Interviews

By Jennifer Swann

What hasn't already been said about Jello Biafra? Well-known as frontman and mastermind behind Dead Kennedys, Jello is also founder of the 25-year-old Alternative Tentacles record label and has moved on to become renowned spoken-word artist and political activist who says he's lived his life as one big act of sabotage against the corporate society he despises. When I think of major punk icons, Jello Biafra is one of the first people who pops into my mind. However, when I tell this to Jello, he exclaims, "For crying out loud, don't reduce me to the subhuman zoo curiosity level of an icon!" and prefers to be remembered simply as a human being like you or me, "someone who's come up with a lot of cool songs, a lot of cool ideas, and wasn't afraid to go the extra mile to stick to what he believes in."

Jello's latest project is a collaboration with 20-year-old heavy rock band The Melvins. The result is 40 minutes of nonstop electrifying rock, complete with hysterical chainsaw guitars, crashing drums, and enough head-banging political anthems to help you get through the next four years of hell. Jello has some of the most recognizable and eerie vocals in all of rock history, and his lyrics are more witty and satirical than ever before, as he screeches about all things from yuppies in Cadillacs to the lighter side of global terrorism.

SKRATCH: The title of your new album with The Melvins is NEVER BREATHE WHAT YOU CAN'T SEE. What does that mean?
JELLO: Like a lot of my titles, I guess that's for you to decide. I was arguing with Buzz [of The Melvins] when he kept telling me I should move to L.A., and I was telling him all the reasons I don't want to live in L.A., and one of the things I brought up was the air pollution, and he said, "Well, never breathe what you can't see." I thought, "Ah-ha, there's our title."

SKRATCH: Can you tell us a little about the song, "McGruff the Crime Dog"?
JELLO: It just occurred to me that there's so much obsession with spying on everybody now, what with the "War on Terrorism" being the news. With all this interest of taking people's privacy away, why not go all the way? We have a huge unemployment problem in this country. The unemployment rate for [those] age 18-24 is twice the [overall] national rate. So much for the American dream on that one! What I'm getting at is, you know, if we really want to get serious about helping all the people living in the street and getting people jobs, we could just hire half the people in the country to spy on the other half. Then everybody could be followed around by their own appointed spy who dresses [like McGruff the Crime Dog]. The Melvins guys were saying, "What are you writing a song about McGruff the Crime Dog for? Nobody's going to remember him—he's been off the air too long." But as it turns out, he's not off the air at all: they just brought him back! The new McGruff looks a little bit more like Snoop Dogg than the previous one did. They're aiming him at younger kids this time. "Turn the other kids in school in for drugs! Take a bite out of crime!" "If you're threatened by a bully, get your friends to surround you, and then walk away. Take a bite out of crime!" Easier done if the friends are nearby, but what if they're on the other side of the playground? Gee, THANKS, McGruff!

SKRATCH: What about the song "Plethysmograph"? Is there really such a thing?
JELLO: [Believe it or not, it's currently] in use in the Arizona prison system right now. It's basically a combination of a lie detector and a cock ring, where you put the ring around the sex offender's wiener and then show him pornographic pictures—and if the plethysmograph detects any kind of expansion, then you don't get your parole.

SKRATCH: Wow, that's pretty insane. It definitely does sound like something out of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.
JELLO: Oh, totally. Yeah, so that's why I had Ashcroft try it out himself in the third verse and electrocute himself straight out the window of his office.

SKRATCH: What's your involvement with Punk Voter like?
JELLO: I got involved because I wanted to help inspire more people to get off their butts and register and vote—not just in this election, but in every other election from now on, you know? Get off your butts, show up, learn the issues, and vote smart. Especially in local elections, because hardly anybody pays attention to those—but it's really important who's mayor and who's on the city council, county commissioners, sheriffs, district attorney, and of course the school board. They're the ones who decide how a lot of the money slips away from us, from the states and the fed, and how the taxes actually get paid. You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course. The school board decides whether or not you're forced to study the Bible in biology class, you know? These things are important. Changing the face everybody sees on TV every night as the president is only one step in the whole thing. You've got to keep showing up and voting smart all the time, you know what I mean? I'm totally down with insurrection in the street. I've had a great time with that over the years. Insurrection in the voting booth is the other part of the equation. You don't get much done without a vote.

SKRATCH: I actually have a bumper sticker that says "Jello Biafra for President" on my bike. If given the opportunity, would you ever consider running for president?
JELLO: Well, I hope not! I mean, there's always the one in a million chance that it could fall into my lap someday, but there's a one in a million chance that it could fall into YOURS or someone who's reading this interview. Therefore, I think it's important for everybody to start preparing for that time, when some really wild shit may go down—just like it did when the communist countries began to collapse, you know, almost overnight, and it was a total surprise to everybody on both sides of the Iron Curtain. But at least in some of those countries, like what's now the Czech Republic, the hardcore frontline opposition had some idea of what they wanted to do if they ever got put in charge of the place. They not only knew what they were fighting AGAINST, but they at least gave thought into what they were fighting FOR; and I don't think we've gotten that far in this country, HAVE we? So it never hurts to (and this may sound egocentric, but it's not) just to think from time to time: "If I were in the president's shoes, what would I do about Iraq? What would I do about the drug laws? What would I do about the widening income gap between the very rich in this country and the middle and lower class and the very poor?" You know, you're not going to find magic answers every time, but just bouncing this shit around can help make you smarter and help prepare for a time when corporations have their inevitable train wreck. When their whole dictatorship they're setting up right now collapses, somebody's going to have to step into that vacuum and pick up the pieces and run this place right. We'll only get one chance. If we sit on our asses and wait for somebody else to do it, you know, we've seen what happens when that goes down. We can't all depend on Michael Moore to lead us to the promised land on a white horse, because he's going to need a pretty damn big horse to do it! We all have to lead each other.

Jello Biafra's new album with The Melvins, NEVER BREATHE WHAT YOU CAN'T SEE, is out now! Check out www.alternativetentacles.com for more information. Oh, and just in case you're wondering about Dead Kennedys' DVD with "cute little elves on the cover" (as Jello describes it), he confirms that he had absolutely no say in all of the crappy live albums, etc., and had nothing to do with the "deliberate dumbing down of what Dead Kennedys is supposed to represent."

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