Gimme Something Better (15 page)

“Alright, we got it! This is the smoking gun! We’ve got it, we’ve got ’em now, ha ha ha ha!”

Forgot to take it with them.

Suzanne Stefanac:
When I arrived home, Biafra was sitting on the front steps. He pointed to the rickety front door, with its many glass panes. One of them was broken. “Cops,” Biafra said. I was confused.

We went into the house, and it was shocking. The place had been torn apart. Drawers were upended. They’d gone through my things pretty thoroughly.

They’d photographed my phone book, which was pretty upsetting. As a journalist, people had entrusted me with their private information. Open on my desk was the transcript for an interview I’d just done with Frank Zappa, about censorship of music. The pages were out of order. They did find a small film canister with a few crumbs of pot. They left it open on top of the Zappa transcript, to show me they’d found it.

Jello Biafra:
Two months later, June 2nd, 1986, me and four other people were all charged by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office with one count each of “distributing harmful matter to minors.” I was charged, Ruth Schwartz from Mordam Records and
MRR
was charged, a guy who used to work at Alternative Tentacles and had quit by that time, he was charged anyway. They charged a guy from Greenworld Distribution, who wholesaled to stores. They even charged a 67-year-old man, whose crime against humanity was owning the record pressing plant that stamped out the vinyl and collated the discs. We were looking at a maximum year in jail, a $2,000 fine, because of what we said with a record album.

Suzanne Stefanac:
For a year or so prior, Dead Kennedys had been among a handful of bands under attack by the Parents’ Music Resource Center (PMRC). Al Gore’s wife Tipper had founded the group with Susan Baker, wife of Republican James Baker, who had been Reagan’s chief of staff and who later served as George H. W. Bush’s secretary of state. It was an odd match with an even odder agenda. The PMRC claimed that lyrics by Dead Kennedys, Prince, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Mötley Crüe, Madonna and even Cyndi Lauper were responsible for teenage pregnancy, suicide and violence.

Jello Biafra:
The prosecuting deputy city attorney from L.A. went on TV that night, saying, “We feel this is a cost-effective way of sending a message that we are going to prosecute.” He deliberately picked an independent, who would have to pay out of their own pocket to defend themselves. Instead of a high-budget PMRC target like Prince or Ozzy, they picked us.

Suzanne Stefanac:
Things had been heating up. In protest, some bands were putting their own stickers on albums.
Frankenchrist
was shipped with a sticker that read, “Warning: The inside foldout is a work of art by H. R. Giger that some people may find shocking, repulsive, or offensive. Life can sometimes be that way.”

After hearing the story, Dirk Dirksen said that we’d clearly have to launch a defense fund. The three of us founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund. Biafra was adamant that the name had to be baldly descriptive. Nothing jokey or clever. Just to the point.

Even though the primary lawyers on the case worked pro bono, the research, court filing fees, expert witnesses and other legal fees added up to more than $50,000. We got the word out through radio stations, inserts in albums put out by Alternative Tentacles, SST and others, and through journalists. MTV News even played Dead Kennedys’ “MTV—Get Off the Air” while making the pitch for the defense fund.

I researched and wrote most of the content in the No More Censorship Defense Fund fact sheet. We told people about the case, as well as other music and art censorship cases. We provided histories of American freedom of expression and the PMRC. We got thousands of letters from people all around the world. Punk kids, their parents and grandparents, even the Ringling Brothers clowns. Most of the money raised came in increments of ten dollars or less. It was an amazing grassroots effort.

Jello Biafra:
We finally went to trial in Los Angeles, almost a year and a half after the initial police raid. The smoking gun Michael Guarino thought he had was this handwritten list I’d been keeping, of the different releases we’d put out on Alternative Tentacles.

“Now one would think, Your Honor, that it would be important to show the jury how these people deliberately disseminate material they know is offensive to the public taste. With bands with names like the Crucifucks, and Butthole Surfers. Look at these titles: ‘Plastic Surgery Disasters,’ ‘War on 45,’ ‘Nazi Punks F-f-f-f Off.’ ”

He brought the list up to the judge, like a kid bringing a paper to the teacher. Judge looked at it: “Ah ha ha ha ha!” Everyone except Guarino was snickering by now, as he took the list back. Phil Schnayerson [Biafra’s attorney] finally asked, “Well, what’s the problem? Is that song a little too close to home? ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’?”

Michael Guarino:
It was upsetting to see Philip Schnayerson so sure of himself, and so sure of the merits of his case. I could start reading the jurors. And I didn’t like what I was seeing. I was seeing a lot of various degrees of hatred towards me, registering on faces. I started getting the feeling that this was not a great case, very early on in the trial.

Suzanne Stefanac:
Mary Sierra, the mother who’d complained about the poster, testified, as did her daughter, who I think was 17 at the time. The mother claimed that she’d purchased the album as a Christmas present for the daughter, but when her younger son saw the poster, that’s when she decided to file the complaint.

Jello Biafra:
They didn’t charge the record store. Guarino justified this to the press, saying, “Well, they were cooperative, and took Dead Kennedys off the shelves.” Wherehouse was the largest retail chain in California. They didn’t just ban
Frankenchrist
from the one store in Northridge, they banned every record we’d ever made from all their stores, permanently.

Suzanne Stefanac:
There were a number of bizarre moments. Lawyers from both sides played cuts from the album and read lyrics aloud. There was a huge poster with lyrics from some of the songs that they would point to with long sticks, like schoolteachers.

Jello Biafra:
Four hours, six hours, eight hours. No jury. Finally, a note comes back from the jury room. “The jury would like a record player.” An hour and a half later, out they came. They could only agree on one thing. That they were hopelessly deadlocked, seven to five in favor of acquittal. Charges dropped, case dismissed. Suzanne Stefanac: It had been exhausting for everyone. Dead Kennedys broke up during the lead-up to the trial. The label had suffered. Biafra hadn’t been able to get on with his own work. The PMRC did better. The labels caved and began slapping warning stickers on albums. On the one hand, this only made kids want those albums more. But as predicted, many major distributors refused to carry albums with “questionable” content.

Michael Guarino:
That was the turning point for me. From time to time, someone would come up to me and say, “Are you the Mike Guarino that prosecuted Jello Biafra? What were you thinking?” Students were amazed that this person they thought they knew, had been involved in this thing. My son is probably one of [Jello’s] biggest fans. He’s 22 years old. He would play the stuff so loud that half the block could hear it. He was a huge fan.

Jello Biafra:
One of the few silver linings to come out of the trial—Frank Zappa got hold of me and gave me some very valuable advice very early on, something that anybody subjected to the kind of harassment should remember:
You are the victim
. You have to constantly frame yourself in that way in the mass media. So you don’t get branded some kind of outlaw simply because of your beliefs and the way you express your art.

I got to visit Frank two or three times at his house in Los Angeles, and those were pretty special times. He showed me a hilarious Christian aerobics video. The women were in their skintight leotards doing jumping jacks. One-two, two-two, Praise the Lord! And of course the bustiest one was in a striped spandex suit, dead center at the front of the screen!

Robert Hanrahan:
Like all the other bands I advised, I asked each band member to read the Billboard book
This Business of Music
and for the band to find an attorney through BALA, the Bay Area Lawyers for the Arts. In the DKs case, I may have made a mistake.

James Sullivan:
I covered the trial for the
San Francisco Chronicle
. The whole thing just felt icky, like taking notes while an old married couple bickered over the pension checks. But the irony—old punk values shriveled up and tossed aside—was just too absurd for words.

Dead Kennedys made their name as America’s answer to the Sex Pistols, a group of punks fiercely committed to exposing the bullshit and hypocrisy of modern life—the corporate greed, the class warfare, the “I, me, mine” attitude. And here the band members were suing Biafra over royalties, and Biafra was claiming that they started a pissing match over his refusal to do the Levi’s commercial with “Holiday in Cambodia.”

There were no winners. Even before the trial was decided, they all looked bad. I guess that’s the danger in setting yourselves up as pillars of righteousness. Sooner or later, we’re all going to take the low road, and pay for it.

James Sullivan:
In the end, the jury decided that Jello owed Klaus and Ray and Peligro something like 75 grand for messing around with their royalty rate, and then covering it up. The weirdest part was that the jury bought into the idea that the ex-band members could have earned more money if Alternative Tentacles had continued to advertise for the old albums. What label buys ads for 15-year-old records? It was hard to argue with Jello’s argument that it was his notoriety that was keeping the band’s legacy alive.

The poor guy looked stricken when the judge read the verdict, like he never imagined he could lose the case. I don’t think the other guys were feeling especially victorious either.

Whatever legacy the band had left behind, it was pretty clear it had just been squandered over what essentially amounted to a backlog of petty grievances. If the band left a statue, now it was covered in pigeon shit.

Bruce Loose:
Personally, I’ve not had the best relationship with Jello. He’s not had the best relationship with me. We’ll leave it at that. I like Ray, and I like Klaus. I connected with Klaus and Ray long before I connected with Jello. It’s sad what happened to them. As far as I’m concerned, they ruined a really good thing.

Martin Sprouse:
The history became so weird. It was bound to happen that way. ’Cause it was always Jello, and then the three other guys. Even back then. They didn’t hang out. You just knew that they weren’t a tight group. That behind the scenes things weren’t as smooth as it seemed.

Tammy Lundy:
The way that they treated Jello later was just so shabby.

Jello has his problems. He had a big ego, like most singers do, but what’s surprising about that? That’s part of the deal.

Dennis Kernohan:
The best thing that ever happened to you four guys, and you’re gonna fuckin’ fight about it the rest of your lives?

Penelope Houston:
When you went in, you wrote down your drink order and handed it over the bar. It must have been some kind of nonprofit, ’cause most of us were under 21. They never carded. The Mabuhay was the mainstay, but the Deaf Club, that was Robert Hanrahan.

Robert Hanrahan:
I bought a burrito at La Cumbre and noticed a sign on the fire escape across the street. It said “Hall for Rent.” I went up the flights of stairs and saw two guys watching TV with the sound off. After a very short while, I realized we weren’t going to communicate, so I wrote on a piece of paper that I wanted to rent the place. Bill—I never knew his last name—was a mustachioed, lascivious, cigar-chewing character who apparently was in charge. He wrote “OK & $250,” so I wrote “OK.”

I rented a P.A. system from the company I worked for, and booked my favorite bands: the Offs, Mutants and On the Rag, who later became Noh Mercy, for the first show.