Jello Biafra - Beyond The Valley Of The Gift Police (1995)

As a young man, Jello Biafra had something that he wanted to say. Through the lyrics of the songs he wrote, performed by the band that he assembled upon arriving in San Francisco, the Dead Kennedys, Biafra achieved a semblance of fame and an even greater notoriety. His sharp-edged poetry struck out at the bloated hypocrites and authoritarian power structure of America with great wit and insight. Even if his words weren't the most polished or flowery, he delivered them with a ferocity and passion that made the Dead Kennedys hardcore pioneers, influential far beyond their commercial reach.

It's been just about fifteen years now since the release of the Dead Kennedys' first album, the powerful Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, and Biafra has come a long way since he wrote songs like Kill The Poor, Holiday In Cambodia or Let's Lynch The Landlord. Throughout this decade and a half, he's been responsible for the formation of a successful indie record label in Alternative Tentacles, and through the label he has helped dozens of other underground artists of every stripe – from punk to industrial to outright experimental – make their art known to the world at large. He's suffered through the break-up of his band, a well-publicized obscenity arrest and a lengthy legal battle against censorship.

Probably more than anything else that Biafra has accomplished during the past fifteen years, however, the most important in my eyes are his contributions towards the rebirth of the spoken word. Along with Henry Rollins, another underground icon, Biafra popularized an exchange of ideas and information, promulgating a widespread epidemic of thought created by a mind virus of his creation. Through the course of a handful of multi-disc spoken word collections and subsequent public performances, Biafra has torn down the artificial commercial barriers that have been holding back one of the simplest, oldest art forms in the history of mankind: speech.

Beyond The Valley Of The Gift Police is Biafra's fourth spoken word album, and, perhaps, his most adventuresome to date. A three-disc set, Biafra covers a lot of material over the course of the collection's three plus hours, managing to keep the listener's attention level constantly focused upon his words without ever lapsing into boredom. Biafra's insights are invaluable, his information well-researched and solid. Just as he did with the Dead Kennedys, Biafra uses a wicked sense of humor and a razor-sharp wit to comment on the foibles of the society we've created even while he is verbally skewering his deserving targets.

Given the time to stretch out and take proper aim at his targets, Biafra is devastating. Message To Our Sponsor offers progressive answers to social ills upon which conservatives and liberals alike stumble over in their mad rush to prove that they're more regressive. Experts provides a not-so-subtle commentary on the disasters created by the overpaid consultants we sadly turn to for answers, while his scathing satirical attack on the Religious Right is as hilarious as it is thought-provoking. His traditional Talk On Censorship covers his entire relationship with Tipper Gore, the Frankenchrist ordeal, his Oprah appearances and provides more than a few warnings that although the governmental cast might be different, nothing has really changed. The autobiographical Eric Meets The Moose Diarrhea Salesman is a brilliant accounting of growing up during the seventies and the insights provided by youthful innocence.

Throughout the course of the thousands of words to be found on Beyond The Valley Of The Gift Police, Biafra uses his verbal skills to warn us that the Emperor really isn't wearing any clothes, and that we should never fail to question authority. In an American media dominated by Lilly-white, right-wing conservative Christian voices, Biafra stands tall as a voice of reason, of concern, of passion. His is a radical world of ideas, of questions, of informed opinion. He never fails to move me, to make me think, to provide a different slant on a subject. Whereas Rollins' spoken word material opened the door to the sharing of personal reflections, Biafra's material has always carried with it the threat of danger, of subversion. Jello Biafra still has something to say; hopefully, he'll continue to share it with us for quite some time.... (Alternative Tentacles)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Beyond The Valley Of The Gift Police from Amazon.com)