"I realized I had ‘fallen and I can’t get up!'"
The Dead Kennedy’s were essential listening for any young surf punk coming of age in the 1980s. Bursting out of San Francisco all snarling and anarchic, the quintet, originally featuring East Bay Ray, Klaus Fluoride, Ted, 6025 and Jello Biafra mashed California’s “surf sound” with London’s mash and thrash to great effect. Anyone who knew what was what had that iconic DK logo etched onto PeeChee folders, harder nuts etching it into textbooks and future felons etching right into the wood of the desk itself.
Though only lasting around 10 years (not including a 2001 reunion), the Dead Kennedy’s made many iconic albums, including the critically-acclaimed debut Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables wherein California Über Alles led off the second side.
What a tune.
Well, in a melancholic twist, Biafra, now 67, suffered a nasty stroke over the weekend. His record label, Alternative Tentacles, took to social media to explain, “On Saturday, March 7th Jello Biafra suffered a hemorrhagic stroke caused by high blood pressure.”
Biafra, jumping in to provide color, added, ”I hopped out of my bed because I needed to pee, and my left leg just collapsed under me and I fell to the floor. I couldn’t even break the fall with my left arm because it wasn’t working either. I tried to hop back up again, and I couldn’t. I realized I had ‘fallen and I can’t get up!’”
He is currently in the hospital but stable and recuperating.
Does that make you feel old or do you live by the credo “old punks never die?”