ewe2
10-03-2006, 02:33 AM
You're a star-belly sneech you suck like a leech
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you
Well you'll work harder with a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers 'til you starve
Then you head is skewered on a stake
Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son...
What you need, my son...
Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack
-- Holiday In Cambodia
It might have been thought that by 1980 punk was running out of steam, but the Dead Kennedys had other ideas. This debut led to Jello Biafra forming the Alternative Tentacles label (which is a major story in itself), and is the blueprint for political thrash punk. The effect on the punk scene worldwide was immediate and electric. After Fresh Fruit came out, if you couldnt jam on a DK song, you weren't in the band.
The DK taste for rockabilly runs through the album from the opener Kill The Poor to the closer Viva Las Vegas, an Elvis cover that has forever ruined the original for me, but warps it into thrashy punk. The surfer influence first appears on Let's Lynch The Landlord Now, but Californian Uber Alles is the best-known "surfer" tune, which descends into punk madness underneath politically flexible lyrics (it was revamped for the In God We Trust, Inc album as We've Got A Bigger Problem Now when Reagan became Governer). But more hardcore thrash is found on the insane Drug Me, Your Emotions, Chemical Warfare, and the much-loved I Kill Children with possibly the most disorientating riff in thrash. The album does coast through Stealing People's Mail, Funland At The Beach, Ill In The Head, but that's only a relative view considering the breakthrough nature of Fresh Fruit.
Unquestionably the masterpiece is Holiday In Cambodia, which suggests surfer influences but is really original punk with an uncompromising message for Western complacency. It probably has the best semblence of production, which for this album is a bit of a misnomer, as "production" in this sense is really just trying to make each instrument clear enough to allow the vocals some space in the mix.
The political messages of Fruit were unique for punk; it's one thing to talk about The Clash's political sensibility, quite another for an American punk band to directly take on the American cultural and political icons and so utterly trash them as the DK's do here. I don't recall The Clash being branded as "dangerous" in the same way as the DK's, although it took some time for the cultural guardians to notice their influence. Biafra pulls no punches: he sees the system as not just a production-line of death, but a net exporter of death also. Forward To Death internalizes this toxic culture, Your Emotions dismisses American individualism as a fakery:
Your school told you this
And your church told you that
Memorize this
And don't you dare look at that
Just a tape recorder
Mimicking of the bores
and the sarcasm of Viva Las Vegas should not be overlooked: a paen to a fake town that swallows fools money. They literally were lone voices on Cambodia, fascism masquerading as democracy, the control of the agenda by the military-industrial complex. These themes would be their stock in trade, their signature, and Jello Biafra was an anti-prophet for the counter-culture.
Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables isn't easy listening, but it's still as relevant and hardcore as ever, and essential listening for any punk or activist looking for the right soundtrack to dissent.
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you
Well you'll work harder with a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers 'til you starve
Then you head is skewered on a stake
Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son...
What you need, my son...
Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack
-- Holiday In Cambodia
It might have been thought that by 1980 punk was running out of steam, but the Dead Kennedys had other ideas. This debut led to Jello Biafra forming the Alternative Tentacles label (which is a major story in itself), and is the blueprint for political thrash punk. The effect on the punk scene worldwide was immediate and electric. After Fresh Fruit came out, if you couldnt jam on a DK song, you weren't in the band.
The DK taste for rockabilly runs through the album from the opener Kill The Poor to the closer Viva Las Vegas, an Elvis cover that has forever ruined the original for me, but warps it into thrashy punk. The surfer influence first appears on Let's Lynch The Landlord Now, but Californian Uber Alles is the best-known "surfer" tune, which descends into punk madness underneath politically flexible lyrics (it was revamped for the In God We Trust, Inc album as We've Got A Bigger Problem Now when Reagan became Governer). But more hardcore thrash is found on the insane Drug Me, Your Emotions, Chemical Warfare, and the much-loved I Kill Children with possibly the most disorientating riff in thrash. The album does coast through Stealing People's Mail, Funland At The Beach, Ill In The Head, but that's only a relative view considering the breakthrough nature of Fresh Fruit.
Unquestionably the masterpiece is Holiday In Cambodia, which suggests surfer influences but is really original punk with an uncompromising message for Western complacency. It probably has the best semblence of production, which for this album is a bit of a misnomer, as "production" in this sense is really just trying to make each instrument clear enough to allow the vocals some space in the mix.
The political messages of Fruit were unique for punk; it's one thing to talk about The Clash's political sensibility, quite another for an American punk band to directly take on the American cultural and political icons and so utterly trash them as the DK's do here. I don't recall The Clash being branded as "dangerous" in the same way as the DK's, although it took some time for the cultural guardians to notice their influence. Biafra pulls no punches: he sees the system as not just a production-line of death, but a net exporter of death also. Forward To Death internalizes this toxic culture, Your Emotions dismisses American individualism as a fakery:
Your school told you this
And your church told you that
Memorize this
And don't you dare look at that
Just a tape recorder
Mimicking of the bores
and the sarcasm of Viva Las Vegas should not be overlooked: a paen to a fake town that swallows fools money. They literally were lone voices on Cambodia, fascism masquerading as democracy, the control of the agenda by the military-industrial complex. These themes would be their stock in trade, their signature, and Jello Biafra was an anti-prophet for the counter-culture.
Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables isn't easy listening, but it's still as relevant and hardcore as ever, and essential listening for any punk or activist looking for the right soundtrack to dissent.