Dead Kennedys
Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3 Disc Set
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Jon Landau, the former Rolling Stone writer who went on to serve as Bruce’s producer, manager, and Svengali, famously called Springsteen rock ‘n’ roll’s future back in 1974–but neither of these records was ever the future of rock. They were its present–and in listener land, where there aren’t any critics digging for the next big thing or record labels marketing fresh trends, they still are. Somebody somewhere in the world is hearing “Holiday in Cambodia” for the first time right now. Somebody is listening to “Thunder Road” in her car, rolling down the window and letting the wind blow back her hair just like Bruce is telling her to.
In the past few weeks both records have been reissued in special anniversary editions, and so the natural thing to do is compare them–which isn’t just an apples-and-oranges proposition. It’s like trying to choose between Guernica and Michelangelo’s David. But they do have something in common: though they have yet to inspire an upwelling of fellowship between Bay Area punks in bondage pants and New Jersey jamokes in denim jackets, they both speak to the frustration and despair of the working class in ways that have yet to grow old.
If the passing decades have been kinder to one of these albums, it’s Fresh Fruit, probably because youthful bitterness ages better than youthful romanticism. The DKs’ music doesn’t sound groundbreaking or outre today–for Christ’s sake, the guitar solo in “Let’s Lynch the Landlord” is pure surf–but the tunes have the timelessness of great direct rock ‘n’ roll, in the tradition yet not bound by it. The political themes in the lyrics are as relevant and urgent as ever, and their snarky outrage still falls on fertile ground. (You could make a good case that “California Uber Alles” just keeps getting more dead-on as the years go by.) Born to Run is slightly harder going for me now. The DKs for sure never said in eight minutes what could be said in one–and if these albums were all I’d heard by either artist, I know which one I’d pick as the more likely singles act.
