Archive for March 22nd, 2010:

A long time ago, when I first heard the hardcore punk group the Dead Kennedys, my initial reaction was a plural word that begins with an a and has eight letters. What was the point, I thought, of being disrespectful toward a family that had two of its members assassinated?

Later I learned it was more than a cheap publicity stunt. The lead singer was Jello Biafra (Eric Reed Boucher), whose stage name derived from mixing a sweetened gelatin brand with a place known for starvation. The band’s name, while taking advantage of the shock effect, had little to do with the Kennedy family itself and more to do with highlighting the deification of the Kennedys that emerged after the assassinations. The band saw that moment as a time when Americans began to turn inward and become more self-centered, transforming them, in Jello’s words, into “corporate-serving rodents.”

Here’s a clip of a famous Dead Kennedys song, “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” played live in San Francisco in 1980, as well as the first few lines of the lyrics.

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