Jello is a mass marketed snack food that has almost no nutritional value. Biafra was a country in Africa where a lot of people starved to death. Eric Reed Boucher saw the irony of combing the two, so he made it his name. Eric became Jello and Jello became the lead singer of the
Dead Kennedys.
And no, he's not endorsed by Bill Cosby. Few personalities in music have had such a storied history as
Jello Biafra. He had both legs broken by Neo-Nazis, ran for mayor of San Francisco (part of his platform would require businessmen to wear clown suits), was charged with obscenity, and pissed off
Oprah Winfrey. Not to mention the fact that he was the original Green Party candidate for president in 2000. Biafra, now 47, currently tours and makes albums with The
Melvins, and owns the record company
Alternative Tentacles.
NS: Why did you decide to become a musician?
JB: I guess it was always my Walter-Mitty-Cinderella- ambition, er whatever. I first heard rock n' roll in the Fall of 1965 - during late Beatle mania. In no time I was jumping up and down on my bed thinking I was
The Rolling Stones or
Paul Revere & the Raiders. I always went for the wilder stuff. My mother even found a picture of
The Beatles I drew in red Crayon that I ended up sending to
Yoko Ono for her
Memories of John book that should come out any day now. I was fascinated with keyboards so I drew in a lot of Vox organs in as well. I wonder which one played the keyboard? When kids said that they wanted to be baseball players or cops or nurses in the case of girls, I had decided I wanted to be The Penguin or The Riddler from
Batman. I've always identified with the villains or the darker side of things [laughter]. Then in either eighth or ninth grade they started running music shows on network TV again - there was no cable yet. And the
In Concert series debuted with really raw footage of Alice Cooper in front of a live audience. That brought it all back again. But by the time I got out of high school it was all adult rock and soft rock, and you'd have to play as good as Hendrix or you didn't belong in the band. You hadn't paid your dues. So . . . I was kind of fucked. Suddenly punk came along and I jumped in. It turned out I wasn't born at the wrong time, I was born at the right time.
NS: What was an early Dead Kennedys show like?
JB: No two shows were alike. One night night we'd be great, and one night we'd kinda suck. We never knew which way it was gonna go . In the early days we were mainly opening up for bands that were on the new wave side, which meant a lot of people hadn't seen us, and didn't know what was going to happen to them. I'd break through the people in the front row at the Mabuhay, where we played, and shower them in their pop-corn and beer - fuck with em - and try and get reactions out of people. As we got better known, there were more people up front so I couldn't get through to the back , and that initial shock value was gone. We had a heavy duty reputation with in a couple of shows, and all kind of weird people started showing up.
NS: What about when the cops started showing up?
JB: It reminded me of the police riots that went down in Chicago in '68, or the LAPD's undeclared war against the Latino community in the late 70s. Where they even shot a tear gas canister into the side of an
LA Times reporter while he was sitting in a bar and killed him. And got away with it. So, you know, shit like that. I never got hurt bad, but some people did including D.H. Peligro. I think the worst one was the infamous Wilmington riot. Wilmington was this little municipality carved out of Long Beach with a history of labor up risings. So, law enforcement liked to fuck with Wilmington. We were playing there with
D.O.A. and
Youth Brigade and the
Minutemen. Cops stormed in from two entrances after the
Circle One gang had started some shit, and somebody called the cops, as if almost on cue. Tons and tons of cops start pouring in, and drove as many as 2000 people out on narrow entrance. Luckily, no one was trampled to death. Once outside, they had to run a gauntlet of rows of cops swinging clubs at their heads, only to be met by tear gas and to be buzzed by helicopters, no less. Other helmeted cops were seen running up and down the streets smashing out windshields and the windows of small businesses with their clubs. And of course, the next day, the
LA Times headline says "Punk band causes riot". The entire thing was planned by the LAPD and the Sheriff's Department who showed up outside their jurisdiction. A woman that East Bay Ray knew, who worked in the emergency room of a local hospital, said that a police official came in around four that afternoon and said "You'd better have a few extra people in the ER tonight. There's going to be a couple of casualties." I later found out that was Dexter from
The Offspring's first punk show. What a baptism.
NS: What made you decide to run for mayor?
JB: The mayor campaign was all on a dare. I was folded into the back of Bruce's, our first drummers, Volkswagen, going to a
Pere Ubu show. He said I had such a big mouth that I should run for president, no, better yet, run for mayor. And I said, "Hey, I think I will." I started telling people at the club I was running for mayor. I wrote my platform out on a napkin about five feet away from the state while Pere Ubu played. A lot of the ideas I thought were good just popped in my head, like requiring police officers to be elected by the districts they represented. That way they'd have to live in the hood, instead of hiding out in Simi Valley or whatever. I think police shootings and beatings would drop, and I think there'd be a lot more trust between the people and the cops. I bet you it would make crime go way down.
NS: Why do you think politicians have such a hard time remembering their responsibility to humanity?
JB: Well, by the time they reach higher office, they've had to throw away any principles they had in the first place. Look at John Kerry. What a pathetic spineless jelly fish. He could've taken Bush down early, just because of the Nazi-style torture going down at Abu Ghraib prison. He didn't do it. Then he's asked on national TV if people are dying for the mistake in Iraq and he says "no". He threw the election away, right there, because he didn't want to offend rich people. The sad thing is, it's not just the Republicans running rich people for office, it's the Democrats too. That's why they're running Jerry Springer in Ohio. They say, "Hey! He'll be a great candidate! Look how much money he'll put in so we don't to pay to buy the office!" It's insane. Especially because his opponent is going to be Kenneth Blackwell, who was the Secretary of State in Ohio who rigged the votes so Bush could steal the election. Basically, we're a one party state masquerading as a two party state. Call them the Republicans or the Corporate Party, or whatever you want. They sure as hell don't represent us.
NS: How long do you think we'll have the two party - or (as you put it) - the one party system?
JB: I'm hoping there's going to be a breakthrough in my lifetime. I'm a member of the Green Party, because I like what the Greens stand for. Slowly but surely we've had more and more local offices won in each election cycle, but there isn't a Green in Congress or in a governor's mansion yet. There was a state legislator in Maine, but the rest of the state legislators re-drew the district so he couldn't get elected anymore. And who did this? Not the Republicans. It was the Democrats. If anything, the Democrats and the Greens should be working together, but the Democrats just slam the door on us, and try and kick us in the teeth whenever possible. As if they intimidate us enough, we'll just get along by going alone like
The Sopranos. But it doesn't work that way. No fucking way.
NS: Do you think they'd ever let a Green in the debate?
JB: They're gonna fight that tooth n nail. It used to be if you had five percent of the vote in pre-election polls, you got in the televised debate. Then when Ralph Nader started polling between eight and ten percent early in 2000, they raised the bar to fifteen percent, so he couldn't get on the air. The last thing they wanted was any actual debate at the staged Presidential debates. They'd rather dumb down election coverage to pro-wrestling, or at least some stupid ass horse race. Maybe some sort of reality show where nothing that happens really matters, and you root for the good team against the bad one. When the games over, you rip open a bag of potato chips, open a Bud, and go change the channel and watch another sporting event.
NS: What do you mean by "becoming the media"? Why can't I just crack beer, wave the flag, and sing along to Toby Keith like the other 50% of Americans?
JB: You're welcome to do that, if you want, but you wouldn't represent the other fifty-percent of Americans. How many albums does Toby Keith sell? One million? Two million? Five million? They're 280 million people in this country, and I doubt everyone of them is a Toby Keith fan. I doubt even 10 million have even heard of that guy. So, let's not assume, just because the corporations that censor our mass media tell us that a majority of certain people believe a certain way that they actually do. That red state/blue state scam is a total myth, and I only started hearing that a few years ago from the corporate media. Study after study has been done by places like Standford University and Pew Research, that show that clear across so-called red states and blue states, the clear majority of people are pro-choice, they think rich people should be taxed fairly, they want a clean environment, they want equal rights for women, and they want good schools. Over half of them favor civil unions, and we're getting close on gay marriage. So tell that to Fox News, and all the other little wannabe Foxes like CNN and NBC. You had another part to that question, . . . what was it?
NS: Who do you think controls the mass media?
JB: Um. You'll have yo look at the corporations and who's on the board of directors. NBC is owned by General Electric. One of the largest corporations in the world, and one of the largest arms manufactures who is up to their neck in nuclear power and nuclear bombs. This gives GE executives editorial content of NBC News. So, of course, they're going to be cheerleading wars and the arms race and saying that global warming doesn't matter. In fact, it matters so little they're not even going to mention it exists. I think deliberate omission of important stories, or slanting the news the way Fox does is the worst form of censorship going on today. Worse than
Tipper Gore, and
jerry falwell, and worse than the new anti-Porn crusade that Bush's Attorney General is trying to launch. What people need to do is teach each other media literacy. I don't even think people should be allowed to pass high school without passing a class on media literacy. But of course, we don't have things like that because people are too greedy to keep up the schools. Plus, the purpose of our schools is to teach obedient drones for our high-tech workforce, not to teach people how to think. It goes back to your question about becoming the media. Becoming the media means emailing and trading articles with people - supporting and maybe even participating in all the underground zines going on right now. The underground zine explosion may be the best thing punk gave the world. Even more important than all the cool music. It also means going one on one with people. At home, work, school, you name it. If they start spouting George Dubya or Pro-War
Rush Limbaugh bullshit, don't tune them out, or dismiss them as being unreachable. Sit down and talk to them. Don't argue. Communicate. You may not be able to get through right away, but you'll at least give them something to think about. Word of mouth is what brought down all those Communist regimes, because people's access to mass media was cut off except for government propaganda. When you see something that's obviously bias or full of shit on one of the news programs, point it out. Get them to laugh at it.
NS: What was it like being on Oprah?
JB: It's kind of a dog and pony show. You don't really meet Oprah. She has her own separate dressing room and at the proper time they herd you on stage and she blows through the curtains, and starts the show. The first time I was on I couldn't get a word in edge wise because she kept giving the floor to Tipper Gore. She has this unseen hand gesture where the camera cuts out of the frame and she points to who she wants the camera on. The second time I was on there I knew that was going to happen, and that I was only going to be able to talk once , so I strung all my dialogue together and caught Tipper Gore lying on live national television. After the crowd started booing, Oprah cut to commercial in order to save her friend and fellow fundamentalist Christian.
NS: How did you meet
Wesley Willis?
JB: My friend Tammy Smith from Chicago said, "I have this tape I think you should hear." The first song on it was "Rock n' Roll McDonalds." I was amazed. Usually, when you run into someone like that you get one or two wild or crazy songs, and the rest of it is kinda normal - somebody's trying to sound exactly like
The Beatles, or exactly like
Bob Dylan. Everything about Wesley was unique, song after song after song - like nothing I'd ever heard before. I tracked him down through her, and talked him into letting us do "The Greatest Hits" series. He wouldn't let any other labels get at him at all. He'd say they either took the album where all the songs were about bands or don't put me out at all. So I called him up, and said, "Hey Wes, I wanna put out your greatest hits." [Wesley responds] "Yeah!" "And these are your greatest hits," and read them off on the phone. And he's going, "Yeah! Yeah!" He was real enthusiastic. We got to become very good friends.
NS: What was he like in person?
JB: Like nobody else the world will ever see. To greet you, he wouldn't kiss you or hug you, or embrace you. He'd headbutt you. His brain was wired so differently, sometimes when you asked him a question you'd get something completely different from what you would expect. A wide-eyed fan, who didn't know who I was, came up to us and said: "Are you Wesley Willis>" "Yeah. Give me a headbutt! Wanna buy a CD?" He always had CD's on him and would try and sell them to strangers wherever he went, even random people on the street. So the guy gets the CD, and says: "What do you think of Jewel?" and Wesley looked up to him after thinking a minute, and said, "It's a good food store." The guy stood there in shock for thirty seconds, and then slowly walked away. He was crashing out at my house one night, and I said: "Hey Wes, that was great, you MCed the whole show - you should a talk show host." "Yes. I would like my own TV talk show"." "Who would be your first guest?" And without blinking an eye he said, "Richard Roundtree and Broom Hilda."
NS: Tell me about the day you learned about the obscenity charge.
JB: The day the charges came down . . . I was getting a call from my lawyer, and he says, "You're charged in LA." I said, "Oh great." And he said, "No wait, CNN is calling, CBS is calling, and they announced it at a big press conference with all the reporters there. You're it dude, you're Tipper Gore's pigeon." The LAPD and the city attorney's office used it as a publicity stunt to try and scam right-wing votes, and be the first on the block to put a musician in jail after Tipper Gore's anti-music crusade. It never occurred to me to take a slap on the wrist and pay a fine. I knew we had to fight. I figured something was coming down, because the cops had raided my house a couple months earlier. Smashed in a window by the front door, and tore the place to pieces saying they were looking for "harmful matter" as they called it. They were hoping to find drugs or guns, but they didn't find any of that, so they settled for Dead Kennedys albums,
Frankenchrist posters, Alternative Tentacles stationery, and my address book. None of which they ever returned. They even looked in the cat box for "harmful matter". There were nine cops tearing my house apart - circling me like sharks - playing good cop and bad cop, while I was sitting there in a bathrobe. Some of them weren't even SFPD cops, they were LAPD that had come some 400-hundred miles outside their jurisdiction to tear my house apart, and San Francisco cops let 'em do it.
NS: Say you woke up in the White House. What would be some of the first reforms President Jello would make?
JB: I think about that a lot actually, and I think everybody should. Let's see, what would be some of the first things I'd do . . . commute all federal drug convictions to time served and let all the people convicted on marijuana charges out of prison. Save space, save money. I'd pull the troops out of Iraq immediately. People say, "Oh no! We have to stay there! They'll be chaos if we leave." But there's chaos right now! A lot of it would calm down if we got the hell out of there. I'd do as much as I could to redirect our defense budget to more constructive things, like rebuilding the Gulf Coast and doing it right, instead of preparing to occupy some other Middle Eastern country. I would suspend all military aid to Israel immediately, until their sub-Fascist government rejoins the human race. I'm not against Israel's right to exist - or the Jewish or Israeli people - but their government is insane right now. The reason they get away with it, is because we pay for it. We don't have to do that. Maybe an overriding thing to apply would be something
Michael Moore said after September 11th, "Will we ever get to the point when we realize we will be safer when the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can have nice running shoes?"Who knows? Maybe I'd even enforce the tax laws on rich people for the first time!
Interview by Nick Shea. Originally published in LFR03.
Dead Kennedys
