ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Dead Kennedys’ early career as a way to illuminate the political experience of one segment of American youth in the late 1970s. It focuses on the contention that Kennedys’ music and performances were a form of political expression and engagement that merits attention equal to that which scholars afford to electoral and social movement politics. Jello Biafra’s first piece for Damage could have been written ten years earlier by Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin, when they were still Yippies – members of the Youth International Party. By the time Kennedys released their first LP, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables the band had established itself as the leading American political punk band, hailing from a city that seemed to specialize in political art. Although the politics and culture of the 1970s and 1980s have become popular subjects for historians and other scholars of the United States in recent years, punk has largely been treated as an afterthought.
