Yeah I’ll keep this short and sweet and just express my bitterness at the worlds most famously-logo’ed karaoke band, Dead Kennedys. We caught them this weekend in Ventura and man, it stunk. We walked out. I want my twenty bucks back. The only redeeming quality of the evening is that now i can serve as a warning beacon to others.
HEY DEAD KENNEDYS — I WANT MY TWENTY BUCKS BACK.
Nostalgia night is a scary night. Stay away. I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into. From here on out, if you don’t have new material you’re touring on, I’m not going ANYWHERE near you. You smell of death.
First off, your openers, the Angry Samoans — good grief, someone get that singer a chair, would you? He had to take a knee the whole set. I could not believe my eyes. That brand of goofball cartoon-character punk rock I guess might kind of worked when you were 17, but dudes youre like, what, a wheezy 50? Hey I’ve got NO problem with age, man, but maybe try playing something that reflects your life as things currently stand, or do the world a favor and stay retired. (Oh one sidenote — your guitar player is GREAT. He’s the only reason I didn’t shoot myself in the face during your set.)
That put me in a sour enough mood, then out rolled the Dead Kennedys, and all I could think was, “who’s that singing Jello’s songs?” And, “is that really a 40-year-old singing about high school football?” Weird. The singer was like Jim Carrey doing a Jello Biafra impression. Just too weird a night for my blood. Nothing new, nothing relevant, no point, smelled of death, left early. I supposed if I had thought about it enough ahead of time I could have figured it out and saved myself the nausea.
How’s that for chipper?
So call me when there’s some new material.
Speaking of which – individually, these guys in DK are great musicians, for what they do. Even the singer, who’s name is “Im not Jello”. I’d absolutely love to hear what they could come up with in this century. East Bay Ray looked pretty cool up there, he’s aged pretty gracefully and I wouldn’t mind hearing what he has to say about … well, about whatever he wants to say. The bass player Greg Reeves at least _appeared_ intelligent and you could tell he really enjoyed what he was doing. Though I’m not sure why. Look — these are the people that wrote Frankenchrist, and now they’re wheeling out a Jello impersonator to sell 20 dollar tickets to 12-yr olds and their middle aged punk rock dads. This is wrong, right?
So as far as Dead Kennedys is concerned, punk IS dead, man. You’ve got a really recognizable logo and a really famous ex-singer, but for the here and now, you got nothin’. Except my 20 dollars. Which I want back.
