Dead Kennedys - The Iguana Studio Demos (1978)

Dead Kennedys were an American punk rock band that formed in San Francisco, California, in 1978, and became one of the defining hardcore punk bands during their initial eight-year run. Their lyrics were usually political in nature, satirizing establishment political figures and authority in general, as well as popular culture and even the punk movement itself. The band got together when East Bay Ray (Raymond Pepperell) advertised for band-mates in the newspaper The Recycler, after seeing a ska-punk show at Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco. The original band lineup consisted of Jello Biafra (Eric Reed Boucher) on vocals, East Bay Ray on guitar, Klaus Flouride (Geoffrey Lyall) on bass, 6025 (Carlos Cadona) on rhythm guitar and Ted (Bruce Slesinger) on drums and percussion, and this lineup recorded their first demos in 1978. 6025 left the band in March 1979 under somewhat unclear circumstances, generally considered to be musical differences, and in June the band released their first single 'California Über Alles', on Biafra and East Bay Ray's independent label, Alternative Tentacles. Despite this now being considered a classic punk-rock single, the band's East Coast tour was poorly attended, as they were a new and fairly unknown entity at the time, and had no album to promote. In early 1980 they recorded and released the single 'Holiday in Cambodia' (another classic punk-rock record), and in June the band recorded their debut album 'Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables', which was released in September on the UK label Cherry Red. Perhaps surprisingly, the album reached number 33 on the UK Albums Chart, and on 25 March 1980 the band were invited to perform at the Bay Area Music Awards in an effort to give the event some 'new wave credibility'. The day of the performance was spent practicing the song they were asked to play, the underground hit 'California Über Alles', but the band became the talking point of the ceremony when after about 15 seconds into the song, Biafra stopped the band, saying "Hold it! We've gotta prove that we're adults now. We're not a punk rock band, we're a new wave band." The band, all wearing white shirts with a big, black S painted on the front, pulled black ties from around the backs of their necks to form a dollar sign, then started playing a new song titled 'Pull My Strings', a barbed, satirical attack on the ethics of the mainstream music industry. This song was never recorded for a studio release, and the performance at the Bay Area Music Awards is the only time the song was ever performed. Over the next six years the band courted more controversy by including a poster of H. R. Giger's 'Penis Landscape' with their 'Frankenchrist' album which resulted in an obscenity trial, releasing the 'Too Drunk To Fuck' single and getting it banned from the radio, and encasing their 'In God We Trust, Inc.' EP in a sleeve depicting a gold Christ figure on a cross of dollar bills. After two more albums, the band split in 1986, before reforming in 2001 without Biafra. These demos have been available for a while as a bootleg, and finally got an official release for Record Store Day in 2018, but as that was a limited edition, and also omitted four tracks from the original Iguana Studios Tape, here is the full tape as recorded by the first inception of the band in 1978.

Track listing

01 Kepone Kids
02 Forward To Death
03 California Über Alles
04 Your Emotions
05 Kill The Poor
06 Holiday In Cambodia
07 Kidnap
08 The Man With The Dogs
09 I Kill Children
10 Dreadlocks Of The Suburbs
11 Rawhide
12 Mutations Of Today
13 Cold Fish
14 Forward To Death
15 Viva Las Vegas
16 [Unknown]
17 Saturday Night Holocaust