Jello Fought the Blitzkreig Bop
In 1994, a 17 year old goatlady went on a three week trip to the US with the Churchlands Senior High School Senior Choir, of which she was a reluctant member. To drown out the sounds of teachers and fellow students on those long plane and bus trips, she had her trusty walkman (you remember the ones… they played tapes). However, an oversight during packing meant that she only had one tape (the one that happened to be in the walkman at the time): The Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
That’s a great album but listening to it 24/7 is gonna get tiresome for anyone, so I ended up buying two more tapes in my budget-conscious travels: Black Sabbath’s classic classic classic Paranoid and the “best of” compilation from The Dead Kennedys, Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. The latter which turned out to be a great soundtrack to the good ole US of A.
What I‘m getting to, in a round about way, was that this was my introduction to the genius that is Jello Biafra. We saw him a couple of years ago on a spoken word tour and man, can the guy talk – he was funny as hell, intense as all fuck and deadly, deadly serious about the topic he was lecturing us on (US politics, George W Bush, and the so-called “War of Terror”, amongst other things).
I’ve never had the fortune to see him perform music live, unfortunately. But he still gets up now and then, such as this song with Fucked Up in San Francisco in early February:
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjeeryEY6DE]
YouTube – Fucked Up with Jello Biafra
He can obviously still bellow with the best of ‘em. But what struck me about this clip was something that I never noticed before: the riff from The Ramones’ Blitzkreig Bop sounds just like the punk version of I Fought The Law and I Won, that I remember from Give Me Convenience. Which is itself a cover/bastardisation of Sonny Curtis’ song from the 50’s. Watching that video, I kept expecting Jello to burst out with “Sitting here in the hot sun…”
So is it just me? Let’s turn to the ‘Tubes to find out.
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYD7hJTGX4s]
YouTube – DEAD KENNEDYS-i fought the law
Heh, maybe hey? Not that it matters at all… I just thought it was funny.