Jello, Ray and co. were truly playing on a different level. Prophetic lyrics and musical/artistic merit.

Really appreciate the fact that you take the time to listen to punk rock music and analyze the lyrics. I feel like a lot of people have this image of punk rock artists being just a bunch of "debbie downers", outcasts who just enjoy spitting out negativity for the sake of it or as a provocation. And while there are some groups that indeed used punk rock as a way to convey blatant empty provocations, there are so many groups that have inspiring and thought provoking lyrics that stand the test of time. For example, in this case, the lyrics you just read were written in 1985 and are (sadly) still relevant to this day. I think that the goal in listening to punk rock music is to allow yourself to have an eye opening experience, and think of ways to be a better human being and try to challenge the dark sides of the reality we live in, rather than letting that darkness take over. I think you did a great job unwrapping the song on the first listen. In my opinion, this is a cry for help by someone who witnesses a worrying rise of discriminations and senseless violence ("stick to your old friends, they're not our kind" , "Come on, let's set someone's dog on fire") or the exaltation of shallow consumerism ("the town's an endless generic mall of video games and fast food chains"). It's the depiction of an environment that breeds "tense and bitter-eyed" human beings with no morals, no culture, except the one that privileges greed and animosity. They aren't given the instruments to create, so "they just destroy", it's all they know

Glad you are listening to the Dead Kennedys. Every single one of their albums are solid gold. Thank you X10000 for being open minded and giving true punk rock a chance.

Yes!! I came here to recommend this one too! Riot gives me chills, it’s so real.

One of my fave DK songs. Glad you checked it out. Still relevant after all these years. Please do "Stars and Stripes of Corruption."

PLEASE do “Riot” by the dead kennedys. it’s chilling, and topical for today

Punk rock from the 80's era was the soundtrack of my life growing up. And it's positive influences are still in me to this day.

Not many reaction channels looking at this kind of stuff, nice one. Thoughtful reaction, and I guess that's the idea behind such songs, to provoke thought. Stiff Little Fingers were such a group whose lyrics often referenced The Troubles in Northern Ireland, back when that was all raging. Check out "Alternative Ulster" to sample this. A great piece of punk music too.

Love this reaction and that you are committed to getting to know and understand DK. In my opinion DK and Jello Biafra were visionaries and their stuff is still so relevant today

You should check out Fear, The Germs, Black Flag. All of these bands were from LA, late '70s well into the '80s. There is so much to explore. Thing I like about this period is that the bands had no hope of ever being mainstream on a big record label, so they just went for it in whichever way they wanted. Some very biting social commentary was the result.

Please, please, please keep exploring punk rock and reacting! So much to discover.

Great reaction, classic song. Anywhere's been everywhere for at least a decade.

Great reaction man. Awesome to see someone appreciate Jello Biafra's writing (singer). His brand of sarcastic intellect and satirical criticism is so unique and has proven to be timeless. More DK please! I'd love to see The Stars and Stripes of Corruption. The lyrics are powerful.

This song was my first taste of Kennedys back in 1991. It blew my mind at the time. The way they wove other musical genres into their sound yet it still comes out genuinely punk. Not a lot of punk bands managed that...Talent and Vision.

My cousin's band used to tour with them, Love Canal. They played with the Circle Jerks and TSOL, mostly.

Uniforms were often worn at parochial schools - so kids at the Catholic schools versus kids at the public schools. I remember hearing the phrase - welp, there goes the neighborhood.

One of my faves im glad you did this one!! Skated to a bunch of Dead Kennedys growing up such a message and badass music!!!

That was a great video with really good analysis of the lyrics and message behind the song. DK are, for me, probably the best American punk band. Lots of good British and Irish punk bands that are well worth checking out as well.

This band was so good! I'm going to learn some and record acoustic covers. Will try to do well, but the words are so good I think I can't go wrong. THANK you!

love your reactions and covering such groups!

Hey TNT, got a huge amount of respect for you to open yourself up to the brilliant genius of punk. Lyrically and musically it's on another level

Great comments. Very articulate. Got stuff that I missed and grew up listening to rap, punk, ext. But recently, I find myself listening again to the DKs. Crass and I’m just blown away at how this is becoming more and more realistic- maybe is the age like you said. You get older and it’s clearer - I’m keeping my fingers crossed and just hope we can all make it through

Never really listened to DK but Holy shit the bass and drums are amazing! Def gonna listen to more.

It’s tough to take in Jello’s lyrics on a first listen. Not as a reaction, but I highly recommend their second 1981 album, Plastic Surgery Disasters. In terms of musicianship and lyrics, it’s pretty unbelievable. Government Flu. Well Paid Scientist. Forest Fire. Riot. Almost all my favorite songs from them are on there - although all their songs are my favorite songs😂🤷🏻‍♂️. One of a kind, those Dead Kennedys, (Jello especially).

Thanks for doing this-it's one of my favorite DK songs! I think because it really hit home growing up in the San Fernando Valley in SoCal, which I remember as being this sort of soulless sprawl of concrete and mini malls and chain businesses and this weird mix of single family homes and generic looking apartments and housing developments(that someone is making a profit from) where people are just stacked on top of each other, and you don't know your neighbors and there's no sense of community and no center or connection to the land or sense of place. Listening to this again years later, I notice more that he's really hitting on how the literal architecture and city planning/design-or lack thereof, like where it's just sort of a free-for-all for housing developers, fast food chains and the like-can create a sense of alienation. And it could be Anywhere, USA. I have some comparative perspective on this too, since I was lucky enough to leave that sort of suburban blight behind and live in a place that feels like town with a sense of community, that has been affordable to live in and is welcoming and not divided on color or uniform lines...but you know what can happen when word gets out about such a liveable place. Housing prices start to go up and then we have to figure out how to stop gentrification and keep our community affordable and inclusive without resorting to just putting up "Projects". We're trying for sustainable and balanced growth...in an atmosphere where greed and profit rules.(Wish us luck!)

I thought I'd listen to this to cheer myself up before I go to bed. 😂😂😂😂

“My war” by Black Flag is a punk classic. Great reaction

KEEP THE DK REACTIONS COMING

Frankenchrist is a masterpiece. This is my favorite DK song. What an album! Everytime I drove into the City (San Francisco) I would put DK on. They are the soundtrack to the environment.

It’s astounding that this was written back in 1986. Jello Biafra was highly prescient, and still is

Rap and Punk are brothers from different mothers

Great song! Thanks for the video and the reaction bud

Maybe the third DK song that I ever heard (whatever order it appears on the album). Frankenchrist was my first DK cassette. Bought because I liked the Shriners on the cover. Life changer.

I couldn’t stop laughing when you stopped reading the lyrics at “or the guy who shows off his sub machine gun…”🤣🤣 Bc I fully know the next part that you refused to say out loud🤣🤣

I got into punk as a teen in the 80s, but the DKs to me were (and still are, all these years later) something special. Definitely a far cry from the reductive and cartoonish clichés that tend to be associated with that genre, i.e. "OK, we get it, spiky hair, combat boots, limited musicianship". When I first heard the "Bedtime for Democracy" album (the first DKs album I ever bought), lyrics to songs like "Rambozo the Clown" and "Where Do Ya Draw the Line" blew me away, because they spoke to the alienation I felt. As impressive as all the bandmembers were individually, the DK's were still greater than the sum of their parts: Jello Biafra's lyrics, East Bay Ray's guitar playing, and of course the rhythm section of Klaus Flouride on bass and D.H. Peligro on drums. Thanks for your review; here's hoping you'll turn some people on to one of my all-time favorite bands.

I’m glad that,for a change,I’m hearing a Dead Kennedys song that I’ve never heard before musically though,parts of it sound a little like their version of I fought the Law(which you might want to give a listen to if you haven’t already because the lyrics are different and it tells a story).

Pretty much every song on Frankenchrist is good. If you listen to any other song on that album, listen to Chicken Farm, musically it's great and lyrically it's about coming to America from a third world country. One of my all time favorites

one of my childhood anthems/bands. thanks for sharing for those who missed the movement🤘🏽🤘🏽🤘🏽🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥❤️❤️❤️😝

Great job on analysing DKs on First listen. One of the gangs is also those who feel privileged in the area.

The age of Privacy is gone - facebook, youtube, mass surveillance... Gangs - drugs? Crime? Maga vigilantes? Racial divides? I'd guess that most of the lyrics are lifted from news stories - a couple of the albums I've got on vinyl have really good insert sheets that are cut up/collages of them. The DK song "A child and his lawnmower" - I can still recite that - directly inspired by such a crazy event. Jello's my favourite lyricist of the "punk" genre.

Fantastic tune and as relevant today as when it was released first in the 80s

Klaus Flouride never gets enough props. Dude was the Diesel Engine behind that band.

Hey Boss, Love It. You hit it on the head.

While this song was written in the mid 1980's, it is still relevant in today's age.

Love this song - I think it goes really well thematically with Cesspools in Eden, Soup is Good Food, and A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch.

Just subscribed! Love your break down. Just because you " got " DK!

You blew my mind with this one. DK has its own cult like following. As due most grate punk bands. 👍

my favorite DK song and album

Love the DKs, absolute classic. One thing to think about is what things where actually like in the 80s and 90s. We look back on those decades with rose colored glasses, but crime was through the roof compared to now. Major cities were disaster zones. Now you can walk around NYC Chicago LA Boston and it's like an amusement park with noodle shops and whole foods.

I was at an A.A. meeting in Seoul, South Korea in 1994. The meeting was on the 8th or 9th floor. In the streets, people were protesting against the Patriot missiles being placed in S.K. There was a gang of government thugs, all dressed in the same blue denim outfits, that were sneaking behind the protesters and dragging them into alleys for a good beat down. The Dead Kennedys predicted this fact of the "blue denim secret police" in "California Uber Alles." Their predictions have come true many, many times. Cheers.

We've Got a Bigger Problem Now is insanely genius 🙌

Man! 40 years on and this song is a prophetic piece of scary art. Brilliant and sad

i had this vinyl!!! It came with a Giger poster inside. This is Rock.

My favorite song from Frankenchrist. East Bay and Klaus ripped it.

Riot is my ultimate favorite by them. VERY 'relavent for today's times, also!

You should check out the full album this is song is from.. Frankenchrist. Especially songs chicken farm and stars and stripes of corruption

Damn, I literally just listened to this album today for the first time in a long time. I think it's neat you went with what's definitely an obscure DK song instead of the easy hits like Holiday in Cambodia or Police Truck. Hell yeah.

This is literally the song that made me a DK superfan!

You nailed the meaning!

Riot by the Dead Kennedys! Might be their best song

If you like Dead Kennedys, check out Black Flag, another pioneering American punk rock band. "Police Story" and "Gimme Gimme Gimme" are some good songs to start off with

You got it right!

Jello Biafra's still writing brilliant lyrics, check out War Pimp Renaissance, The Brown Lipstick Parade, etc.

Fucking great that this lives in you new generations, I have been around punk since it started, and yes its real rebellion, and the energy of punk still my hair on my body stand up and Craves me to head bang 😆 thanks for your channel

DK spits truth .. no matter what year you live in .. also kick ass music

So glad you did this one! More DK please.

Bought the album the day it came out. It came with a poster of an HR Giger’s Penis Landscape. This album got them in a lot of trouble because some kids mom saw it and got a lawyer and sued them for distributing porn to minors. This court case got the attention of Tipper Gore, Al Gore’s bored wife, and she and other bored housewives all got together and formed a group called the PMRC and they’re the ones that came up with the warning labels on records. The FBI burst into Jello’s apartment and took whatever they wanted; files and such. Jello said that it didn’t take long for the court to stop talking about the poster but started talking about their lyrics and politic and if you know anything about the Dead Kennedys you know they only sing about politics. They eventually won the case but went broke in the process. They came out with one more album Bedtime For Democracy and that album is one angry pissed off record. Stars and Stripes of Corruption is my favorite on Frankenchrist.

Very cool I was going to request this one too. But pretty pretty please 'The Stars and Stripes of Corruption' It's the ultimate DKs anthem and manifesto. It's their Big A Little A.

check out Hellnation from the same album... one of my absolute fav DK tracks.

I’m joining this conversation nine months late, and you’re probably not going to see this, but I gotta recommend that you check out a song that Jello did while teamed up with D.O.A. - ‘Full Metal Jackoff’. And then check out Jello and Mojo Nixon - ‘Plastic Jesus’.

one of the greatest band s ever

Love the Kennedys. If you had hair T i could see you which a mohawk hairstyle. Try Price of Admission by Stiff Little Fingers. Punks not just fast and loud.

My three biggest musical influences: Public Enemy, Sweetheart of the Rodeo era The Byrds, and the Dead Kennedys. That's basically me in a nutshell.

You should take a listen to “soup is good food” by DK it is another one of their songs that has meaning even today. Love that you enjoy DK they are still a band of my youth i can still listen to today.

D.H. Peligro......sadly passed away this month

Jellos lyrics as usual 100 percent on point

This is my favorite Dead Kennedys song

Check out Jello Biafra/DOA's Full Metal Jackoff song. It's like an extension of this song. But hits a lot harder for very specific reasons.

The dad in this song is a few dads I knew, always warning their kid about people who aren't the same; also paranoid, talking about crime, buying a guy, his friends are in their 40's and mostly made up of lone wolfs who also are paranoid, constantly watching the news and wanting to seclude themselves from people who are different. Love this song. One of my favorite DK songs of all.

First heard the dead kennedys way back in the 80s and still listening to them today. Jello is still going strong to day with his band the guantanamo school of medicine. Also his stuff with lard, nó means nó, the Melvins, mojo Nixon

Great reaction!! Please, React to Halloween by DK

the DK's are in my top 10 of best bands of ALL time!

Good analysis of the lyrics, Jello is a brilliant lyricist, try some LARD his other band project with uncle Al from Ministry.

Check out the EPIC "Full Metal Jack*ff" by jello and DOA (after Dead Kennedys), 13+ minutes of late 80s rage, tells a story, basically a mini movie, not for the squeamish!

As an adult listening to DK, I realize that Jello really wished the American dream were true. As a kid listening to this song, I really thought the Dad was a bad guy who made the world worse, but now I realize that he's just a guy doing what he thinks is best to protect his family and community, but he's put in an impossible situation and playing into the powers-that-be's hands. Fear is a powerful motivator.

DK: Riot & I am the Owl. Very good & timely lyrics. (or ttmeless)

Dude you gotta do Soup is Good Food by them.

Man you made my day

Yessss jello and dk

Yes, band - Fear

Bad Brains are worth listening to, they were hard-core punk and they were all black. Another great band that was somewhat hardcore punk was X.

Also got to do some Dead Milkmen

🔥🔥🔥

This song is 37 years old now.

Way to dig into a song dude, most people wouldn't give DK a second listen because of their style, but these meant something then and now

i bet if u contacted jello biafra for an interview he would do it. he loves to talk

Toute ma jeunesse les Dead Kennedys et oui j'ai 50 ans LOL, bonjour de la FRANCE

Woo! 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

Sounds like a Charles Bronson movie. That neighbor hood sounds nice compared to today. At least people still had dads.

Check out the band Subhumans!!