Destroy No. 9, pp. 3–5, and “Tearing a Stripe Off the Scar Mangled Banner,” NME, October 17, 1981, p. 19 (though the latter article refers to the song as ‘Keyhole Factory’). See also Richard Foster, “Keypone: The ‘Flour’ Factory,” Richmond Magazine, July 2005, http://www.richmondmagazine. com/articles/kepone-the-flour-factory-11-09-2008.html. 19. The lyrics to “Kidnap” appear in “Dead Kennedys!” Search & Destroy, No. 9, p. 5. This question of whether he goes too far with some of his humor is sometimes still an issue: “There’s a tightrope that I walk to this day of using my fondness for horror and gallows humor with political subjects where sometimes people put too much of a halo over my head and then they get hit with something they really don’t think is very funny. You know, like after the second space shuttle disaster I had this joke in a spoken word show about astronaut fajitas served on hot tiles all over Texas. Some people were

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like ‘Oh my god, Jello isn’t who I thought he was.’ No, I’m not.” Biafra interview. 20. Kristine Stiles, “Negative Affirmative: San Francisco Bay Art, 1974–1981,” in Lisa Gabrielle Mark and Paul Schimmel, eds., Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–1981 (New York: Prestell, 2011), p. 32. 21. Flouride interview; Boulware and Tudor, Gimme Something Better, pp. 69, 75; V. Vale, “Interview with Jello Biafra,” Pranks (San Francisco: RE/Search, 1987), p. 61; Weems interview. 22. Geza X interview; “Dead Kennedys,” Catazine, No. 2 (1985), pp. 33–4. 23. Vale interview; Keylor interview; East Bay Ray, email to author, August 6, 2014; Klaus Flouride, email to author, May 24, 2014. 24. Keylor interview; East Bay Ray interview. 25. “Dead Kennedys!” Search & Destroy, No. 9, pp. 3–5; “Dead Kennedys: Disease with a Bullet,” Sounds, November 3, 1979, p. 11; “Dead Kennedys,” Zigzag, November 1980, pp. 12–14; “Dead Kennedys,” Slash, Vol. 2, No. 4 March 1979; “Kennedys: Better Dead than Ted,” NME, December 15, 1979, p. 21; “California Uncaged: The Dead Kennedys,” NME, October 4, 1980, p. 27. 26. “Dead Kennedys!” Search & Destroy, No. 9, pp. 3–5. 27. “Dead Kennedys,” Slash, Vol. 2, No. 4 (March 1979). 28. Review of California Über Alles b/w Man with the Dogs, New York Rocker, No. 23, October 1979, p. 13; Review of California Über Alles b/w Man with the Dogs, Slash, Vol. 2, No. 9, October 1979.

3 The Sun Beams Down on a Brand New Day 1. David Talbot, Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love (New York: Free Press, 2012). 2. Stiles, “Negative Affirmative,” pp. 27–8. 3. Talbot, Season of the Witch, pp. 42–59, 81. 4. Joel Selvin, “The Sex Pistols – Punks and Musicians,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 16, 1978; Joel Selvin, “The Audience Came Curious

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But Many Left Convinced,” Chronicle, January 22, 1978, p. WOR 59; Joseph Torchia, “Go Punk Yourself!” Chronicle, January 24, 1978, p. 12; see also John Wasserman, “How I Got Punked On by the Sex Pistols,” Chronicle, January 16, 1978, p. 2. 5. See Joe Street, “Dirty Harry’s San Francisco,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 1–21; Talbot, Season of the Witch, p. 169. 6. Talbot, Season of the Witch, pp. 169, 286; “2 Guards Tell How Security Failed,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 1978. 7. For the SLA and Patty Hearst story, see William Graebner, Patty’s Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Shana Alexander, Anyone’s Daughter: The Times and Trials of Patty Hearst (New York: Viking, 1979); Patricia Campbell Hearst, Every Secret Thing (New York: Doubleday, 1981); Marilyn Baker, Exclusive! The Inside Story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA (New York: Macmillan, 1974). Peter Carroll is one of the few commentators to connect, albeit briefly, the SLA to economic malaise. See Peter Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: America in the 1970s (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982), p. 133. 8. Talbot, Season of the Witch, pp. 150, 153. 9. Talbot, Season of the Witch, p. 61. 10. “The Making of a Housing Crunch,” California Living Magazine, February 10, 1980, pp. 12–17. 11. Ennis interview; Patterson interview; Talbot, Season of the Witch, pp. 229–30; “Crowd Marks International Hotel Eviction,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 1978; “Permit Board Ends Efforts to Save International Hotel,” Chronicle, January 9, 1979, p. 5. 12. Oliver DiCicco, interview with author, June 3, 2013. 13. Stiles, “Negative Affirmative,” p. 32; Brad Lapin, interview with author, April 15, 2014; Mickey Sampson, interview with author, May 27, 2013. 14. “Dirk Talks,” Damage No. 1 (July 1979), pp. 8–9; “The Pope of Punk,” San Francisco Examiner, July 27, 1980, Scene, p. 1. 15. Ennis interview; Biafra interview; Houston interview.

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16. Sampson interview, January 12, 2013. 17. Lapin interview; Nico Ordway, “Politics of Punk,” Search & Destroy, No. 10, p. 22; Happy Geek, “SF News,” New York Rocker, Vol. 1, No. 15, November 1978, p. 44; Happy Geek, “SF News,” New York Rocker, Vol. 1, No. 16, January 1979, p. 58; Happy Geek, “San Francisco,” New York Rocker, No. 19, June–July 1979, p. 39; Ginger Coyote, “Local Newz: SF,” Damage, July 1979, p. 29; Caitlin Hines, “San Francisco: Summer ’79” Slash Vol. 2, No. 9, October 1979, p. 12; Caitlin Hines, “San Francisco: The Absurd Courts the Vulgar,” by Caitlin, Slash, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1980), p. 10. 18. Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), pp. 264–72; Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (New York: Touchstone, 1999), p. 403; Epstein, dir. The Times of Harvey Milk; “Moscone, Milk Slain,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 1978, p. 1. 19. “Stunned Silence in San Francisco,” Chronicle, November 28, 1978; Herb Caen, “Gray Day,” Chronicle, November 28, 1978, p. 27. 20. Happy Geek, “SF News,” New York Rocker, Vol. 1, No. 16, January 1979, p. 58; Talbot, Season of the Witch, pp. 344–5. 21. “It’s Voluntary Manslaughter,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 1979, p. 1; “City Officials Shocked by the Verdict,” Chronicle, May 22, 1979, pp. 1, 18; Talbot, Season of the Witch, pp. 344–5; Biafra interview. 22. Happy Geek, “San Francisco,” New York Rocker, No. 20, July 1979, p. 38; Warren Hinckle, Gayslayer! The Story of How Dan White Killed Harvey Milk and George Moscone and Got Away with Murder (Virginia City: Silver Dollar Books, 1985); Mickey McCarthy, “No Apologies,” CREEP, No. 1, pp. 3–4. 23. “A Bloody Protest at City Hall,” Chronicle, May 22, 1979, pp. 1, 18; “Anatomy of a Gay Riot,” Chronicle, May 23, 1979, pp. 1, 14; “The Mayor’s Night Under Siege,” Chronicle, May 23, 1979, pp. 1, 14; Happy Geek, “San Francisco,” New York Rocker, No. 20 (July 1979), p. 38. 24. Sampson interview, January 12, 2013; Mickey McCarthy, “No Apologies,” CREEP, No. 1, pp. 3–4.

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25. Sampson interview, January 12, 2013; Mickey McCarthy, “No Apologies,” CREEP, No. 1, pp. 3–4. 26. “POA Wants Gain to Quit—He Says No,” Chronicle, June 13, 1979, p. 2; “The POA Vote On Chief Gain,” editorial, Chronicle, June 13, 1979, p. 58; “Mayor Asks Gain to Quit,” Chronicle, July 6, July, pp. 1, 24; “Feinstein’s Decision Draws Fire,” Chronicle, July 6, 1979 pp. 1, 24; “The Decision on Chief Gain,” editorial, Chronicle, July 6, 1979, p. 42. 27. Sadie McFarlane, interview with author, May 31, 2013; Caitlin Hines, “San Francisco: Summer ’79,” Slash, Vol. 2, No. 8, September 1979, p. 8; Caitlin Hines, “San Francisco: Summer ’79,” Slash, Vol. 2, No. 9, October 1979, p. 12; Caitlin Hines, “San Francisco: ’79/80,” Slash, Vol. 3, No. 1, January–February 1980, p. 9; Jonathan Everleigh, “San Francisco News,” New York Rocker, No. 28, February–March 1980, p. 31; Ginger Coyote, “Local Newz: SF,” Damage, July 1979, p. 29. 28. “A Noisy Clash at Eviction in Japantown,” Chronicle, June 29, 1979, p. 2; Warren Hinckle, “A Man Running for Bad Guy,” Chronicle, October 6, 1979, p. 2; Talbot, Season of the Witch, p. 356. 29. “Dead Kennedys,” Slash, Vol. 2, No. 4, March 1979. 30. Jill Dolan, “Performance, Utopia, and the ‘Utopian Performative,’ ” Theatre Journal, 53 (2001), pp. 457–60. 31. Reid interview; Barry Lazarus, interview with author, June 21, 2014; Rees interview. 32. Geza X interview; Spaner interview.

4 It’s Time to Taste What You Most Fear 1. Biafra, “Creative Crime for the Sober Seventies,” Damage, No. 1, July 1979, p. 29. 2. Biafra, “In the Center of a Crumbling Empire,” Damage, No. 2 August/ September 1979; “Kennedys: Better Dead than Ted,” New Musical Express, December 15, 1979, p. 21.

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3. “Jello Biafra for Mayor: Why?,” campaign leaflet, Greg Langston personal collection, copy in author’s possession. 4. Jello Biafra, “Running for Mayor,” I Blow Minds for a Living, LP. Alternative Tentacles, 1988; interview with Jello Biafra, Pranks (SF: |RE/Search Publications, 1987), pp. 62–3; Flouride interview. 5. “Biafra!” Punk Globe, September 1979. 6. Flouride interview; Fresh Fruit for Rotting Eyeballs, DVD (Cherry Red, 2003); Weems interview. 7. “Jello Biafra for Mayor” leaflet, Greg Langston personal collection, copy in author’s possession; Biafra, “Running for Mayor”; interview with Jello Biafra, Pranks, pp. 62–3. 8. “Jello Biafra for Mayor” leaflet; Biafra, “Running for Mayor”; “Biafra: 6,591 votes (3%)!!” Damage, January 1980, p. 18; “Biafra!” Punk Globe. 9. “Life During Showtime,” by Michael Goldberg, New York Rocker, No. 25, December 1979–Janaury 1980; interview with Jello Biafra, Pranks (SF: RE/Search publications, 1987), p. 61. 10. “Kopp vs. Feinstein on the Key Issues,” Chronicle, October 29, 1979, pp. 1, 6; “An Eclectic Bunch of Mayoral Also-Rans,” Chronicle, October 25, 1979, p. 5. 11. “Biafra: 6,591 votes (3%)!!”; Fresh Fruit for Rotting Eyeballs; Sampson interview, January12, 2013. 12. “Dead Kennedys,” Zigzag Magazine, November 1980, pp. 12–14; Ral Pheno, “The Rock Bloc,” letter to editor, San Francisco Chronicle, November 12, 1979. 13. “Biafra: 6,591 votes (3%)!!”; Reid interview; Vale interview; Ray interview. 14. Lapin interview; Craig Gray, interview with author, June 2, 2013. 15. Patterson interview; Falconi interview; Urban interview. 16. Jerry Rubin, Do It!, p. 132; Spaner interview; Biafra interview, Pranks, p. 64. 17. Chester Hartman, “Landlord Money Defeats Rent Control in San Francisco,” in John Gilderbloom et al., Rent Control: A Source Book, 3rd ed. (Santa Barbara: Foundation for National Progress, 1981),

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pp. 198–9; John Atlas and Peter Dreier, “The Tenants’ Movement and American Politics,” in Rachel G. Bratt, Chester Hartman, and Ann Meyerson, eds., Critical Perspectives on Housing (Philadelphia: Temple, 1986), p. 396; Peter Dreier, “The Politics of Rent Control,” in John Gilderbloom et al., Rent Control: A Source Book, 3rd ed., (Santa Barbara: Foundation for National Progress, 1981), p. 169; “The Way the City Voted,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 8, 1979, p. 5. 18. On evictions, see, for example, Warren Hinckle, “Family Gets an Eviction Notice for Christmas,” Chronicle, December 24, 1979, p. 2; “Protest Foiled at Tenderloin Hotel,” Chronicle, February 28, 1980, p. 6. On rent control: “Rent Control Is Now Up to Feinstein,” Chronicle, April 9, 1980, p. 2; “Mayor Signs a Rent Law,” Chronicle, April 11, 1980, p. 1; “Mayor Gets Rent Control Plan,” Chronicle, June 17, 1980; “Feinstein Vetoes Tough Rent Law,” Chronicle, June 20, 1980, p. 1; “A Correct Veto by Feinstein,” editorial, San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, June 22, 1980, Section B, p. 2. 19. Brad L., “Editorial,” Damage, No. 6, May 1980, p. 4; “Target Bust,” Damage, No. 6, May 1980, p. 37. 20. Spaner interview. 21. Interview with Jello Biafra, Pranks, p. 61. 22. Joel Selvin, “A Day—and Night—for Musicians,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 27, 1980; “Pull My Strings” liner notes, Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, LP (Alternative Tentacles, 1987); Flouride interview; “SF” Damage, No. 6, May 1980, p. 35; Sadie Deeks, “Babylon by the Bay,” Damage, No. 6, May 1980, p. 36; Jello Biafra, email to author, June 11, 2014. 23. “Joel Selvin Gets Interviewed,” CREEP, No. 2, pp. 28–31. 24. “Jello Biafra,” Slash, Vol. 3, No. 5, June 1980, p. 40. 25. Flouride interview; Geza X interview. 26. “Jello Biafra,” Slash, Vol. 3, No. 5, June 1980, pp. 40–1. 27. “California Uncaged: The Dead Kennedys,” NME, October 4, 1980, p. 27. 28. Biafra interview.

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5 There’s No Way Like the American Way 1. Biafra interview; “Dead Kennedys,” Zigzag Magazine, November 1980, pp. 12–14; East Bay Ray interview; Flouride interview. 2. Vale interview; Biafra interview; Ogg, Dead Kennedys, p. 13. 3. Biafra interview; Mia d’Bruzzi, interview with author, Janury 12, 2014; Winston Smith, interview with Hooten, in Sinker, ed., We Owe You Nothing, p. 158 4. DiCicco interview. 5. DiCicco interview; Biafra interview. Biafra claims that Ray and Ted shot down the notion of Geza X producing the LP because they didn’t want to spend the money. Ray does not remember that conversation, “but I don’t know how we could have afforded him, our budget was so small.” Geza thinks it may have been both financial considerations and that Ted did not like some of the things Geza did when recording his drums on “Holiday in Cambodia,” including taping a wallet to his snare to dull the sound a bit; East Bay Ray, email to author, August 6, 2014; Geza X interview. 6. DiCicco interview; Sampson interview, January 12, 2013. 7. Two insightful analyses of the scene at this time are Brad Lapin, “End of Year Editorial Message,” editorial, Damage, No. 4, January 1980, p. 30; Mickey Creep, “CREEP 5,” editorial, CREEP, No. 5, p. 3; Mickey Creep, “Western Fraud” by Mickey Creep, CREEP, No. 5, p. 4. 8. “Jello Biafra,” Slash, Vol. 3, No. 5, June 1980, pp. 40–1; Biafra interview. 9. Biafra interview; “Devo? Part Two,” Search & Destroy, No. 3 (1977), p. 17; “Jello Biafra,” Slash, pp. 40–1. 10. “What Will Happen if You do Not Register for the Draft?” Ripper, No. 8, p. 8; “Resist the Draft: Refuse to Register!” Ripper, No. 8, p. 5; “Violence: use & abuse,” by Mickee McCarthee (Mickey Sampson), Creep, No. 2, p. 9. See also, “The 1980 Draft Registration,” Damage, No. 10, November 1980, p. 31. 11. Biafra interview. 12. “Jello Biafra,” Slash, pp. 40–1. 149

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13. Biafra interview; Biafra, “Creative Crime for the Sober Seventies,” Damage, No. 1, July 1979, p. 29; Jello Biafra, interview with V. Vale, Incredibly Strange Music: Volume II (SF: RE/Search Publications 1994), p. 10. 14. Biafra interview; Sampson interview, January 12, 2013. 15. East Bay Ray, email to author, August 6, 2014; Biafra says Ray is wrong about “Your Emotions” being about someone in the band. He says they first started playing it at the band’s fourth or fifth rehearsal, too early to have had someone working with them; Biafra phone interview; Flouride interview. 16. “Dead Kennedys,” Zigzag, November 1980, pp. 12–14. 17. The Sounds of Sunshine settled out of court for a few thousand dollars. 18. Biafra interview. 19. Biafra interview. 20. Biafra interview; Winston Smith, interview with author, May 29, 2013. 21. Smith interview; Winston Smith, interview with Josh Hooten, p. 156. 22. Smith interview with Hooten, p. 159; Smith interview. 23. “California Uncaged: The Dead Kennedys,” NME, October 4, 1980, p. 28; “Dead Kennedys,” Zigzag, November 1980, pp. 12–14; “Tearing a Stripe Off the Scar Mangled Banner,” NME, October 17, 1981, pp. 19–20. 24. Doug Simmons, Review of FFRV, New York Rocker, December 1980, p. 34. 25. Patterson interview; d’Bruzzi interview; Ray interview; Sampson interview, January 12, 2013. 26. Flouride interview; Biafra interview. 27. Watt interview; Ray interview; d’Bruzzi interview. 28. “Biafra: Here’s the Beef: An Interview with Suzanne Stefanac,” Another Room, Vol. 3, No. 8; Review of Fresh Fruit, Ripper, No. 4, p. 32; Watt interview.

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29. Patrick Albino, “A Substitute for Jello,” letter to the editor, New York Rocker, September 1981, p. 4; on accusations of preachiness, see comments from Steve DePace and James Angus Black in Boulware and Tudor, Gimme Something Better. 30. “Twisted Tales,” Sounds, October 2, 1982, p. 13; “Biafra: Here’s the Beef.” 31. Gimme Something Better, pp. 86, 87; Lazarus interview. 32. “California Uncaged: The Dead Kennedys,” NME, October 4, 1980, p. 27.

151

152

Bibliography

Author interviews Jello Biafra Mia d’Bruzzi Oliver DiCicco East Bay Ray Al Ennis Ted Falconi Klaus Flouride Craig Gray Penelope Houston Jim Keylor Brad Lapin Barry Lazarus Sadie McFarlane

Hugh Patterson Ruby Ray Joe Rees Michael Reid Mickey Sampson Winston Smith David Spaner Peter Urban V. Vale Mike Watt Jane Weems Geza X

Books Alexander, Shana. Anyone’s Daughter: The Times and Trials of Patty Hearst (New York: Viking, 1979). Bailey, Beth and David Farber, eds., America in the Seventies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004). Baker, Marilyn. Exclusive!: The Inside Story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA (New York: Macmillan, 1974).

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Baskir, Lawrence M. and Willim A. Strauss. Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation (New York: Knopf, 1978). Bell, Jonathan. California Crucible: The Forging of Modern American Liberalism (Philidelphia: Penn, 2012). Belsito, Peter and Bob Davis. California Hardcore: A History of Punk and New Wave (San Francisco: Last Gasp, 1983). Berger, Dan, ed. The Hidden 1970s: Essays in Radicalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010). Berkowitz, Edward D. Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). Boulware, Jack and Silke Tudor. Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day (New York: Penguin, 2009). Breines, Winifred. Community Organization and the New Left 1962–1968: The Great Refusal (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989). Carroll, Peter. It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: America in the 1970s (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982). Clendinen, Dudley and Adam Nagourney. Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (New York: Touchstone, 1999). Cowie, Jefferson. Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working-Class (New York: New Press, 2010). Foley, Michael Stewart. Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance during the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003). Foley, Michael Stewart. Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s (New York: Hill & Wang, 2013). Gilderbloom, John I., et al. Rent Control: A Source Book, 3rd ed. (Santa Barbara: Foundation for National Progress, 1981). Graebner, William. Patty’s Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Hall, Simon. American Patriotism, American Protest: Social Movements since the Sixties (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Hearst, Patricia Campbell. Every Secret Thing (New York: Doubleday, 1981). Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979). Hinckle, Warren. Gayslayer! The Story of How Dan White Killed Harvey Milk and George Moscone and Got Away with Murder (Virginia City : Silver Dollar Books, 1985).

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Hodgson, Godfrey. More Equal than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). Jenkins, Philip. Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Kuttner, Robert. Revolt of the Haves: Tax Rebellions and Hard Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980). Langer, Susanne K. Feeling and Form (London: Routledge, 1953). Lorenz, J. D. Jerry Brown: The Man on the White Horse (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976). Lynskey, Dorian. 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs (New York: Faber & Faber, 2010). MacLeod, Dewar. Kids of the Black Hole: Punk Rock in Postsuburban California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010). Ogg, Alex. Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, The Early Years (Oakland: PM Press, 2014). Patterson, James. Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of a Nation (New York: Scribner, 2008). Perlstein, Rick. The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014). Rubin, Jerry. Do It! Scenarios of the Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970). Rubin, Jerry. Growing (Up) at 37 (New York: Evans, 1976). Sandbrook, Dominic. Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right (New York: Knopf, 2011). Schulman, Bruce. The Seventies: the Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Da Capo, 2001). Schulman, Bruce and Julian Zelizer, Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008). Self, Robert O. All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy since the 1960s (Hill & Wang, 2012). Self, Robert O. American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). Shilts, Randy. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (New York: St. Martin’s, 1982).

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Stein, Judith. Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Street, John. Music and Politics (Cambridge, Polity, 2012). Talbot, David. Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love (New York: Free Press, 2012). Turcotte, Bryan Ray and Christopher T. Miller. Fucked Up and Photocopied: Instant Art of the Punk Rock Movement (Corte Madera: Gingko Press, 1999). Wilentz, Sean. The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008 (New York: Harper Collins, 2008). Willis, Paul. Profane Culture (London: Routlege, 1978).

Articles, Chapters, Reviews “A Bloody Protest at City Hall,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 1979, p. 1. “A Correct Veto by Feinstein,” Editorial. San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, June 22, 1980, Section B, p. 2. Albino, Patrick. “A Substitute for Jello,” letter to the editor, New York Rocker, September 1981, p. 4. “Anatomy of a Gay Riot,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 23, 1979, p. 1. “A Noisy Clash at Eviction in Japantown,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 1979, p. 2. Atlas, John and Peter Dreier. “The Tenants’ Movement and American Politics,” in Rachel G. Bratt, Chester Hartman, and Ann Meyerson, eds., Critical Perspectives on Housing (Philadelphia: Temple 1986). “Biafra!” Punk Globe. Biafra, Jello. “Creative Crime for the Sober Seventies,” Damage, No. 1, July 1979, p. 29. Biafra, Jello. “In the Center of a Crumbling Empire,” Damage, No. 2, August/September 1979. “Biafra: 6,591 votes (3%)!!” Damage, January 1980, p. 18. Biafra, Jello. Interview with V. Vale, Incredibly Strange Music: Volume II (San Francisco: RE/Search Publications, 1994). Biafra, Jello. “Make No Mistake, the 70s Sucked,” in Bryan Ray Turcotte and

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Christopher T. Miller, Fucked Up and Photocopied: Instant Art of the Punk Rock Movement (Corte Madera: Gingko Press, 1999), p. 8. “Biafra: Here’s the Beef: An Interview with Suzanne Stefanac,” Another Room, Vol. 3, No. 8. Caen, Herb. “Gray Day,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 1978, p. 27. “California Über Alles” b/w “Man with the Dogs,” Review. New York Rocker, No. 23, October 1979, p. 13. “California Über Alles” b/w “Man with the Dogs,” Review. Slash, Vol 2, No. 9, October 1979. “California Uncaged: The Dead Kennedys,” NME, 4 October 1980. “City Officials Shocked by the Verdict,” Chronicle, 22 May 1979, p. 1. Coyote, Ginger. “Local Newz: SF,” Damage, July 1979, p. 29. Creep, Mickey. “CREEP 5,” editorial, CREEP, No. 5, p. 3. Creep, Mickey. “Western Fraud,” CREEP, No. 5, p. 4. “Crowd Marks International Hotel Eviction,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 1978. “Dead Kennedys,” Search & Destroy, No. 9, 1978, pp. 3–5. “Dead Kennedys,” Slash, Vol. 2, No. 4, March 1979. “Dead Kennedys: Disease with a Bullet,” Sounds, November 3, 1979, p. 11. “Dead Kennedys,” Zigzag, November 1980, pp. 12–14. “Dead Kennedys,” Catazine, No. 2, 1985. “The Decision on Chief Gain,” Editorial. San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 1979, p. 42. Deeks, Sadie. “Babylon by the Bay,” Damage, No. 6, May 1980, p. 36. “Devo? Part Two,” Search & Destroy, No. 3, 1977. “Dirk Talks,” Damage, No. 1, July 1979, pp. 8–9. Dolan, Jill. “Performance, Utopia, and the ‘Utopian Performative,’ ” Theatre Journal, 53, 2001, pp. 457–60. Dreier, Peter. “The Politics of Rent Control,” in John Gilderbloom et al., Rent Control: A Source Book, 3rd ed. (Santa Barbara: Foundation for National Progress, 1981), p. 169. “An Eclectic Bunch of Mayoral Also-Rans” San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, 1979, p. 5. Everleigh, Jonathan. “San Francisco News,” New York Rocker, No. 28, February–March 1980, p. 31. “Feinstein’s Decision Draws Fire,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 1979 p. 1.

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“Feinstein Vetoes Tough Rent Law,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 20, 1980, p. 1. Foley, Michael Stewart. “A Politics of Empathy: Johnny Cash, the Vietnam War, and the ‘Walking Contradiction’ Myth Dismantled,” Popular Music and Society, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 2014, pp. 338–59. Foster, Richard. “Keypone: The ‘Flour’ Factory,” Richmond Magazine, July 2005. “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables,” Review. Ripper, No. 4, p. 32. Goldberg, Michael. “Life During Showtime,” New York Rocker, No. 25, December 1979–January 1980. Goldberg, Michael. “SF News,” New York Rocker, Vol. 1, No. 16, January 1979, p. 58. Goldberg, Michael. “San Francisco,” New York Rocker, No. 19, June–July 1979, p. 39. Goldberg, Michael. “San Francisco,” New York Rocker, No. 20, July 1979, p. 38. Happy Geek, “SF News,” New York Rocker, Vol. 1, No. 15, November 1978, p. 44. Hartman, Chester. “Landlord Money Defeats Rent Control in San Francisco,” in John Gilderbloom, et al., Rent Control: A Source Book, 3rd ed. (Santa Barbara: Foundation for National Progress, 1981). Hinckle, Warren. “A Man Running for Bad Guy,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 6, 1979, p. 2. Hinckle, Warren. “Family Gets an Eviction Notice for Christmas,” Chronicle, December 24, 1979, p. 2. Hines, Caitlin. “San Francisco: Summer ’79,” Slash, Vol. 2, No. 8, September 1979, p. 8. Hines, Caitlin. “San Francisco: Summer ’79,” Slash, Vol. 2, No. 9, October 1979, p. 12. Hines, Caitlin. “San Francisco: The Absurd Courts the Vulgar,” Slash, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1980, p. 10. Hines, Caitlin. “San Francisco: ’79/80,” Slash, Vol. 3, No. 1, January–February 1980, p. 9. “It’s Voluntary Manslaughter,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 1979, p. 1. “Jello Biafra,” Slash, Vol. 3, No. 5, June 1980, p. 40. “Joel Selvin Gets Interviewed,” CREEP, No. 2, pp. 28–31. “Kennedys: Better Dead than Ted,” NME, December 15, 1979, p. 21.

158

B I B L IO G R A P H Y

“Kopp vs. Feinstein on the Key Issues,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 29, 1979, pp. 1, 6. L., Brad. “Editorial,” Damage, No. 6, May 1980, p. 4. L., Brad. “Editorial,” Damage, No. 9, September/October 1980. L., Brad. “End of Year Editorial Message,” Damage, No. 4, January 1980, p. 30. “Lowell Students Demonstrate,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 1979, p. 4. “The Making of a Housing Crunch,” California Living Magazine, February 10, 1980, pp. 12–17. “Mayor Asks Gain to Quit,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 1979, p. 1. “Mayor Gets Rent Control Plan,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 17, 1980. “The Mayor’s Night Under Siege,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 23, 1979, p. 1. “Mayor Signs a Rent Law,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 11, 1980, p. 1. McCarthee, Mickee. “Violence: use & abuse,” CREEP, No. 2, p. 9. McCarthy, Mickey. “No Apologies,” CREEP, No. 1, pp. 3–4. “Moscone, Milk Slain,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 1978, p. 1. “The 1980 Draft Registration,” Damage, No. 10, November 1980, p. 31. Ordway, Nico. “Politics of Punk,” Search & Destroy, No. 10, p. 22. “Peppy S.F. Rally to Fight School Cuts,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1979, p. 4. “Permit Board Ends Efforts to Save International Hotel,” Chronicle, January 9, 1979, p. 5. Pheno, Ral. “The Rock Bloc,” Letter to editor. San Francisco Chronicle 12 Nov 1979 “POA Wants Gain to Quit – He Says No,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 13, 1979, p. 2. “The POA Vote On Chief Gain,” Editorial. San Francisco Chronicle, June 13, 1979, p. 58. “The Pope of Punk,” San Francisco Examiner, July 27, 1980, Scene p. 1. “Protest Foiled at Tenderloin Hotel,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 28, 1980, p. 6. “Rent Control Is Now Up to Feinstein,” Chronicle, April 9, 1980, p. 2. “Resist the Draft: Refuse to Register!” Ripper, No. 8, p. 5. Selvin, Joel. “The Sex Pistols—Punks and Musicians,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 16, 1978.

159

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Selvin, Joel. “The Audience Came Curious But Many Left Convinced,” San Francisco Chronicle, Janaury 22, 1978, p. WOR 59. Selvin, Joel. “A Day—and Night—for Musicians,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 27, 1980; “SF” Damage, No. 6, May 1980, p. 35. Simmons, Doug. “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables,” Review. New York Rocker, December 1980, p. 34. Solnit, Rebecca. “Rattlesnake in the Mailbox: The Great Unraveling (and a Little Braiding Together),” in Lisa Gabrielle Mark and Paul Schimmel, eds., Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–1981 (New York: Prestel, 2011). Stiles, Kristine. “Negative Affirmative: San Francisco Bay Art, 1974–1981,” in Lisa Gabrielle Mark and Paul Schimmel, eds., Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–1981 (New York: Prestell, 2011). “Stunned Silence in San Francisco,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 1978. Street, Joe. “Dirty Harry’s San Francisco,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 1–21. “Target Bust,” Damage, No. 6, May 1980, p. 37. “Tearing a Stripe Off the Scar Mangled Banner,” NME, October 17, 1981, p. 19. Torchia, Joseph. “Go Punk Yourself!” San Francisco Chronicle, January 24, 1978, p. 12. “Twisted Tales,” Sounds, October 2, 1982, p. 13. “2 Dead Kennedys Already,” CREEP, No. 3, p. 9. “2 Guards Tell How Security Failed,” San Francisco Chronicle, Novermber 28, 1978. Vale, V. “Interview with Jello Biafra,” Pranks (San Francisco: RE/Search, 1987). Wasserman, John. “How I Got Punked On by the Sex Pistols,” Chronicle, January 16, 1978, p. 2. “The Way the City Voted,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 8, 1979, p. 5. “What Will Happen if You do Not Register for the Draft?” Ripper, No. 8, p. 8. Willard, Michael Nevin. “Cutback: Skate and Punk at the Far End of the American Century,” in Beth Bailey and David Farber, eds., America in the Seventies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).

160

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“Winston Smith,” interview with Josh Hooten, in Daniel Sinker, ed., We Owe You Nothing—Punk Planet: the Collected Interviews (New York: Akashic Books, 2001, p. 161).

Audio Recordings and Film Biafra, Jello. “Eric Meets the Moose Diarrhea Salesman,” Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police, CD (Alternative Tentacles, 1994). Biafra, Jello. “Running for Mayor,” I Blow Minds for a Living, LP (Alternative Tentacles, 1988). Epstein, Rob, dir., The Times of Harvey Milk, DVD (Criterion, 2011). Fresh Fruit for Rotting Eyeballs, DVD (Cherry Red, 2003). “Pull My Strings” liner notes, Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, LP (Alternative Tentacles, 1987).

161

162

Index of Song and Record Titles

This index includes all songs and records mentioned in the text (i.e., not only Dead Kennedys titles) “Bleed for Me,” 127 “California Über Alles,” 42, 57–9, 98, 100, 105, 110, 113, 116, 119, 129 “The Call Up,” 115 “Chemical Warfare,” 117, 120, 128 “Dance of the Laughing Death Angel,” 48 “Do You Feel Like I Do?” 25 “Dreadlocks of the Suburbs,” 51, 106–7 “Drug Me,” 116–17, 120, 128 Feeding of the 5000 (EP), 123 “Forward to Death,” 48, 113, 114, 118–19, 120 “Funland at the Beach,” 50, 118, 126 “Gacy’s Place,” 40 “Gaslight,” 48 Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death (LP), 100 “Halloween,” 107, 127 “Helter Skelter,” 118

“Hillside Strangler,” 40 “Holiday in Cambodia,” 46, 47, 83, 104–6, 108, 113–14, 116, 117, 120, 129 Hotel California, 6 I Blow Minds for a Living (LP), 88 “I Fought the Law,” 107 “I Kill Children,” 41, 50, 118, 126 “Ill in the Head,” 48, 118–19, 120 In God We Trust (EP), 50 “I Wanna Be Sedated,” 116 “I Wanna Jam with Son of Sam,” 40 “Johnny Too Bad,” 57 “Kepone Factory,” 50, 127 “Kidnap,” 51, 57, 65 “Kill the Poor,” 114–15 “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” 84, 114, 116, 117, 119, 120 “Lonely is the Night,” 29 “Man with the Dogs,” 50, 59 “Mercenaries,” 115 “Moon Over Marin,” 127

163

INDEX OF SONG AND RECORD TITLES

“My Sharona,” 101, 103 Plastic Surgery Disasters (LP), 32–3, 106, 107, 128 “Police Truck,” 107–8, 116–17, 119 “Psycho Killer,” 40 “Pull My Strings,” 101–3, 104, 108 “Religious Vomit,” 47 “Riot,” 32–3 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (LP), 123 “Short Songs,” 48 “Son of Sam,” 40 Stations of the Crass (LP), 123

“Stealing People’s Mail,” 117, 120 “Straight A’s,” 48 “The Stroke,” 29 “Terminal Preppie,” 106–7 “Too Drunk to Fuck,” 50 Tommy (LP), 123 “Viva Las Vegas,” 119 “We Got the Neutron Bomb,” 114 “When Ya Get Drafted,” 22, 114, 115–16 “Your Emotions,” 113, 118–19, 150n15

164

Main Index

Abalone Alliance, 44 Aerosmith, 30 Alley Cats, 91 Amboy Dukes, 29 Amin, Idi, 125 Aquarius Records, 45 Albino, Patrick, 129 Alexander, Dave, 105 Alioto, Joseph, 65 antiwar movement, 18 Aquino, Ness, 74 Arneson, Robert, 52 Avengers, 4, 10, 15, 46, 71, 74, 110

Beats, 56, 61, 62, 63, 124 Beck, Jeff, 55 Berkowitz, David, 39, 40 Biafra, Jello, 4, 7, 8, 13, 29–30, 31, 35, 69–70, 128, 129 college career, 45–6 critics, 129–30 and Dead Kennedys name, 4, 46–7 and DK origins, 45–9 early life, 19–26 Fresh Fruit collage, 123–5 gallows humor, 50, 52, 83, 85–6, 87, 94, 125, 142n19 mayoral campaign, 87–95, 108 performance style, 54, 56, 82, 83, 86–7 and Sixties, 14, 15, 38, 62 song lyrics, 41, 50–52, 56, 58–9, 82–3, 105–7, 108, 115, 116–18, 129, 131 stage name, 49 views of American public, 4–5, 58, 105–6, 116

Bachman Turner Overdrive, 140 Bagel, 74 Bags, 91, 110 Barbagelata, John, 65 Basie, Count, 31, 32 Bators, Stiv, 54 Bammies, 98, 100–3 Bay Area Music (BAM), 45 Bay Area Music Awards (see Bammies) Beatles, 118, 123

165

MAIN INDEX

Yippie style, 52, 80, 83, 85–6, 94–5 Billionaires for Bush, 24 Black, James Angus, 151n29 Black Flag, 10, 91 Black, Jack, 25 Black Power, 38, 62, 70 Black Randy and the Metrosquad, 40 Blue Cheer, 57 Blum, Richard, 79 Bomp Records, 126 Boone, Debbie, 51 Boone, Pat, 27 Boston (band), 29 Boucher, Eric (see Biafra, Jello) Boucher, Stanley, 20–1 Boucher, Virginia, 20–1 Briggs, John, 41, 43 Briggs Initiative, 2, 41, 43–4, 70, 71 Britt, Harry, 96–7 Broadway Hotel, 74 Bruce, Lenny, 24 Bromberg, David, 100 Brown, Gov. Jerry, 4, 8, 50, 127, 130, 141n6 and California Uber Alles, 57–9 unprincipled, 41–4 Brown, Gov. Pat, 41 Bryant, Anita, 43 Buffett, Jimmy, 26 Bundy, Ted, 39 Burroughs, William S., 110, 124

California Apartment Association, 95 California College of Art, 16 Capote, Truman, 39 Captain Beefheart, 48 Carter, Amy, 51 Carter, Jimmy, 16, 109, 115 Cash, Johnny, 10 CBGBs, 1, 3 Chain Gang, 40 Chick, Jack T., 47, 118 Chaplin, Charlie, 24 Charles, Ray, 27, 68 Chase, Richard, 40 Chavez, Cesar, 41 Cherry Creek Country Club, 117, 121 Cherry Red Records, 4, 105, 110 Chicago 7 trial, 22, 23 City Lights Bookstore, 61 civil rights movement, 18, 26, 27, 32–3 Clash, 10, 77, 92, 115, 129 Cold War, 17, 38 Conner, Bruce, 68, 124, records DKs, 56–7 Cooper, Alice, 107 Coppola, Francis Ford, 100, 103 Coyote, Ginger, 88, 91 Cramps, 91 Crash, Darby, 54, 56, 82 Crass, 80, 123 CREEP, 68, 75–6, 103–4 Creep, Mickey (see Sampson, Mickey) Crime (band), 4, 44, 68 Cronkite, Walter, 41

Cadona, Carlos (see 6025) Caen, Herb, 72, 73

166

MAIN INDEX

Dada, 124 Damage, 18, 35, 68, 70, 85, 89, 93, 117 Davenport, John, 88, 91 Davis, Angela, 115 d’Bruzzi, Mia, 111, 127 Dead Kennedys, audience, 80–2, 86–7, 128–30 Bammies prank, 98–103, 108 band name, 4, 46–7 first east coast tour, 86–7, 97 first gig, 42, 49–50 as “gateway drug,” 10 models of professionalism, 110–11 November 22nd gigs, 73, 97–8 origins, 34, 37, 45–6 pranks, 24 in recording studio, 56, 57, 104–6, 110–12 and utopian performative, 7, 80–2 and Yippie tradition, 7, 98–103 Deaf Club, 4, 57, 78, 80, 97, 100 Deeks, Sadie, 78 DePace, Steve, 151n29 Detroit riots, 22, 27–8 Devo, 30, 56, 114 Diablo Canyon, 44 DiCicco, Oliver, 67–8, 111–12 Different Fur Studios, 56 Diggers, 62 Dils, 4, 10, 19, 52, 71, 80, 103, 110 Dirksen, Dirk, 47, 73, 78, 88, 119 background, 68–9 critics of, 69 Dirksen, Sen. Everett, 68

Do It! (Rubin), 95 Dolan, Jill, 80 Domino, Fats, 27 Doors, 68 Dowd, Gerald, 79 Dundee, Scotland, 4 Du Plenty, Tomata, 56 Dylan, Bob, 100 Eagles, 25, 26, 29 Eames, Charles and Ray, 31 East Bay Ray, 7, 8, 18, 54, 98, 110, 113, 119, 149n5, 150n5 Bammies prank, 100–3 and DK origins, 45–9 early life, 30–4 guitar sound, 54–6, 106 stage name, 45 1839 Geary (see Temple Beautiful) Ellington, Duke, 31 Ennis, Al, 16, 18, 40, 50, 69 EST, 58 Fairey, Shepard, 125 Falconi, Ted, 16, 18, 94 Fast Products, 110 Feederz, 91 Feinstein, Dianne, 8, 41, 61, 65, 73–4, 96 landlord, 73, 79, 84, 96 mayoral campaign (1979), 87, 91, 92–3 real estate developers, 73, 79, 84, 104 SFPD, 74, 77–8, 79, 97 White night riot, 75–6

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MAIN INDEX

feminism, 18, 33 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, 68 Fillmore Auditorium, 91 Firefall, 26 Flipper, 16, 46, 94 Flouride, Klaus, 4, 18, 45, 52, 56, 84, 106, 113, 119, 121, 127–8 Bammies prank, 100–3 and Biafra’s mayoral campaign, 88, 93 and DK origins, 45–9 early life, 26–31 stage name, 49 Ford, Gerald, 16, 39 Frampton, Peter, 25 Frazier, John Linley, 39 Free Speech Movement, 126 Freeway killers, 40 Frightwig, 111 Fromme, Lynette “Squeaky,” 39n F-Word (band), 40

Gibbs, Georgia, 27 Ginsberg, Allen, 68 Gleason, Patrick, 56 Gold Brothers, 29 Goldwater, Barry, 38 Gore, Tipper, 118 Graham, Bill, 92, 100, 101, 103 Grand Ole Opry, 33–4, 121 Greenway, John, 57, 114, 122 Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, 63 Hanrahan, Robert, 78 Hartung, John, 30 Hartung, Priscilla, 30 Hearst, Patty, 51, 64–5 Hearst, Randolph, 64–5 Heartfield, John, 124, 125 Hell, Richard, 14 High Fidelity (film), 25 Hillside Strangler, 40 Hinckle, Warren, 75, 79, 97 hippies, 13, 14, 18–19, 23, 38 Hoffman, Abbie, 23–4, 35, 85 Hollywood Squares (band), 40 Holocaust, 120 Hongisto, Richard, 79n Hopkins, Lighting, 32 Hotel Argyle, 79 Hotel Carlton, 79 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 63 housing battles over, 66–7, 71, 77–8, 79, 95–7 policy, 66, 90 Houston, Penelope, 15, 16, 70

Gacy, John Wayne, 39, 126 Gain, Charles, 74, 78 Gang of Four, 110 Gann, Paul, 42 Garcia, Jerry, 63, 100 Gay Community Center (see 330 Grove) gay rights movement, 18, 43–4, 62, 70 Genocide, Johnny (see Patterson, Hugh) Germs, 54, 110 Geza X (see X, Geza)

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MAIN INDEX

Howard, Lee, 33 Huckleberry House, 63 Human League, 110 International Hotel, 66–7, 77

Kraftwerk, 49 Kristallnacht, 120 Langer, Susanne, 6 Lapin, Brad, 18, 35, 68, 70, 85, 88, 92, 93, 97, 110 Lasch, Christopher, 19 Lazarus, Barry, 82, 130 League of Women Voters, 32 Lefferdink, Mrs., 22, 25 Leila and the Snakes, 34 Les Nickelettes, 68 Lewis, Jerry Lee, 29 Liars, 54 Life, 124 Little Richard, 27, 29 Loma Linda (venue), 78 Loobkoff, Sergie, 130 Lorenz, J.D., 41–2, 58 Louisiana Hayride, 121 Lyall, Geoffrey (see Klaus Flouride) Lynyrd Skynyrd, 130

Iron Butterfly, 68 Jarvis, Howard, 41, 42, 141n6 Jefferson Starship, 45 Jenkins, Philip, 2 John, Olivia Newton, 130 Jones, Cleve, 75 Jones, Rev. Jim, 2, 3, 8, 71 Jonestown, 2, 71, 72, 73 Journey, 29, 100 Kemper, Edmund, 39 Kennedy, John F., 4, 32, 86 assassination, 15, 20, 26, 32, 73 Kennedy, Robert, 4, 15 assassination, 39 Kennedy, Ted, 125 Kent State shootings, 22 Kernohan, Dennis, 54 Keylor, Jim, 46, 57 Kezar Pavilion, 92 KGB (band), 74 Kihn, Greg, 100 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 15, 27, 32–3 Kirk, Rahsaan Roland, 10 KMEL radio, 100, 101 Knack, 98, 101, 103, 104 Kopechne, Mary Jo, 125 Kopp, Quentin, 65, 87, 91, 92, 93

Mabuhay Gardens, 3, 4, 7, 8, 34, 45–6, 47, 57, 100 benefit concerts, 43–4, 70 earliest punk shows, 68–9 first DK gig, 49–50 audience perspective, 69–70, 80 police harassment, 74, 78 Magic Terry & the Universe, 29 Mahal, Taj, 100 Mailman, 47, 48 Manson, Charles, 39, 118 Marcus, Greil, 5–6 Marley, Bob, 129

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MAIN INDEX

Marr, John, 54 Maximum Rock & Roll, 16, 40, 54, 69 Max’s Kansas City, 86 MC5, 25, 29 McNay, Iain, 110 Meatloaf, 98 Mekons, 110 Mentally Ill, 40 Mesa, Eddie, 3 Milk, Harvey, 2, 45, 96 Briggs Initiative, 43–4 murder, 72, 73, 75 Minutemen, 25 Mr. T Experience, 130 Mitchell Brothers, 97 Mobius Music, 111–12 Monday, Mary, 68 Money, Eddie, 100, 103 Montana, Joe, 100 Montrose, Ronnie, 100 Moonies, 58 Moore, Sara Jane, 39n Morrison, Van, 100 Moscone, George, 2, 66 and Dan White, 71–2 murder, 72, 73, 75 and SFPD, 74, 75, 78 Mullin, Herbert, 39 Munch, Edvard, 125 Murphy, Cornelius, 97 Mutants, 4, 71, 74, 98

Newhall, Scott, 63 New Left, 7, 62, 81, 95, 119–20 New Musical Express (NME), 126, 131 New World Liberation Front (NWLF), 64, 65 New York Rocker, 59, 92, 126, 129 Nixon, Richard, 16, 51, 91 No Alternative (band), 94 No Nukes, 44 Norm, 112 nuclear power, 44, 114, 125–6 Nuns, 4, 68, 71, 110 Offs, 44, 49, 54, 57, 110 Ogg, Alex, 110 Old Waldorf, 54 Onion, 24 Osmond, Donny and Marie, 51–2 Oswald, Lee Harvey, 15, 20, 26 Oxford Circle, 57 Page, Jimmy, 55 Painted Bird (Kosinski), 28 Parents Music Resource Council (PMRC), 118 Patterson, Hugh, 94 Pearl Harbor and the Explosions, 100 Peck, Gregory, 31 Penick, Kathy (Chi Chi), 89 People’s Temple, 2, 71, 91 Pepperell, Ray (see East Bay Ray) Pere Ubu, 88 Perlstein, Rick, 5 Perry, Steve, 100

Naropa Institute, 50 Negative Trend, 4, 10, 46, 54, 56, 71, 80, 82, 110, 115

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MAIN INDEX

Pier 39, 73, 90 Plate, Peter, 77 Police (SFPD), 65–6, 67, 87, 96, 120–1 harass punks, 74, 75–6, 78, 97 and Dan White, 75 White Night riot, 76–7 Port Huron Statement, 81 Portman, Frank, 130 Potter, Paul, 81 Pratt, Geronimo, 70 Presley, Elvis, 29, 33, 119 Proposition R, 90, 95–7 Proposition 13, 2, 42–3, 71, 79, 90–1, 141n6 Public Enema, 82, 130 Punk benefit concerts, 70 demographics, 14–15, 18–19 hardcore, 1, 8, 128 and housing battles, 67 as political subculture, 5–6, 8, 70–1 San Francisco infrastructure, 68 and serial killer fascination, 40–1 and the Sixties, 13–14, 19, 33, 34, 127 in San Francisco, 61–3 and utopia, 80–1 White Night riot, 75–7 Punk Globe, 88, 91 Pussy Riot, 7 Putin, Vladimir, 7

Ra, Sun, 73 Ramones, 1, 29–30, 116 Rat (venue), 86 Ray, Ruby, 18, 59, 94, 127 Readymades, 44 Reagan, Ronald, 38, 42, 44, 104, 125 Red Army Faction, 51, 117 Red Brigades, 51, 85, 117 Rees, Joe, 16, 18, 47, 82, 88, 101, 124 Reid, Michael, 47, 77, 81–2, 93–4 Rezabeck, Rozz, 54, 56, 82 Rhodesia, 17 Ripper, 128 Rockefeller, Nelson, 125 Rocky Mountain Arsenal, 117 Rolling Stone, 45 Rolling Stones, 32 Rollins, Henry 14 Rotten, Johnny, 17, 49 Rubin, Jerry, 23–4, 35, 85, 87, 95, 98 Ruby, Jack, 20 Ryan, Rep. Leo, 71 Samiam, 130 Sampson, Mickey, 46–7, 68, 70, 88, 93, 103–4, 109, 112, 127 on White Night riot, 75–6, 77–8 San Franciscans for Affordable Housing (SFAH), 95–6 San Francisco Art Institute, 74 San Francisco Chronicle, 63–4, 72, 76, 87, 92, 93, 96 San Francisco Examiner, 69, 75, 79, 92, 120 Santana, Carlos, 45, 100, 103

Question 6 (see Briggs Initiative)

171

MAIN INDEX

Savoy Tivoli, 57 Schaer, Roland, 80 Schlesinger, Bruce (see Ted) Schulman, Bruce, 5 Scott, David, 87, 93 Screamers, 47, 56, 110 Search & Destroy, 8, 18, 30, 47, 50, 51, 56, 58, 59, 68, 114 Seeger, Pete, 31 Self, Robert, 32 Selvin, Joel, 63, 103–4 serial killers, 39–41, 45, 50, 122 Sex Pistols, 34, 46, 47, 63–4 Shatter, Will, 46 Shearing, George, 68 Silver, Carol Ruth, 75, 76 Sirhan, Sirhan, 39 6025, 47–9, 119 Skaggs, Boz, 100, 103 Slash, 6, 59, 85, 104, 114, 116 Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut), 28 Sleepers, 110 Smith, Patti, 1 Smith, Steve, 103 Smith, Winston, 9–10, 111, 121, background, 123 Fresh Fruit collage, 124–6 Smokey and the Miracles, 27 Solnit, Rebecca, 14, 35, 37 Son of Sam (see Berkowitz, David) Sounds of Sunshine, 121 Spaner, David, 24, 83–4, 95, 98 Sparks, 117 Squier, Billy, 29 Squier, Billy, 104 Stiles, Kristine, 62, 68

Stooges, 25, 29 Straight People’s Theater, 68 Strummer, Joe, 18 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 19, 81 Styx, 29 Subhumans, 24, 95 Sunol Valley Golf Club, 91 Supremes, 68 Swift, Jonathan, 114 Symbionese Liberation Army, 51, 64–5 Talbot, David, 61, 63, 67 Talking Heads, 1, 40 Target, Joe (see Rees, Joe) Target Video, 47, 82, 89, 97, 113, 124 Ted, 7–8, 47, 49, 88, 103, 149n5 Television, 1 Temple Beautiful, 4, 91, 122 Tewksbury Studios, 105 Thatcher, Margaret, 96 Thomas, David, 88 Three Mile Island, 44n 330 Grove (venue), 54, 78 Tower of Power, 29 Trade-a-Tape and Records, 25 Travolta, John, 51 Urban, Peter, 19, 94 utopian performative, 7, 9, 80–2, 101–3, 128 UXA, 4, 71, 110 Vale, V., 1, 8, 18, 47, 56, 68 Vietnam War, 15, 16, 20, 81, 127

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MAIN INDEX

antiwar movement, 18, 21, 23, 28 draft, 21, 28

Will, George, 14 Winterland, 34, 63–4 Wolfe, Tom, 19 Woods, Dessie, 70

Warfield Theater, 98, 100–2 Warhol, Andy, 29 Watergate, 15, 16, 91 Watt, Mike, 25, 128 Wayne, John, 51 Weavers, 31 Weems, Jane, 48, 54 Weirdos, 34, 45, 110, 114 Western Front Festival, 91, 97, 103, 113 White, Dan, 2, 3, 71, 78, 89, 94, 107 assassinations, 71–2, 73, 75 verdict riot (see White Night riot) White Night riot, 74–7, 85, 94, 120–1 Who, 123

X (band), 110 X, Geza, 18, 47, 82–3, 112, 115, 145n5 on DK sound, 54–6 produces “Holiday in Cambodia,” 104–6 X, Malcolm, 27 Yippies, 7, 23–4, 34–5, 52, 62, 80, 81, 85, 94, 95, 98 Young, Rep. John, 34 Younger, Irving, 76, 77 Yousef, Ramzi, 313 Zappa, Frank, 25 Zigzag, 126

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174

Also available in the series

1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans Harvest by Sam Inglis The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh Abba Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli Electric Ladyland by John Perry Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott Sign ‘O’ the Times by Michaelangelo Matos The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard Let It Be by Steve Matteo Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk Aqualung by Allan Moore

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

175

OK Computer by Dai Griffiths Let It Be by Colin Meloy Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis Exile on Main Sreet by Bill Janovitz Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli Ramones by Nicholas Rombes Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno Murmur by J. Niimi Grace by Daphne Brooks Endtroducing . . . by Eliot Wilder Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese Low by Hugo Wilcken Born in the U.S.A. by Geoffrey Himes Music from Big Pink by John Niven In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper Paul’s Boutique by Dan LeRoy Doolittle by Ben Sisario

A L S O AVA I L A B L E I N T H E SE R I E S

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

There’s a Riot Goin’ On by Miles Marshall Lewis The Stone Roses by Alex Green In Utero by Gillian G. Gaar Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti Loveless by Mike McGonigal The Who Sell Out by John Dougan Bee Thousand by Marc Woodworth Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns Court and Spark by Sean Nelson Use Your Illusion Vols 1 and 2 by Eric Weisbard Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier Aja by Don Breithaupt People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor Rid of Me by Kate Schatz Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite If You’re Feeling Sinister by Scott Plagenhoef Pink Moon by Amanda Petrusich

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73.

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Let’s Talk About Love by Carl Wilson Swordfishtrombones by David Smay 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Drew Daniel Horses by Philip Shaw Master of Reality by John Darnielle Reign in Blood by D. X. Ferris Shoot Out the Lights by Hayden Childs Gentlemen by Bob Gendron Rum, Sodomy & the Lash by Jeffery T. Roesgen The Gilded Palace of Sin by Bob Proehl Pink Flag by Wilson Neate XO by Matthew LeMay Illmatic by Matthew Gasteier Radio City by Bruce Eaton One Step Beyond . . . by Terry Edwards Another Green World by Geeta Dayal Zaireeka by Mark Richardson 69 Love Songs by L. D. Beghtol Facing Future by Dan Kois It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Christopher R. Weingarten Wowee Zowee by Bryan Charles Highway to Hell by Joe Bonomo

A L S O AVA I L A B L E I N T H E SE R I E S

74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

Song Cycle by Richard Henderson Kid A by Marvin Lin Spiderland by Scott Tennent Tusk by Rob Trucks Pretty Hate Machine by Daphne Carr Chocolate and Cheese by Hank Shteamer American Recordings by Tony Tost Some Girls by Cyrus Patell You’re Living All Over Me by Nick Attfield Marquee Moon by Bryan Waterman Amazing Grace by Aaron Cohen Dummy by R. J. Wheaton Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem Histoire de Melody Nelson by Darran Anderson Flood by S. Alexander Reed and Philip Sandifer I Get Wet by Phillip Crandall Selected Ambient Works

91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.

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Volume II by Marc Weidenbaum Entertainment! by Kevin J.H. Dettmar Blank Generation by Pete Astor Donuts by Jordan Ferguson Smile by Luis Sanchez Definitely Maybe by Alex Niven Exile in Guyville by Gina Arnold My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kirk Walker Graves The Grey Album by Charles Fairchild ( ) by Ethan Hayden Dangerous by Susan Fast Tago Mago by Alan Warner Ode to Billie Joe by Tara Murtha Live Through This by Anwen Crawford Freedom of Choice by Evie Nagy

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