JELLO BIAFRA
Jello Biafra (born Eric Reed Boucher; June 17, 1958) is the former lead singer and songwriter for San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys, and is currently a musician and spoken word artist. After he left the Dead Kennedys, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had co-founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. Although now focused primarily on spoken word, he has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. Biafra is known to use absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice. (More from Wikipedia)
Punk rockers often pick out wacko names; frontman Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys, drummer Rat Scabies of the Damned, and of course Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious of Sex Pistols are examples. Usually it is just one or two bandmembers who do that, but all of the Ugly did: Mike Nightmare (singer), Raymi Gutter (guitar), Sam Ugly (bass), and Tony Torcher (drums), plus soundman Johnny Garbagecan.
(November 2011)
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As is common in the punk rock community, many of the bandmembers picked their own names; the name of front man Jello Biafra still has a certain ring to it I suppose, though hardly anyone remembers the breakaway African state Biafra (1967-1970), the once and future province of Nigeria. Other bandmembers were East Bay Ray, Klaus Fluoride and 6025.
Dead Kennedys is certainly among the most outrageous band names of all time, though Jello Biafra insists that they were not trying to insult the Kennedy family but were trying “to bring attention to the end of the American Dream”.
Even at the time, the brand name “Jell-O” didn’t seem cool enough for a punk rock artiste, though the name turned up once again in the comic-punk band Green Jellö.
(July 2012)
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Looters, Flashpoint – My copy of this 1990 CD has a sticker on it with a list of the dates in their U.S. tour, so it might have been a promotional album of some kind. Allmusic gives this album 4 stars and says this about their incongruous beginnings and fan base: “Formed in San Francisco in 1982 at the peak of the city’s hardcore punk movement, Looters were embraced by the local punk rock scene even though the style of music the multi-racial, multi-ethnic band played couldn’t have had its roots further from Gilmore Street. The Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra was an early fan of the band, however, which led to the release of a self-titled EP on his Alternative Tentacles label. As legend would have it, Island Records head honcho Chris Blackwell heard the disc playing in a record store during a trip to the Bay area and subsequently signed the band to Island.” This is their debut album on Island but actually their second album (Jericho Down came out in 1984). The album has a host of influences and is rife with a compelling world-music vibe. The opening track, “War Drums” naturally is drum-based but also has fine harmony vocals. But the killer track for me is “Manzanar”, with its recurring call of “how far . . . is Manzanar”. From Wikipedia: “Manzanar is the site of one of ten American concentration camps, where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II from March 1942 to November 1945.”
(December 2015)
