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anarchy for sale: dead kennedys v jello biafra & atr by Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com) - May 15, 2001 |
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Members of a band that poked holes in the craven, commercial, lying facade of modern life are accusing one another of being craven commercial liars. It has been a strange year for legendary punk bands: The Clash announced - and then pulled out of - a long-awaited reunion. Julian Temple's revisionist Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and the Fury (2000) received critical praise. But when a San Francisco Superior Court jury found Jello Biafra guilty of "royalties uber alles" on May 19, 2000, they signalled the end of hardcore punk's most political group. From 1978 until they disbanded in 1987, the Dead Kennedys were America's heirs to Britain's revolutionary punks. Their albums Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (1980), In God We Trust, Inc (1981), Plastic Surgery Disasters (1982), Frankenchrist (1985), Bedtime For Democracy (1986) and the posthumously released compilation Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death (1987) confronted the American Dream's stark realities: MTV, rabidly evangelical Christians, corrupt politicians, and brain-dead consumers. Their independent label Alternative Tentacles Records (ATR; formed 1980) quickly rose to iconic underground status. Bands such as Rage Against The Machine, The Offspring, and System of a Down have cited the Dead Kennedys as key influences. In 1986, the Dead Kennedys were sued under revised Californian anti-obscenity laws for distributing pornography with the Frankenchrist album: the contentious item was actually Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger's painting Landscape #20: Where Are We Coming From (Penis Landscape). The band split under the pressure, Biafra became a high-profile critic of America's conservative right (fuelling a successful spoken word career), and also gained control of ATR. The third outcome had important lasting implications. In 1997, Biafra vetoed the use of a Dead Kennedys signature song, Holiday in Cambodia, in a Levi Jeans television advertising campaign. Biafra's ex-band mates, East Bay Ray (guitar), Klaus Flouride (bass), and D.H. Peligro (drums), subsequently terminated their ATR contract on October 1st, 1998, claiming that Biafra had failed to promote the band's back catalogue, and had miscalculated their royalties lower than other ATR artists. Biafra then counter-sued Ray for breaching fidiciary duty (of Decay Music, the bands' administrative arm), and stopped work on archived live recordings. Predatory media covered the painful split. The trial outcome - US$200,000 in damages awarded to Ray, Flouride, and Peligro - has crucial implications for the music industry. The case established a legal precedent for "lack of promotion" damages. As the band's most prolific creative force, Biafra had argued that each songwriter owned his material, but the jury ruled that the band collectively owned the songs. Did Biafra being guardian of their recording legacy and the band's "artist-friendly" commercial promoter cause a "conflict of interest"? Ethicist Jane Jacobs' book Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992) suggests yes: Biafra became trapped by a self-reinforcing "monstrous hybrid" of the two conflicting 'guardian' and 'commercial' syndromes. But morally condemning Biafra outright reveals his critics' "syndrome inflexibility": separating both roles is like skating on thin ice. The Dead Kennedys were the musical forerunners of today's Culture Jammers and anti-globalization protests. They rallied against the Military-Nintendo Complex, the War on Some Drugs, and America's sterile Disney-fication. It is a tragic historical irony that they will be forever divided by a neo-corporate "royalties uber alles" disagreement. |
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Alternative Tentacles Records Ex-Dead Kennedys vs Jello Biafra California, Uber Alles Hell No, We Won't WTO 3 Ex-Dead Kennedys in Trial Against Jello Biafra & ATR Jello Biafra Responds to Dead Kennedys Jello Biafra Loses Dead Kennedys Battle Jello Biafra/Dead Kennedys Head To Court Sept. 27 Jury Sides With Dead Kennedys, Finds Jello Biafra Liable Closing Arguments Presented In Dead Kennedys Trial Jury Finds Jello Biafra Liable For Mismanagement Dead Kennedys A History of Alternative Tentacles Recordings Rollingstone.com Artists: The Dead Kennedys Attorney Says Dead Kennedys Verdict May Have Far-Reaching Implications A Dead Kennedys Web Site Disinformation Dossier On Jello Biafra Disinformation Dossier On The Military-Nintendo Complex |
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