The DKs’ 1980 debut remains one of the cleverest and punkest political statements ever spouted, a rampage of landlord-lynching, mail-stealing, child-killing, and rude disparaging of California governor Jerry Brown. Frontman Jello Biafra aims his bristling sarcasm at collegiate liberals on the disturbing masterpiece “Holiday in Cambodia” while East Bay Ray’s guitar soars and dives like a jet bomber, but really, every tune here is packed tight with incisive lyrics and propulsive rhythms: Even lesser-known tunes like “Your Emotions” and “Ill in the Head” are pointed and punk as fuck. However, this reissue is no improvement on the original record. The poster has been reprinted so small as to make the lyrics unreadable. What’s worse, Biafra and the other DKs have gone to court over the band’s legacy, so Jello is not interviewed in the accompanying DVD documentary, which has some spastic live footage and a funny segment about him running for mayor of San Francisco, but is otherwise superfluous. Unlike the album it accompanies.
.Dead Kennedys
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables: Special 25th Anniversary Edition
