In the twenty or so years since his brainchild, The Dead Kennedys, officially
disbanded, Jello Biafra has made a career of spoken word gigs interspersed with
musical collaborations with some of the most compelling figures in underground
music. Recording projects and touring with the likes of Melvins, NoMeansNo,
DOA, Mojo Nixon, and Lard (with Ministry’s Al Jorgensen) among others have
kept his “punk as political weapon” message sharp, but the lack of his own band
made these collaborations usually short-lived and left Biafra with a ton of songs
that never saw the light of day.
Inspired by The Stooges gig on Iggy Pop’s 60th birthday in San Francisco,
Biafra laid plans for his own 50th birthday party and finally decided it was time
to start a band of his own. After cramming practices for a month, the four-piece
dubbed themselves Jello Biafra and the Axis of Merry Evildoers! and featured
Biafra, Ralph Spight (Victims Family, Freak Accident, Hellworms), Jon Weiss
(Sharkbait, Horsey), and Billy Gould (Faith No More) The band took the stage
in a sold-out two-night stand at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. Flush
from that exhilarating triumph, nine months of rehearsal and writing followed;
they added ace guitarist Kimo Ball (Freak Accident, Carneyball Johnson, Mol
Triffid, Griddle), and christened themselves Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo
School of Medicine.
The Audacity of Hype was produced by Biafra and engineered by hip hop producer
and longtime co-conspirator Matt Kelley (Hieroglyphics, The Coup, Digital
Underground, Victims Family, Tumor Circus) at Prairie Sun Recording in
Cotati, CA, and San Francisco’s Hyde Street Studios. The band’s twin guitar attack
retains some of the space-punk overtones and spy-music-on-meth chaos of The
Dead Kennedys while adding a healthy dose of Detroit-style proto-punk flavored
with Weiss’ industrial excursions into metal percussion.
Topically, the album explores how the forced Iraqnophobia and Homeland Insecurity
continues to feed lawlessness at the top (“The Terror of Tiny Town”) vs. a
runaway police state and class war toward the bottom (“Three Strikes” and “Electronic
Plantation,” originally done by The No WTO Combo, Biafra’s one-off collaboration
with Krist Novelselic and Kim Thayil). “Clean as a Thistle” becomes
more timely every day as “family values” blowhards from Sanford to Berlusconi
are caught in sinful trysts, while album closer “I Won’t Give Up” offers an Age of
Obama anthem on how change comes from agitation from below, not from glamour
and sound bites from the top.
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