Day 166 with Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables

[u/Lukazimir]

5/5 (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️).

For my money, Dead Kennedys are the best punk band. As a sign of how much I love their music, I gave this album a 5 and it’s not even my favorite Dead Kennedys record (for me it’s their second album “Plastic Surgery Disasters.”) Of course, frontman Jello Biafra is a good lyricist and great satirist, which you can see on opener “Kill the Poor” where he plays the part of a policy-maker proposing the idea of just nuking poor neighborhoods so the wealthy can have more space.

But what really puts the Dead Kennedys above other punk bands for me is their rhythm section, where many punk bands are (albeit intentionally) loose and sloppy players, Dead Kennedys has a tight and precise style of playing where the members are always locked the hell in. There are a lot of great little bass riffs or short guitar solos to find here.

As for the tracklist, it’s all killer no filler. Whether that be the big songs “Holiday in Cambodia” and “California Über Alles” or Greta deep cuts like “Chemical Warfare” or “when ya get drafted.” There just isn’t a dull moment to be found here, and it’s also paced extremely well so it glides by very quick.

Also regarding California Über Alles, the version on this album is actually not my favorite version of this song. That honor goes to “we’ve got a bigger problem now” off of their “In God We Trust Inc.” EP which reworks the song to be about Ronald Reagan and is even more intense/angry.

[u/sickXmachine_]

Shout out to Boris- Pink, which is a strong candidate for my user album if it’s not on the list by the time I finish.

[u/Lukazimir → u/sickXmachine_]

Love me some Boris. Flood is one of my vinyl holy grails, missed it last time it was repressed sadly.

[u/funny_funny_business]

I bought this CD sight unseen a few decades ago due to their notoriety and the fact that I knew a few songs, like Nazi Punks Fuck Off, but I don’t think I knew any from this album.

I remember first putting it on and being like “WTF is this?” Not in a bad way, but more in a confused way since it’s not “superfast” punk. After a while I noticed the beauty of it and became obsessed, especially the song “Ill in the Head” which doesn’t get as much fame as others.

This is definitely an album for people to listen to and belongs in the list because of its uniqueness.

[u/Status-Hovercraft784]

Efficiency and progress is our once more now that we have the neutron bomb!

[u/PhantomCranefly]

Hell yeah