The Half-Life of Words
Last Wednesday, Tony Pierce posted something called Just Words. (Read it.)
It elicited this comment from me:
But after time words, oft repeated, lose their vitality. When was the last time that any of us remembered the implications of the band name "Dead Kennedys"? Yet decades ago the name shocked us. As did "Huey Lewis and the News." Well, maybe not.
Regarding the former band (not the latter), the intent was to shock, or at least that's how one fan looks at it:
If there is one group that stands out as the epitome of American Punk it is the Dead Kennedys. Some may argue that Henry Rollins and Black Flag or Exene Cervenka and X or even Lee Ving and Fear were the stalwart renegades of rock'n'roll at the dawn of the American Punk scene, but no group can hold a candle to the controversy generated by the "DK" and their flamboyant leader, Jello Biafra...
The band's name alone was controversial enough -- playing gigs on November 22nd every year (anniversary of JFK's assassination) only inflamed the controversary [sic]....
Dead Kennedys returned with Frankenchrist in 1985. This LP ultimately (and indirectly) led to the demise of the Dead Kennedys. An enclosed poster of Swiss surrealist and ALIEN stylist/creator H. R. Giger's painting "Penis Landscape" gave the band its greatest publicity ever. Under a revised California obscenity law, a suit was filed on behalf of the mother of an adolescent who purchased the LP. Prosecutors argued the poster, which features an offensively garish landscape of penises and anuses (peni and ani?), broke the law written to prevent pornography from being distributed to minors. The legal battle ran for two years, during which time Jello Biafra joined the likes of Frank Zappa and John Denver in condemning the actions of the PMRC (Tipper Gore's music censorship operative). In 1987 the case was dismissed after a hung jury could not reach a concensus.
Heh. But the Dead Kennedys weren't the only band with a "controversial" name. Here are some others (although I left the more controversial ones off the list - sorry, call me chicken):
'57 Lesbian
Alcoholics Unanimous
Apocalypse Hoboken
Brady Bunch Lawnmower Massacre
Butthole Surfers
Cap'n Crunch and the Cereal Killers
Drunks With Guns
Elvis Hitler
Four Nurses of the Apocalypse
Hell Camino
Herpes Cineplex
HIV and the Positives
Jehovah's Witness Protection Program
Jesus Chrysler Supercar
Jesus Manson and the Starvation Army
Jonestown Punch
Kerrigan's Knees
Mao Tse Helen
Mr. Happy and the Genocides
Mussolini Headkick
Nervous Christians and the Lions
Norman Bates and the Shower Heads
Pearl Harbor and the Explosions
Pepto Dismal
Phenobarbidols
Psycho Sluts from Hell
Sandy Duncan's Eye
Shirley Temple of Doom
The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir
The Boxing Ghandis
The Dancing French Liberals of 1848
The French are from Hell
The Pro-Midget Mafia
The Revolting Cocks
They Tried To Frame OJ
And, of course, Huey Lewis and the News.
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