Dead Kennedys live: Unannounced midnight show at the Viper Room, Hollywood, 5/7/03.
May 08 '03
The Bottom Line Don't abandon your baby.
"I'm frustrated about how many new people are going to discover Dead Kennedys through this scene and have no clue as to where we were at and can't understand why I don't want to reform the band and do a Sex Pistols' Filthy Lucre Tour. They don't understand what punk was or what it is still supposed to be."
~Jello Biafra, circa mid 1990's
Before I talk about what I witnessed last night at the Viper Room, I think a brief history lesson is probably in order. For those of you who know little to nothing about Dead Kennedys, this history is important in order to understand both my mood and reaction to seeing perhaps the most important American punk band of all time perform to a crowd of approximately one hundred people, seventeen years after they initially made the decision to stop playing live.
Bear with me on this. I'll get to the show.
A brief DK History
Jello Biafra -Vocals
East Bay Ray -Guitar
Klaus Flouride -Bass
D.H. Peligro -Drums
Dead Kennedys sprang up in the late 70's as a political response to everything that's wrong about the "me" generation. A musical rebellion against the idea that screwing over your peers to get ahead is justifiable as long as you win. If the Watergate conspiracy convinced Americans that they couldn't even trust their own president, The assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, and the explosive destruction of the idyllic American family, was perhaps the first and most undeniable hint that something was wrong. The American dream was a lie, and Dead Kennedys were looking for truth.
Dead Kennedys were by no means the first band to lash out at the problems they saw in the world around them through punk rock music. What separated them from other politically motivated bands such as Reagan Youth, MDC and Crass, was an underlying passion for creativity and individual thinking, largely due to front man Jello Biafra.
What Jello urged above all, was individual freedom through the expression of ideas. Militantly anti-drug because he saw it as a crutch that hinders ones thinking and destroys rather than creates, Jello and the Kennedys encouraged people to question the world around them and become a positive influence through change.
1986 was a big year for the band. In January of 1986, the band decided to quit performing live. They released their fifth and final studio album, Bedtime for Democracy, at the end of that year.
In June of 1986 Jello Biafra was charged by the Los Angeles City attorney's office with "distribution of harmful matter to minors". The charge stemmed from the inclusion of a poster in their 1985 album Frankenchrist. The poster, a painting by Swiss surrealist master H.R. Giger entitled Landscape No.XX: Where Are We Going? (alternately known as Penis Landscape), depicted ten erect penis's entering ten decaying orifices.
For the record, Jello has referred to the image as a statement against our bankrupt society; A society seemingly ripe with people endlessly hellbent on fucking each other.
The subsequent trial was the first obscenity trial over a record album, and the poster has since come to represent a statement for first amendment rights.
Jello Biafra was acquitted and the prosecuting attorney has since admitted that he made a mistake in pursuing the case in the first place.
The next ten years or so saw the members involved in various side projects, most of which were released through Jello Biafra's record label, Alternative Tentacles. (Before 1986, AT was jointly owned by the four band members and run by East Bay Ray.)
It is unclear exactly when relations between Jello and his former band mates began to disintegrate. Jello claims the final straw came in 1997 when he vetoed the use of one of their songs, Holiday in Cambodia, to promote Levi's jeans. The deal, reportedly, would have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Klaus Flouride and East Bay Ray have since denied ever considering the Levi's deal. Either way, the band was not on good terms by this point.
On October 29, 1998 East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride and DH Peligro filed suit in the Superior Court of the State of California for the city and county of San Francisco against Jello Biafra and Alternative Tentacles Records. They claimed to have been defrauded by Jello and alleged he failed to promote their back catalog and withheld back royalties.
I'm not going to get too detailed on this, because it's a complicated story that shifts drastically depending on who you speak to. The end result, however, is crystal clear.
In May of 2000, the jury returned special verdicts in favor of the ex-band members against Jello Biafra. They were awarded $179,284 in compensatory damages. Biafra was found guilty of "malice, oppression and fraud" and fined an additional $20,000 in punitive damages to his ex-band mates. Alternative Tentacles was no longer allowed to sell most of the DK catalog, including the five full length albums. The remaining members of the band wasted little time in reissuing the albums through Los Angeles based label Manifesto records and on September 11th, 2001 released Mutiny on the Bay, an unfortunate and sorry excuse for a live album.
In October of 2001, the band announced they would begin touring again, replacing Jello Biafra on vocals with Dr. Know's lead singer, Brandon Cruz. Professing a love for the DK songs and a devotion to the fans who haven't seen them live in sixteen years, the "current" Dead Kennedys hit the road with enthusiasm and vigor. Despite an incredibly strong and vocal resistance by fans loyal to Jello Biafra and what the Dead Kennedys once stood for, and despite getting banned outright from the most important punk clubs in their hometown of San Francisco, DK has been playing sold out shows ever since.
Dead Kennedys Live at The Viper Room, 05/07/03
I normally would not even consider paying to see the "current" Dead Kennedys, despite a heightened curiosity and a genuine passion for the music and ideals they once professed. However, this show was free and almost completely unannounced. I just couldn't pass up the chance to see for myself what this was all about, without having to support it monetarily.
I arrived outside the club with mixed feelings. First of all, I really hate seeing shows at the Viper Room. That place is a cesspool of preening actors and image hounds. I get very cynical just thinking about seeing a show there.
Second of all, I really wasn't sure what to expect. How would the remaining members acknowledge the absence of Jello Biafra? Would the playing be up to par? The singing? The theatrics? About two weeks ago, my friend Jessica and I watched my video copy of Dead Kennedys live at the On Broadway and a bootleg I have of DK at an unknown venue, and from these, the closest I had to seeing them perform in their prime, I'd discerned just how incredible and important Jello's stage presence was.
I wasn't expecting the concert to blow me away. My pre-show feelings ran the gamut from curiosity to anxious excitement to doubtful apprehension.
Inside, there was a short wait while a band I didn't like finished their set. My friend Tom and I stood up close to the stage. There were maybe two hundred people there. Tom and I passed the time making jokes about the pretentious crowd and the thought of Jack Osbourne getting swirlied by crust punks in the men's room. I looked around the room and counted more cell phones than mohawks, and took this to be a very dark omen.
The show started with an ominous pre-recorded track of rumbling music while a grind core-like voice made threatening comments about Anarchy. Tom and I looked at each other and tried not to laugh at the absolute absurdity of it. It sounded like something you'd hear standing in line for the new "anarchy" ride at Disney Land or something.
Suddenly, the curtains flew back and Dead Kennedys launched into the first of many soulless bastardizations of the songs I love.
Musically, the remaining members played a tight and accurate set. There just wasn't any life in the songs. Klaus, Ray, D.H. and the replacement-replacement singer (Brandon was out on an injury) appeared to be having quite a bit of fun up there, but that was the problem for me. These songs are supposed to mean something. The issues and themes of this music are serious and still socially relevant today, and the band I watched last night was simply playing for kicks. It really sank to my worst expectations.
And that's without even considering how old the band looked. Klaus Flouride has chalk white hair, folks. I mean, he looked cool, but he looked old. And East Bay Ray had this chicken neck thing going on.
To be fair, D.H. was looking pretty tough. He's actually aged very well.
The crowd consisted of a healthy mix of drunk idiots, curious onlookers, old fans, new fans, and the usual Viper Room denizens: inflated ego actor types and bar-goers. Many of the people were simply standing there with a noncommittal stance like I was.
The lead singer did a decent vocal job with the songs, and he knew most of the lyrics, only blanking a little during one of the last tunes. But he conveyed no sense of understanding for the meanings behind the music. He sang the lyrics to Riot like he were a kid dancing around his room in front of his mirror. Tom called him a "fucking douche-bag". (Not really all that alarming, considering Tom calls a lot of people that.)
Earlier in the evening, I'd seen a cop car with a bumper sticker that read "Don't Abandon Your Baby." I was struck by how damning a condemnation of our society it is that enough people abandon their babies to warrant the police putting stickers on their vehicles strictly forbidding it. As I watched Dead Kennedys prancing through the songs as if this were the "Happy Good Times Hour with DK", I couldn't help but think of the abandoned babies and wonder if I was witnessing further proof of the decay of Western Civilization. After all, Ozzy Osbourne is now selling Pepsi and pimping his little monster children on MTV, Jello Biafra is now business partners with Tammy Faye Baker, and here were the remaining members of Dead Kennedys and some random fucking douche-bag blissfully chugging through Viva Las Vegas while a hundred-or-so struggling actors drank on. It was awfully disconcerting.
At the end of the night, East Bay Ray was having guitar problems while the band came back for an encore, so the lead singing douche-bag tried to joke around with the audience. He cracked a comment about almost hitting one of the Backstreet Boys in his car earlier in the day. He then asked the audience if anyone could name three Backstreet Boys. Predictably, someone raised his hand and suggested "You?"
Heh.
Dead Kennedys used to mean something. If ever there was a band with an important message to convey, it was DK. Combining biting humor with social conscience and political awareness, Dead Kennedys defined the punk scene for many, and in my opinion, rose far above it. At one time, DK was as much about art as it was music.
Now, having seen DK perform live, I can confidently and without hesitation proclaim the following statement as true: "Punk's Fucking DEAD".
The final message here seems to be one of corruption and defeat. After all, if we can't trust our teachers, our parents, the cops or our president, what do we do when we realize we can no longer even trust our favorite punk band?
I propose we take a different lesson from this. Rather than throw up our hands in defeat and take a big suicidal bite from that six dollar burger from Carl's Jr., I propose we all go out and start fixing things ourselves. It's what Dead Kennedys always stood for before the bickering and pettiness, and it's probably the closest thing to truth that you're going to find, assuming that's what you're searching for.
In a society where the cops feel the need to remind people not to abandon their babies, it's obvious we have quite a bit of work to do. It's also quite obvious to me that Dead Kennedys aren't gonna fix things, so we'd better get to it.
I'd suggest we get to it right away.
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Member: Ryan Stockstad
Location: Valley Village, California
Reviews written: 77
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"True revolutionaries never bomb buildings." ~Dan Bern
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