Album Review: "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables," Dead Kennedys

Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the debut LP from Dead Kennedys, came out 40 years ago today.

It's a darn good record, but don't kid yourself; it's not "ahead of its time." In fact, it's very of its time, with paper thin production and references to Jane Fonda, Jerry Brown (back when Jello didn't like him), and Pol Pot (the worst, least effective strain, if you ask me).

See, Jello wrote all the songs before Ronald Reagan got elected, so there's a very 1970s, Carter-era, "the hippies sold out and became yuppies" kinda vibe throughout the album. Songs like "Kill the Poor" and "When You Get Drafted" are actually attacking the corporate neoliberal establishment, so in that way, I guess the album is rather timely, even if Jello doesn't see Trump as a solution to this.

Otherwise, "California Uber Alles" sounds like Blue Oyster Cult, "Holiday in Cambodia" (which might be problematic due to its use of the "n-word") should have long been used as a travel ad jingle, and "Let's Lynch the Landlord" (which might be problematic due to its use of the word "lynch") is total 60s garage throwback with the catchiest surf solo ever. And I still think that their cover of "Viva Las Vegas" is a hoot.

Too bad Jello Biafra has basically become a slightly quirkier Bono.

Edwin Oslan

Revenge of Riff Raff

3rd September, 2020

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!