Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables: 25th Anniversary Edition [Digipak] (CD - 1980)

Additional personnel: 6025 (guitar); Paul Roessler, Ninotchka (keyboards).

Recorded at Moibus Music, San Francisco, California.

All tracks have been digitally remastered.

Includes a poster.

Dead Kennedys: Jello Biafra (vocals); East Bay Ray (guitar); Klaus Flouride (bass guitar); Ted (drums).

Additional personnel: 6025 (guitar); Paul Roessler, Ninotchka (keyboards).

A hyper-speed blast of ultra-polemical, left-wing hardcore punk, and bitingly funny sarcasm, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables stands as the Dead Kennedys' signature statement. As one of the first hardcore albums, it was a galvanizing influence on the musical and attitudinal development of the genre, also helping to kickstart the fertile California scene. The record's tactics are not subtle in the least; Jello Biafra's odd warble and spat-out lyrics leave no doubt as to what he thinks, baiting his targets of conservatism, violence, overbearing authority, and capitalist greed with a viciously satirical sarcasm that keeps his unflinchingly political outlook from becoming too didactic. The thin production dilutes some of the music's power, but the ragged speed-blur still packs a wallop, and the hooks cribbed from surf and rockabilly give it a gonzo edge. The songwriting isn't consistent all the way through the album, but classics like "Kill the Poor," "Let's Lynch the Landlord," "Chemical Warfare," "California Über Alles," and "Holiday In Cambodia" helped define the hardcore genre and, thus, must be heard. ~ Steve Huey

To followers of the early-'80s West Coast punk scene, few acts have greater import than the Dead Kennedys, and FRESH FRUIT FOR ROTTING VEGETABLES is their definitive work. Fueled by the hyperactive, paranoid rants of frontman Jello Biafra, the band lays out a blueprint for societal upheaval, preaching distrust of everything, and the eventual breakdown of the totalitarian police state in which we live. His disturbing world view is propelled by the guitar stylings of East Bay Ray, who replaced punk's stereotypical volume assault with carefully chosen and flawlessly executed bursts of musical sarcasm and frightening sonic inventiveness.

The album's opener, "Kill the Poor," is a jubilant excoriation of society's treatment of poverty. Songs like "Let's Lynch The Landlord" and "Stealing Peoples' Mail" provide detailed (and hysterically funny) plans for undermining society's oppression, as does "Chemical Warfare," which even goes so far as to act out the violent rebellion. This was rage of unprecedented intellect, vitriol whose eloquence only served to make it more effective. The politics of the classics "Holiday In Cambodia" and "California Uber Alles" are extreme and violent, but also expertly stated and brilliantly executed. minimize