Jello Mercer
Okay, so maybe digging out old footage of the Dead Kennedys early shows is not the best way to deal with insomnia. However, living in the two-channel universe with one channel not working and the other showing the tail end of a hockey game that is already out of reach for my team tends to limit my passive entertainment options. So I found a DVD of early Dead Kennedys shows and watched it … twice.
I am happy to report that I still like the Dead Kennedys. I do not like them in the wow-these-guys-are-really-politically-cool-and-they-don’t-care-what-people-think-blah-blah-blah sense. I used to. I like them now more because I enjoy looking back on them and remembering that the late 1970s and early 1980s were a lot more than Air Supply and soft rock. It was difficult to imagine that a band who had an anti-racism song called “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” might be capable of some subtlety in scathing commentary but after watching “California Uber Alles” (that is a link to the YouTube version of the video I was watching–my DVD even had the sing-a-long version with the lyrics underneath it) for the third time (I started through the DVD a third time) I enjoyed having Jello point out what should have been obvious. I could also see why people were offended–metaphors to totalitarian regimes and using organic poison gas (it is California after all) might be a tad off putting.
I also realized that Jello Biafra is Rick Mercer. I know this is going to be difficult to accept because both are currently alive and each have their own Wikipedia page and differ in age by more than 10 years, but it is true. I saw the truth just as I was fading from consciousness having just flipped between the Dead Kennedys and a CBC commercial for the Mercer Report. It was as plain as day (night). Of course I can never watch the Dead Kennedys and not see the Mercer Report.
