“Forty years after it officially crash-landed in our midst, it’s easy to believe punk ‘sold out’ its lofty original ideals, not least because its leading acts all eventually signed to major labels and played ball with The Man. Yet regardless of its shortcomings, punk still had a seismic global impact during the mid-to-late 70s and its legacy can still be felt in everything from its inherent DIY ethos to its (broadly) anti-sexist stance. However, while countless revisions of this flawed – yet exhilarating – period have since been published, they nearly always fix punk as a purely transatlantic phenomenon. … This is entirely understandable, as both nations have reason to claim punk as their own. In North America, the 70s had barely dawned before New York was spawning remarkable proto-punk acts such as Suicide and New York Dolls, while across 1974-76, trailblazing US refuseniks such as Pere Ubu, Patti Smith, Ramones and Blondie were already hurling out remarkable, oeuvre-defining discs. …”
uDiscover (Audio)
Category: Dead Kennedys
“Holiday in Cambodia” / “Police Truck” – Dead Kennedys (1980)
“‘Holiday in Cambodia’ is a song by American punk rock band Dead Kennedys. The record was released as the group’s second single in May 1980 on Optional Music with ‘Police Truck‘ as its B-side. The title track was re-recorded for the band’s first album, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (1980); the original recording of the song, as well as the single’s B-side, are available on the rarities album Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death (1987). The photograph in the front cover of the single was taken from the Thammasat University massacre in Thailand, and depicts a member of the right-wing crowd beating a hanged corpse of a student protester with a metal chair. The song is an attack on a stereotypical, moralizing, privileged American college students. Its lyrics offer a satirical view of young, well-to-do and self-righteous Americans, contrasting such a lifestyle with the genocidal dictatorship of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot and his Communist Party of Kampuchea (mentioned in the lyrics), which is estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of some two million people in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The re-recording of this song that appears on Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables is different from the single version, being fifty-five seconds longer, at a higher tempo and featuring an extended, surf-influenced intro, as well as an extended bridge and guitar solo. …”
Wikipedia
Rock History 101: The Dead Kennedy’s
Genius (Audio)
YouTube: “Holiday In Cambodia”, Police Truck – (Live at DMPOs on Broadway, SF)
Urgh! A Music War (1982)
“Urgh! A Music War is a 1982 British film featuring performances by punk rock, new wave, and post-punk acts, filmed in 1980. Among the artists featured in the film are Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), Magazine, The Go-Go’s, Toyah Willcox, The Fleshtones, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, X, XTC, Devo, The Cramps, Oingo Boingo, Dead Kennedys, Gary Numan, Klaus Nomi, Wall of Voodoo, Pere Ubu, Steel Pulse, Surf Punks, 999, The Alley Cats, UB40, Echo & the Bunnymen and The Police. These were many of the most popular groups on the New Wave scene; in keeping with the spirit of the scene, the film also features several less famous acts, and one completely obscure group, Invisible Sex, in what appears to be their only public performance. …”
Wikipedia
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Urgh! A Music War 26 videos
Dead Kennedys – California Über Alles / The Man with the Dog (1979)
“‘California Über Alles’ is a song by Dead Kennedys. The single, which was the group’s first recording, was released in June 1979 on the Optional Music label, with ‘The Man with the Dogs’ appearing as its B-side. … The lyrics were written by Jello Biafra and John Greenway for their band The Healers. Biafra composed the music in one of his rare attempts at composing on bass. … The lyrics are a pointed, satirical attack on Jerry Brown, the Governor of California from 1975–1983 (and later 2011–2019), and are sung from his perspective, as an imaginary version of Brown outlines a hippie–fascist vision of America. Lines such as ‘Serpent’s egg already hatched’, a reference to a line from William Shakespeare‘s play Julius Caesar, comment on the corrosive nature of power. The lines ‘Big Bro on white horse is near’ and ‘now it is 1984’ refer respectively to a statement Brown made during his first governorship that Americans were supposedly looking for ‘a leader on a white horse’, and to the totalitarian regime of George Orwell‘s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to describe a future (from a 1979 perspective) where Jerry Brown has become President, and his ‘suede denim secret police’ kill ‘uncool’ people with ‘organic poison gas’ chambers. The song is also an early example of Dead Kennedys’ style, with heavy surf rock and militaristic overtones. …”
W – “California Über Alles”
Mix Online
YouTube: California Über Alles, The Man With the Dogs
Punk Scrawled Artist 