Dead Kennedys
Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death

THE REVIEW

1987. American hardcore dead (but is it really true?), Dead Kennedys dissolved like snow in the sun a year before (sigh!!!).... What to do???? In the Hamletian doubt, throw out this "Give me convenience Or give me death", just because...
And it was very well done, by the usual Biafran Alternative Tentacles, to release this little big classic that gathers 17 shards of Kennedyan schizophrenia, tracks taken from various singles of the band, compilations, and rarities.  And here, as elsewhere, our favorite Presidential Corpses remind us once again, with subtle and tremendous irony, how the sacrosanct American dream is drowning in an atrocious nationalist, obscurantist, imperialist slime, that smiles and chuckles and chews tobacco and spits and watches TV all night locked in dark rooms with a gun on their lap, the bottle of whiskey on the chair, and barbiturates to sleep on the nightstand. 
While dazzling presenters artfully package the best nightmares inside the magic box, the average consumer of the American dream sinks slowly with all their pride, their fierceness, their smile, their alcoholism, and obtuseness in the mephitic swamp of Reaganomics, with great rounds of applause from the audience, also waiting to wallow sadly in the laughing brackish marshes of the 80s USA.

By now this CD is a classic in the band's discography and contains famous tracks like "Police truck", "Too drunk to fuck", the generational anthem of Californian punks "California uber alles" and a stunning version of "Holiday in Cambodia", but the real surprises are "I fought the law", a beautiful song by the Crickets already excellently covered by the Clash and reprised by the Kennedys sharp and amphetamine-like and with the usual possessed voice of Jello that makes you sing it at the top of your lungs.
"Kinky sex makes the world go 'round" is the anguish of those who suffer the abuses of power even while sleeping and are awakened by the phone to be coldly informed by their superior at the Department of Defense about the urgent economic need to trigger a new war; "The prey" slick and mocking like the squalid character it describes. The unmistakable graphic mark of Winston Smith also seals this chapter of the Kennedy family with an artwork (even though the inside booklet is the work of Jello Biafra and John Yates) that is a masterpiece to be admired in detail and that has always helped make the San Francisco band unique.

Enough, I don't know what else to say, then there were legal controversies, from above, below, unpaid royalties, cuckolds and beaten, reformed with the singer of Dr. Know etc etc...  ...etc...etc...