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"It's Time to Put Democracy to Bed".
This is the provocative title used by the Dead Kennedys, the hardcore band led by its charismatic leader, the anarchist Jello Biafra, for their last studio album. It was released in 1986, a month before their breakup, which occurred in December of the same year. The breakup of the group was motivated by the fact that the band's members wanted to pursue personal projects.
Subsequently, relations between the remaining members of the group and the singer became strained, leading to several legal disputes. One of these involved the incorrect payment of royalties by Biafra and his production company, "Alternative Tentacles."
In 2001, instead, it was Biafra who filed a lawsuit against the group, because they had reformed the Dead Kennedys with another singer, and a dispute arose over the use of the name. The lawsuit was won by the group.
Going back to the album, the Dead Kennedys leave us with this last work that is more than ever provocative and "revolutionary." "Bedtime for Democracy" is a clear reference to United States President Ronald Reagan (the latter was among the protagonists of the 1951 film "Bedtime for Bonzo"). In the same year, the president was also "quoted" by the punk rock band Ramones, in "My brain is hanging upside down (Bonzo goes to Bitburg)."
It must be said that the album reflects the production work that slightly "softens" the group's sound: the guitar sound is less full-bodied and cleaner, while the bass is highly emphasized. Despite this difference from the early albums, this work is nonetheless a gem of hardcore punk. There is no standout song like "Holiday in Cambodia" from the album "Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables," but it is a seamless and smooth work. The songs follow the typical hardcore scheme, with few frills and a lot of energy, none of the songs exceed two and a half minutes (except for the electric "Cesspools In Eden", for "Chicken Conformist" and the powerful "Lie Detector").
Biafra once again manages to masterfully combine the political and social commentary in his lyrics with musical need. The themes addressed by the Dead are now the usual ones, but never predictable or trivial. The album paints a satirical and accusatory picture of American society as ever. In "The Great Wall" the group attacks the economic hegemony of the capitalists, who with their power isolate the poor classes from the world. "Macho Insecurity" is an ironic parody of hardcore-metal bullies. Biafra's satire is sharper than ever. It goes so far as to criticize the commercialization of the anarchist movement in "Anarchy For Sale"; "Chicken Conformist", with its constant changes in speed, denounces the bigoted conformity of the star-spangled society.
There is also time to dream: "One-Way Ticket To Pluto" is an imaginary journey to Pluto organized for American politicians, only that due to a route error, the rocket is headed towards the Sun. You can imagine the ending...
At this point, it would be far too tedious to describe every song. I advise you to listen to this album carefully, it is the legacy that the Dead Kennedys leave to the world, the last great work of a never banal band, always ready to grasp (and denounce) the social unrest caused by the "system".
Tracklist and Lyrics
02 Dear Abby (01:09)
Dear Abby,
Got a problem. I'm a decent, underpaid, hardworking county coroner. It's
important that my family eat meat at least three times a week. But we just can't
afford to with the prices the way they are. So I bring home some choice cuts from my
autopsy subjects. Just mix in the Tuna Helper…and ta-da!
The whole family thinks my new meals are delicious. They ask me what's
my secret. Abby, I think they're getting suspicious. My smart-ass 8-year-old keeps
asking, "Where's all the meat? The red dye #2 kind that's kept in the fridge."
If they find out the truth I don't think they'll understand. Abby, what do I tell
my family?
DEAR REAGANOMICS VICTIM: Consult your clergyman. Make sure the body's
blessed and everything should be just fine.
03 Rambozo the Clown (02:25)
Got a deadly toy
To brainwash your boy
An egocentric muscle thug
Kicks butt on screen like a brat outa hell
Bullshitter in the Indochina shop
Pull the string in his back, we win the war
That we never should have started at all
A cabbage patch terrorist to call our own
Who rewrites history with a machine gun
Don't think about it-KILL IT
That's what we teach your child
RAMBOZO
RAMBOZO
RAMBOZO the Clown
To draft age kids
It sure looks like fun-
"Kill 'em all
And let God sort 'em out."
Like video games-no mess
Just fuel for a mass lapse of common sense
You can be Don Quixote
We'll dice you with our windmill blades
Brawn over brain
Means a happy ending
G.I. Joe in the cereal bowl
Grey shrapnel-flavored chewing gum
Mass murder ain't just painless
Now we've made it cute
RAMBOZO
RAMBOZO
RAMBOZO the Clown
War is sexy
War is fun
Iron Ego
Red Dawn
Be a wolverine. You'll rule the hills
Just get some guns and Cheerios
Any kid can conquer Libya
Just steal a fighter plane
Look who came home in a wheelchair
V.A. Hospital, they don't care
"We're the machine
You're just a tool."
Who fell for the myth of Rambozo the Clown
04 Fleshdunce (01:29)
We're world industry's thoughtlords
The entertainment wing
We keep you all in line
By fixing your free will
Surround you with pop fantasies
Just slightly out of reach
To soften all the blows
Of your forced daily routine
We strip-mine your underground culture
Take the bite out and rinse it clean
Give ourselves credit for creating it
Then sell it back to you
At twice the price
Our pool of talent vampires
Has blown into your town
To dazzle, sign and milk you
All strictly on our own terms
You think you've got a lot to say
We'll change that real soon
You're not a person anymore
We've made you a cartoon
By the time we're through remolding you
You won't even recognize your face
There's no end to the eager beavers
Drawn the moths to our Babylon's mirage
Conveyor belt of fleshdunce
They all want to do the fleshdance
Conveyor belt of fleshdunce
Who all want to do the fleshdance
05 The Great Wall (03:17)
Great Wall of China
It's so big it's seen from outer space
Put there to keep starving neighbors
Locked outside the gates
What's changed today?
Empires hoard more than they need
And peasants threaten our comfort
We'll build a Great Wall around our power
Build a Great Wall around our power
Bankrupt L.A.'s streetcar line
So people pay more to drive
Plant strategic freeways
To divide neighborhoods by color lines
We'd rather pay for riot squads
Than pump your ghetto back to life
We let your schools decay on purpose
To build a Great Wall around our power
Another Great Wall around our power
Warlords in grey suits
Take a different route to work each day
Second-hand green berets
Form the companies' private armies.
We'll take all your gold
But won't teach reading or feed your poor
The League of Gentleman
Would rather feed guns to puppet dictators
There's too many people in your world
And refugees are expensive
When they trickled down onto our soil
We hunt them and arrest them
Classify them insane
And put them back on the next plane
To the waiting arms
Of the same death squads they fled
We've built a Great Wall around our power
Economic Great Wall around our power
Worldwide Great Wall around our power
Give us your poor,
Your tired and your weak
We'll send 'em right back
To their certain death
06 Shrink (00:12)
If only people could shrink
Our world wouldn't be so overcrowded
Bring ourselves down to size
There'd be so much more food to go 'round
Why don't we build a machine
With all the know-how of the industries
We put a man on the moon
On earth we'll need more room to breathe real soon
Oh
Drink your vaccine and let's shrink
And bring your poodle so it doesn't eat us
The roads will be so wide
No traffic jams when we're half a foot tall
Bring what you need down here
We'll shrink it all by microwave
Don't wanna die like dinosaurs
We'll have enough resources to go round
Oh
So now you've made the big shrink
Meanwhile we'll keep acting big
We well-bred beautiful people
Who says we have to go too?
Cops and Mason businessmen
Were exempted from the ovens
As if you weren't already.
The rest of you are all our termites now
Oh
07 Triumph of the Swill (02:04)
Life can only get better
All you need to do is fall in love
Everyone else has fun but you
Buy that fun you'll fit in too
Dance your problems away
GOVERNMENT MUSIC
Cheap escape to that mind-control beat
GOVERNMENT MUSIC
Mellow out—Life's too hard
You don't even want to think
See the macho cock-rock metal heroes
Vomit fire out of their big mouths
Shake your fists obediently
Make Leni Riefenstahl real proud
See the Aryan bozo with the red guitar
Parachute on the White House lawn
Gonna bomb the commies with his air guitar
So dumb he can't drive 55
Like Bing Crosby before them
GOVERNMENT MUSIC
Too idiotic to be real
GOVERNMENT MUSIC
You want it loud?
We'll make sure it goes nowhere
So you won't get ideas
Triumph of the swill
Triumph of the swill
Triumph of the swill
Triumph of the swill
Music is banned in Khomeini's Iran
On the grounds that it stimulates the brain
We've done him one better in the land of coke & honey
Using music to put people's brains to sleep
Ever wonder why commercial radio's so bad?
It's 'cause someone upstairs wants it that way
If the Doors or John Lennon were getting started now
The industry wouldn't sign 'em in a million years
So what do we get
GOVERNMENT MUSIC
Christian censorship and taxed blank tapes
Shoppers strung out on our false hopes
Will flock to obey
Triumph of the swill
Triumph of the swill
Triumph of the swill
Triumph of the swill
08 Macho Insecurity (01:30)
Name one thing on earth lower than a tough guy
Who talks with his fists instead of using his head
Who beats the shit out of anything it can't understand
Behind the muscle mask is a scared little boy
called Macho insecurity
Macho insecurity
Macho insecurity
'Cause you can't stand
yourself
Got a bitch with me?
Why won't you say it to my face?
It's so easy to mouth off to others
But where's your proof?
Maybe we can talk if you'd just drop your act
Nothing's ever solved by making childish threats
That's Macho Insecurity
(chorus)
Why do you want people to be so afraid of you?
Why are you so scared of anything that's different?
No one's ever there when you need friends
You wonder why…
It's 'cause you take yourself so seriously
But being such a clown
Gives the rest of us the right to laugh
At your Macho Insecurity
'Cause you can't stand yourself
09 I Spy (02:30)
You look at me from the back of the room
All I see is a bumbling buffoon
Head down like you don't see much
Until you move in to make your bust
I spy for you and me
I spy for you and me
Disguised like you're one of the scene
Just stand alone with no real friends
Scared people will find out who you are
Alone in the world without your telephone beeper
I spy for you and me
I spy for you and me
Curious folks ask questions of life
But you can't answer 'cause your heart's like a knife
Still you feel you sing the last song sung
You're just a heartless piece of scum with a gun
I spy for you and me
I spy for you and me
I spy I spy
I spy
10 Cesspools in Eden (06:02)
Poison is bubbling
Beneath your dreamhome
Buried there years before
Kid runs in crying
From playing in the garden
"Mommy, I burned my hands!"
"What's making our eyes so itchy?"
"Don't rub 'em—they'll swell up."
Oh Oh Oh Oh
It's the big waste dump
Oh, yeah
We built your ticky-tacky houses
On landfill soil
To cover up a gift
We left you years before
Of toxic chemicals
And leaking gas
Just dig a little while,
You'll find our acid baths
Cesspools
In Eden
Oozing away…
Groundwater's poisoned
Air stings like hell
The lines for doctors grow long
Over martinis
The company laughs
"We don't owe you one damn thing."
But what about all these fainting spells?
How'd you like a lick
From my open sores
And Oh….Oh Oh Oh —
Why are our babies stillborn?
A storage tank's leaking
It's about to explode
Why evacuate
When you can watch the fun
Nothing happens here
Get out the lawn chairs
We'll drink pink lemonade
And watch Martinez burn
Cesspools
In Eden
Oozing away
Cesspools in Eden
Leak by the day
The land we sold you
Is right atop our acid pits
We fill them by the truckload
In the dead of night
There's thousands more toxic
Tips of the iceberg
We pay a little bribe
Or we just don't report them
And see what you get—
Cesspools
In Eden
In Eden
No accident—
Just a little of our greed-fueled negligence
So you've found the proof why
Your cancer rate's shot up
But whatcha gonna do
When we've got all the cards
Times Beach, Rocky Flats,
Love Canal & Bhopal
Merry Christmas, hostages
From the folks who care
Cesspools in Eden
Oozing away
Cesspools in Eden
Leak by the day
Cesspools in Eden
Have a nice day
12 A Commercial (01:32)
Have we got a telethon for you coming soon on MTV! A rockin' bankroll
extravaganza featuring all your vigilante rock stars! Sammy
Hagar…Sylvester Stallone…Clint Eastwood. It's so important we've even
exhumed the bodies of Lynyrd Skynyrd! This ain't no sissy concert to raise
food for the needy; this concerts whipped up the American way to raise
money for guns for the greedy! So stay tuned and dig in those heels
for…USA FOR SOUTH AFRICA!
It's USA for South Africa 'cause those poor, sex-starved riot battalions
need more machine guns, more tear gas, more nerve gas, more electric
fences for those prison camps they call "homelands." And who's going to
give it to them? WE ARE! Every one of us! Everytime we go to the bank.
Everytime we buy food at Theftway. Or those fancy chrome wheels for your
hot car. It's USA FOR SOUTH AFRICA!
Don't delay! Apartheid is a BIG business! What would these American ladies
do without those diamonds? You heard the White House…DON'T MISS IT! Have
you're rich parents' money ready, world hunger's gone forever once your
check's in the mail when MTV and the rock and racism connection bring you
live, from Sun City, USA FOR SOUTH AFRICA!
14 Anarchy for Sale (01:18)
step right up folks!
Anarchy for sale!
T-shirts only 10 dollars
Badges only $3.50
I nicked the disign, never asked the band
I never listen to them either
Buy! Buy! Buy! from Circle A
Like hula hoops, it's a disposable craze
Another fast-food fad to throw away
Get you Anarchy For Sale
Anarchy For Sale
Anarchy For Sale
Sheep unite!
Get your cuddly boots and studs
Be sure to rebel in proper style
Rebel along the paths we pick
Out of fear of peer pressure we create
Hey you! -
Get those flyers off my wall!
No commie peace shit in my boutique
No one here cares what that all means
Our Anarchy is For Sale
Anarchy For Sale
Anarchy For Sale
Our town sucks
Our scene rules
To belong you must buy into it
So we sold you metal spike bracelets
C'mon let's see a good fight
That's Anarchy For Sale
Anarchy For Sale
Anarchy For Sale.
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