num_pages: 224
description: Dead Kennedys routinely top both critic and fan polls as the greatest punk band of their generation. Their debut full-length Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables  in particular is regularly voted among the top albums in the genre. Fresh Fruit offered a perfect hybrid of humor and polemic strapped to a musical chassis that was as tetchy and inventive as Jello Biafras withering broadsides. Those lyrics cruel in their precision were revelatory. But it wouldnt have worked if the underlying sonics were not such an uproarious rush the paraffin to Biafras naked flame. Dead Kennedys continuing influence is an extraordinary achievement for a band that had practically zero radio play and only released records on independent labels. They not only existed outside of the mainstream but were as V. Vale of Search and Destroy noted the first band of their stature to turn on and attack the music industry itself. The DKs set so much in motion. They were integral to the formulation of an alternative network that allowed bands on the first rung of the ladder to tour outside of their own backyard. They were instrumental in supporting the concept of all-ages shows and spurned the advances of corporate rock promoters and industry lapdogs. They legitimized the notion of an American punk band touring internationally while disseminating the true horror of their native countrys foreign policies effectively serving as anti-ambassadors on their travels. The book uses dozens of first-hand interviews photos and original artwork to offer a new perspective on a group who would become mired in controversy almost from the get-go. It applauds the bands key role in transforming punk rhetoric both polemical and musical into something genuinely threateningand enormously funny. The author offers context in terms of both the global and local trajectory of punk and while not flinching from the wildly differing takes individual band members have on the evolution of the band attempts to be celebratoryif not uncritical.
language: English
title: Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, The Early Years
publisher: PM Press