Dead Kennedys

Dead Kennedys is one of the most famous American hardcore bands of all time. The band formed in 1978 when Jello Biafra responded to an East Bay Ray ad in a music magazine. They were soon joined by Klaus Flouride (bass), a second guitarist who had passed to posterity under the name of 6025, and drummer Ted, replaced at the end of 1980 by D.H. Peligro.
The Dead Kennedys performed their first concert at Mabuhay Gardens in July 1978. Very soon their fame grew around San Francisco and the band recorded its first single "California Über Alles" a year later, on its own Alternative Tentacles Records label, on Fast Products in the United Kingdom. Following are "Holidays in Cambodia", "Kill the Poor" and "Too Drunk to Fuck", which will reach the Top 40 in England in 1981 and finally the first album Fresh Fruits for Rotting Vegetables.
The Dead Kennedys meet their reputation by shielding every corner of Canada and the US. They performed their first concert in England in 1980, which proved to be a success. From then on, the tours and albums follow.
However, the provocative attitude of the Dead Kennedys attracted them to the lightnings of well-thinking movements, P.M.R.C. in mind. Jello Biafra had already created a great mess when he ran in the San Francisco municipal elections. The release of Frankenchrist in 1985, accompanied by a poster reproducing the painting Penis Landscape by Swiss painter H.R. Giger, brings the group into a legal procedure in which the Dead Kennedys are accused of corrupting young people. When the first amendment on freedom of expression had been dropped, the group decided to separate after Bedtime for Democracy had been released, which would be undermined by tensions that would continue 15 years later.
The Dead Kennedys played their last show in March 1986 at the San Francisco Area.
Alterglobalist and environmentalist activist, author of Spoken Words, Jello Biafra did not stop all musical activities, on the contrary. Since the separation of the Dead Kennedys he has signed projects as diverse as Lard , Tumor Circus , has partnered with NoMeansNo , D.O.A ., Mojo Nixon , Reverend Horton Heat and lately the Melvins with whom he has made a very notable performance at the Fury Fest 2005.
After gaining the right to use the name and repertoire of the Dead Kennedys, the remaining three members try to revive the myth more or less successfully.