East Bay Ray, birth name: Raymond John Pepperell, remembers the moment his mind first clicked into full-on crazed-punk mode.
It was the late 1970s and Ray was playing guitar in a San Francisco Bay Area rockabilly band named Cruis’n. They did a lot of cover songs. One night, he was hanging out at the punk venue The Mabuhay Gardens – a.k.a. The Fab Mab – in North Beach when he heard enticing blasts of noise coming from the stage. It was the proto-punk band The Weirdos, who had trekked to The Fab Mab from their home base in L.A.
Ray, it turns out, had a moment.
“It was like, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do!’” he told Spectrum Culture, with a laugh. “’I want to start a punk rock band.’”
So, Ray did what any enterprising young musician in search of a band would do. He took out an ad in a local music weekly and left little two-inch by five-inch cards advertising his intentions in indie stores in the area. Within weeks, he had replies and band members – and punk icons The Dead Kennedys were born.
By 1979, the Dead Kennedys had a local following and were playing regular sets for booker Dirk Dirkson, who always mixed up bills with punk, art and new wave bands at The Fab Mab. Three bands a night, seven nights a week.
“The Fab Mab was like a Paris salon,” Ray said. “That was kind of the Golden Age, people writing and influencing each other.”
Cherry Red Records, a U.K. concern, became early advocates of the Dead Kennedys, offering the group 10 grand to record a debut LP. The band did it for $6,000 at Mobius Music; the resulting LP, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, was released on Sept. 2, 1980.
The record, now in its 42nd year, is staring down a renaissance of sorts. The LP has been remixed – some might say contentiously – from original multitrack tapes by Chris Lord-Alge, an engineer and producer whose credits include Bad Religion and Sum 41 and, um, Chaka Khan and, yeah, Bruce Springsteen. Now, it’s getting the re-release treatment from Manifesto Records, which initiated talk of the re-mix.
Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables – 2022 Mix will be available from your favorite local record shop on Sept. 30. The band, broken up in the Reagan ‘80s, reunited a few years ago and are playing the oldies circuit with the likes of Slayer, for whom they opened in the Czech Republic.
Ray admits he “was very skeptical” about the idea of tinkering with a classic. But he and fellow DK alumnus Klaus Fluoride started warming to the idea.
Enter Jello Biafra, the band’s original and longtime frontman, who runs his own label, Alternative Tentacles, and has not signed on to the recent Dead Kennedys reunion efforts.
Biafra issued a statement on the release, stressing he was not consulted on the remix and that he is displeased with the band, per Punk News. He also offered up a list of his favorite previously released mixes/mastering of the album.
“LISTEN BEFORE YOU BUY!!” Biafra’s statement starts. “This was done almost totally behind my back. Intentionally. It was not ‘overseen by the band,’ as their press release claims. I was deliberately locked out. Not one person from the band or the labels reached out to me at all. Nor did Chris Lord-Alge, who did the remix. I guess he didn’t care, or value anything I brought to the band at all. Without me those songs wouldn’t exist.”
Ray is used to the vitriol. He said he and others made attempts to reach out to Biafra, without luck. But, still, Ray stressed he stands by the product.
“It’s the original parts, the originals we’re playing, with nothing added and nothing taken away,” Ray said. “He’s made it fuller – there’s a lot of presence. It kinda turns it from 2D to 3D. But it still rocks. The playing is good and the songs are good.”
The songs, it should be said, were way ahead of the three-chords-and-a-cloud-of-dust most punk bands were summoning in the pre-hardcore days of 1980. Ray’s rockabilly background surfaced in his aggressive punk strumming and chord changes, and his Echoplex – a staple of Fresh Fruit – calls to mind Elvis Presley guitarist Scottie Moore and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. Fluoride’s jazz and blues leanings surface. And Biafra, with his ever-present vibrato, lends garage rock credibility to the proceedings.
“I think that’s one of the things I’m proud of with the Dead Kennedys – we have these great song arrangements,” Ray said. “Even though we’re identified as a punk band, it’s the same thing Cole Porter does. It’s the same thing that The Beatles do.”
To illustrate, Ray points to two bridges that build alarming tension in the early DK barn-burner, “Holiday In Cambodia.” The musicians didn’t plot out the trope; it just kinda happened.
“It’s not like we did that deliberately,” he laughed. “We were just trying to get it to hold our interest, and make us like it.”
Ray is quick to defend himself against Biafra and those who question why a classic punk outfit would reassemble in the era of Green Day.
“D.H. [Peligro] and Klaus and I look at each other and say, ‘It’s not about us,’” Ray said. “’It’s about the Dead Kennedys and the music – we’re just the channel.’”
Who owns a band’s legacy? Is it the frontman or the foot soldiers? The Dead Kennedys notably collaborated on their songs and LPs, many of which continue to be iconic punk offerings. But does Biafra, as the face of the band, have more of a say than Ray?
Ray has been trying to focus on his resolve. But he gets fairly pointed about Biafra’s opposition to the re-united band.
“There have been a lot of ad hominem attacks against me,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“How punk is that?” he added. “Well, it is what it is.” — Justin Vellucci, Spectrum Culture, Sept. 12, 2022
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