#515
November 1986
Dead Kennedys
Bedtime for Democracy
Genre: Hardcore
3.25 out of 5
Highlights:
Dear Abby
I Spy
Requisite 80s cover: “Take This Job and Shove It”. Opening with this, instead of ending it the way they did with “Viva Las Vegas” just a few years before, suggests they don’t have a lot of faith in this thing.
I was never really into “punk” but I adored Dead Kennedys. In God We Trust, Inc. Plastic Surgery Disasters. Even Frankenchrist. For some reason it took me over 2 decades to get to Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. I think it’s the combination surf punk mania and sardonic wit + Jello’s delivery…it all works for me.
Bedtime didn’t the first time around. I don’t know what I was expecting.
When I lived in the valley, around 1992, my wife and I were clearing out our rental as we bought a ranch in Lancaster and, on the last days there my neighbor in the back came in to have a beer and hang out. he was with his pals. They drank, we talked. I didn’t have a lot of time. I don’t know who the neighbor was. I mean, I can’t recall his name. He was a musician and he might have turned out to be someone of renown but I have no idea. For all I know it was Art Alexakis. It looked like him, in retrospect.
I was sitting on the empty floor where our pot bellied pigs used to roam (I had a pig selling business for a few years. More stuff to know about Allen!) talking with a guy named Darren. We shared some stuff about music that we liked. Toward the end he mentioned that he played with Red Hot Chili Peppers for a spell but I wasn’t an RHCP fan.
That was DH Peligro.
We didn’t talk about DKs. I wish I did.
This record is fine. But, it’s one record too much. The bloom is off these guys and its time for us all to grow up.
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