Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables by Michael Stewart Foley

In 1978, San Francisco plunged from a summer of
political tension into an autumn cascade of
malevolence that so eluded human comprehension it
seemed almost demonic. The battles over property
taxes and a ballot initiative calling for a ban on
homosexuals teaching in public schools gave way to
the madness of the Jonestown massacre and the
murders of Mayor George Moscone and city
supervisor Harvey Milk at the hands of their former colleague, Dan
White.
In the year that followed this season of insanity, it made sense that a
band called Dead Kennedys played Mabuhay Gardens in North Beach,
referring to Governor Jerry Brown as a "zen fascist," calling for
landlords to be lynched and yuppie gentrifiers to be sent to Cambodia to
work for "a bowl of rice a day," critiquing government welfare and
defense policies, and commenting on dead and dying children. Drawing
on Bay Area zines as well as new interviews with the band and fans,
Michael Stewart Foley treats Dead Kennedys' first record, Fresh Fruit
for Rotting Vegetables, as a critical historical document, one that not
only qualified as political expression but also stimulated emotions and
ideals that were, if you can believe it, utopian.

160 pages.