Jello Biafra on 21st century censorship
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/clicktrack/2010/03/be_specific_jello_biafra_on_21.html
March 30, 2010
By Chris Richards
When Jello Biafra brought the Dead Kennedys to Washington D.C. in
1982, The Washington Post referred to his path-finding California
punk troupe as "the D.K.s." Twenty-eight years later, Biafra brings
his new band, the Guantanamo School of Medicine, to the Black Cat for
a Tuesday night performance.
Click Track spoke with Biafra about censorship in 21st century
America. He had plenty to say, but we still had to censor the
four-letter words.
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Were you aware that the Post referred to the Dead Kennedys as "the
D.K.s" back in 1982?
I don't remember the Post ever referring to the band as the D.K.s at
all. There was lots of pressure early on from people who thought they
could get us a major label deal if we just changed our name. And even
the major labels themselves were saying, "Oh yeah, we'll give you all
the artistic control you want, if you just change your name." But one
of the reasons I used that name was to torpedo any fantasies of any
other band members of signing to those pimps. I think one of the most
important things punk brought back was the whole concept of staying
independent and doing things yourself. It made music a lot less
boring in any category you can name.
Today, there are newer punk bands with names like [expletive] Jeans
or [expletive] Up. I see that they don't get much attention from
traditional media outlets because their names have to be spelled with
a bunch asterisks. Have you noticed this?
I think [expletive] Up are getting a lot of press because they're on
the Matador label whose media machinery is very strong. I saw a long
New York Times review of them that found a way not to mention their
name for the entire article. It went into a fair amount of detail
about the band. What I can't remember was if a reader who didn't know
who the band already was would be able to figure it out. Because I
already knew the band, I had seen the band and I had my own strong
feelings about the band -- namely that I thought they were really good.
You've seen censorship change a lot of the course of your career. Do
you think standards are loosening up? And how is it affecting your work?
I still like getting in people's faces and beating them over the head
with what I'm trying to communicate. You know, I've never been a big
fan of subtle art. I like art that gets deep into my head and starts
my brain spinning with new ideas and inspiration and my whole body is
full of energy. That's why I liked H.R. Geiger's paintings when I
first saw them. One of them wound up in the [Dead Kennedys']
"Frankenchrist" album because I got so many ideas from just looking
at them. That can go for music, film, writing, journalism, pranks --
like the guy who got fired from a Toyota dealership recently. He
managed to hack into all of these alarms of cars that the dealership
had sold and set them all off at once. I thought that was hilarious.
But does our anything-goes-on-the-Internet era make it harder to
find those same kinds of shocks and thrills?
Well, we always have to fight to preserve what we have. If people
like Comcast and AT&T had their way, they would have an iron grip on
the Internet and not only be able to charge more money, but pick and
choose what went over what they seem to think is their information
highway. I'm a big booster of Internet neutrality and that will
always be under threat as long as we have coin-operated lawmakers.
I mean, censorship via the private sector is probably more widespread
and more damaging than the latest whining by Tipper Gore or Joe
Lieberman blaming all high-school shootings on Marilyn Manson or
irrational stuff like that.
I flipped through a little bit of the soundbites of corporate McNews
today, and at least Tiger Woods's [anatomy] is off the front burner
for a day or two. But now we've got what, a Moscow subway bombing,
and oooh, somebody's playing basketball today. Wow. Cool.
But then I think of all the other issues that people could also have
on their plate, be it poverty, the veterans we ignore -- who come
back from wars we never should have started -- with missing limbs or
PTSD or the one I met in New York whose vertebrae is corroding as I
speak from depleted uranium poisoning and how many people still
aren't going to get proper health care when across the border in
Canada, it's a human right by law.
In choosing what stories to highlight and how much time to give those
stories and what stories to taint, slant or not mention at all -- or
not even tell all sides of the story -- in corporate McNews, that is
by far the worst form of censorship going on today.
You'd think half this country was going gaga over the tea baggers.
When in reality, all it would take to wipe them off the front page
would be a million uninsured marching on Washington. Or then again:
would that get 10 seconds and then it would be back to the tea
baggers again? Nobody would ever hear about Sarah Palin if corporate
McNews didn't find so much [expletive] there to keep throwing on the
screen. All she has to do is open her mouth and even MSNBC has her
all over the screen all day.
How do you decide what issues you're going to talk about each night on
stage?
Well, it depends on the songs we're gonna play. We're a newer band
and we only have about an album and a half of our own songs learned
at this point. There are few Dead Kennedys songs in the set as well,
and yeah, I chose some of them because of their current impact --
especially "Bleed for Me," the anti-torture song that I originally
wrote about the desaparecidos in Argentina and the kind of bloodshed
we were stoking in El Salvador and Guatemala, through the Shah of
Iran and things like that. And now to my horror, it's going on in
this country and the Obama administration isn't doing a damn thing to
bring neo-Nazi war criminals from the Bush regime to justice.
That scares me more than any other disappointment in the Obama era so
far. Because if those people aren't brought to justice now, they'll
inevitably storm back into power in 2012 or 2016 or maybe one more
cycle at the most. And they're gonna be 10 or 20 times nastier than
they were already. It's not Bush and Cheney and Ronald Dumbsfeld that
bother me so much as the people that worked for them -- the ones that
thought they were [wimps] just like Cheney and Rove did when they
worked for Nixon.
People like David Addington, John Yoo, the General Geoffrey Miller,
Douglas Feith -- even people like Condoleezza Rice should be in jail
for war crimes as we speak. And Robert Gates's crimes go all the way
back to [the Iran-]Contra-gate.
Is this Obama's fault or is this our fault? I remember Amy Goodman
[wrote] about an incident when Franklin Roosevelt was first elected.
As President-elect, he received a previously scorned labor leader who
gave him a list of demands. And supposedly FDR said, "Okay, this all
looks pretty good. Now make me do it." And I know exactly what he
meant by "Make me do it." Get your people out in the streets. Get
your people to lobby their Congress-creatures and let them know how
important this is. And even on health care, the people who know how
badly we need a public option in the single-payer system simply
haven't done their job.
Talking about change, or lack thereof, how has D.C. changed from
your perspective? Some think the musician-activist community has
eroded a little in recent years.
Most of the people I know would dispute that it's eroded away. It may
have eroded away in the eyes of corporate McNews such as The
Washington Post, which is of course going to be spending more time
covering Tiger Woods's [anatomy] or the latest outburst from John
McCain than what underground bands in their own community are saying.
You have to keep in mind that D.C. has underground political hip-hop
now, too, which may not have been spawned from people who listened to
the Dischord bands. It's a completely different sound and scene, and
that's very important too.
How did you become aware of those hip-hop groups?
I'm not aware of who exactly does what. I know there was a large
post-march anti-war concert I emceed on the capital mall in '05. One
of the major backers was Thievery Corporation. I've also run into a
Green Party-connected rapper named Head-Roc from time to time, from
way below the underground. And I know there's a lot more, too.
Well this has been great. I really appreciate your time...
Hopefully, we'll be back out east after this show because one example
of trying to rekindle mass activism, and get through to people, and
make the Obamatons do the right thing is the Iraq Veterans Against
the War, among others, are putting together something called the UXO
Tour, which stands for "unexploded ordinance" in military terms. [The
idea is] to play as close to military bases as possible, veterans
admitted free. Veterans and soldiers will be admitted free and
everyone else has gotta pay so we can keep this thing going.
And when will this take place?
It's supposed to debut during Fleet Week in New York City and
[organizers will] park a rented boat in the next berth to the big
ship that the military brings on to show off our world-domination.
And I guess [hip-hop group] the Coup has signed on for the whole
tour. The Flo-bots, who are hip-hop-ish from Denver. ...And You Will
Know Us By the Trail of Dead. Wayne Kramer. And if all goes well,
we're gonna be there, too. And you can get more as it comes out from IVAW.
They're gonna try and play by the Carolina bases and outside of Camp
Pendleton, outside of Fort Lewis in Washington, (which we're not
going to be able to do because we're going to be in Europe), and
culminating in [Washington D.C.] right before the election.
Wow. Very interesting.
One more thing I want to mention here: It might not be directly about
censorship but it finishes my argument about the Obama situation.
That's why our band is called the Guantanamo School of Medicine: To
let people know we're not going let torture off the hook. Isn't that
why we fought against the Nazis in the first place? So the album
opens with "The Terror of Tiny Town." The title and plot come from an
all-midget cowboy movie from the 1930s but the metaphor for the Bush
administration was just so strong, I couldn't resist.
But why even talk about Bush now? Well, the reason is that so many of
the lawless excesses are still going on. The end of the lyric is: "So
what now? He ain't gone til they're all brought to justice for war
crimes. So act fast or this lasts. Because before you know it, guess
who will be back?"
And [the album] closes with a song called "I Won't Give Up," which is
basically the first shot across the bow of the Obama era, saying, to
quote our famous commander-in-chief, [in Obama voice] "Look..." [laughs].
Prepare to get your hearts broken, but for crying out loud, don't
give up. Don't get quieter and just retreat to living on your phones
and texting all day. Get stronger. Get louder. Get wilder. Get
weirder and push back. Because after all, if there hadn't been a lot
more insurrection than we're seeing right now, we never would have
even gotten the New Deal, let alone the Civil Rights Act of '64 or
any decent environmental laws, or abortion rights, or gay rights. You name it.
.
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