I Thought The Law

The law don't mean shit if you've got the right friends
That's how this country's run
Twinkies are the best friend I've ever had
I fought the law and I won
I fought the law and I won

I fucking love Dead Kennedys. They just do it right. Their version of ‘I Fought The Law’ was printed on a flexi disc to be given away at street protests against Harvey Milk’s murderer Dan White returning to San Francisco in 1985*. Topped by their lyric changes (‘Gonna right my book and make a million / I fought the law and I won’), that’s real punk happening right there; not just fast songs and daft clothes.

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I fucking loved Dead Kennedys before I bought Give Me Convenience, Or Give Me Death**, but I loved them a whole lot more afterwards. I owned Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables already but this singles and rarities compilation was a very convenient buy indeed. Rumours that I bought it almost entirely to own ‘Too Drunk To Fuck’ because of the swearing are almost entirely true.

Coming complete with a 7″ flexi disc and a low-quality, highly informative booklet Give Me Convenience would be worth every penny if the music were only half good, that it is frequently insanely good, funny and righteous just makes this ambrosia for the rebellious soul.

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The single versions of ‘Holiday In Cambodia’ and ‘California Über Alles’ are lesser than the versions on Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables and so, superb though they are, I will leave them for a later discussion. So let’s hit up the others.

‘Police Truck’ is just amazing, riding that oddly militaristic surf rock sound that the Kennedys just mastered at their very best^, dealing with police brutality in horribly graphic terms but somehow amusingly and lightly too? no mean trick that, it’s the rhythm I reckon. Ditto ‘Too Drunk To Fuck’, which is just one of my very favourite songs by anyone, ever. Hideous frat party happenings were never dealt with a better sneer and more contempt ever – plus the puking sound at the end, has to be real surely?^^ It made history as the first song in the UK Top 40 to have ‘Fuck’ in the title. Told you I loved Dead Kennedys.

Obscurities, the menacing ‘Man With The Dogs’ and ‘In-Sight’ are up next the former has a great melody and the latter is another twisted surf-rockin’ punker. They outdo themselves in the anger stakes on ‘Life Sentence’ where Jello Biafra really sounds like he’s going to swallow the microphone. True story.

Give Me Convenience kicks off side 2 with ‘I Fought The Law’ which, as much as I like the Bobby Fuller Four version, is the definitive version – distinguished as much by its wit as by its utterly righteous anger. To deal with one’s enemies and their sympathisers amusingly and contemptuously has to be the aim, they are bang on the money here.

The queasy ‘Saturday Night Holocaust’ somehow likening the US disco scene to the final solution, albeit satirically, doesn’t cut it for me. But, no matter, we’re up to one of my favourites next.

‘Pull My Strings’ is genius. Booked to play the Bay Area Music Awards in 1980, the band abandoned the promised ‘California Über Alles’ after a few bars to sing a very pointed song abut how the music industry loved new wave and why. It’s hilarious, bearing in mind many of the songs targets were there in the audience. It also features a particularly funny histrionic 70’s style guitar solo from East Bay Ray.

Is my cock big enough?
Is my brain small enough?
For you to make me a star?
Give me a toot, I'll sell you my soul
Pull my strings and I'll go far

That’s some more real punk right there.

Next up is another favourite, ‘Kinky Sex Makes The World Go ‘Round’ features the US secretary of war calling up a surprisingly orgasmic Margaret Thatcher, who moans erotically at every fresh outrage/dirty trick/atrocity he suggests. All this is played over the band’s own ‘Bleed For Me’ in the background.

Elsewhere on Give Me Convenience we get sinister street killer ode ‘The Prey’ which is excellent and goes strangely Bertolt Brecht at one point – ‘I can almost taste your dandruff / As I reach out for your face / And I strike!‘. I’m also very keen on ‘Night Of Living Rednecks’, recorded live in Portland, OR. where Jello recounts being chased by a bunch of fuckwads the last time he was in Portland, over an improvised be-bop jazz played by the band while Ray changed a string.

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Give Me Convenience is a great collection of Dead Kennedys tracks, a wonderful nugget of dark humour, noise, fierce wit, surf rock stylings, contempt and an ungovernable burning rebelliousness, way WAYY beyond most bands’ ken.

I leave you with the 13-second blast of ‘Short Songs’, as Jello says, ‘Rick Wakeman, eat your heart out!’

1068 Down.

PS: I really do like short songs.

*I have simplified things there, as is my wont, George Moscone was killed by him too, no less tragically. I would utterly recommend The Times Of Harvey Milk, a brilliant documentary film.

**henceforth to be known as Give Me Convenience for finger fatigue reasons.

^just how frigging great a guitarist is East Bay Ray? that’s one of them fancy hypothetical thingies folks.

^^song credits include ‘gagging and puking sounds by Geza X’, well-played Mr X!