Jello Biafra and The Guantanamo School of Medicine – The Audacity of Hype

Jello is one of these guys that inspires a lot emotions in a lot of people. Some love him. Some vehemently despise him. Whatever your feelings his work with the Dead Kennedys is undeniably some of the best music the genre has to offer. And unlike the other knucklehead Kennedys, Jello deserves credit for putting out a massive amount of original material over the last 20 odd years. From his spoken word albums, to working with everyone from DOA, No Means No, The Melvins, Mojo Nixon, Leftover Crack and Al Jourgensen, to running Alternative Tentacles Jello’s work ethic should never be in question. My personal favorite of all this is easily the DOA collabo. If you don’t have this in your collection you’re missing out, Full Metal Jackoff is a punk rock tour de force. But enough of his resume, how’s “The Audacity of Hype”? Yeah, it’s pretty good. Pretty. Pretty. Pretty good.

The Shepard Fairey cover with a devil-horned vampire-toothed Biafra in Barack Obama’s place, plays on the word HOPE by changing one letter and making it HYPE. The CD also comes with one of the classic fold out inserts the DKs always included with their albums. I always loved those things. You could stare at them all afternoon (something I often did) and still not see everything. Lyrically, this album tackles typical Biafra fodder…George W. Bush, the Prison Industrial Complex, Free Trade, Consumerism, the Electoral Process, and the panic so many Americans fall prey to that allows Governments free reign to sneak shit like the Patriot Act on by. Musically The Guantanamo School of Medicine don’t disappoint either; featuring Billy Gould (Faith No More) on bass, Kimo Ball (Freak Accident) on guitar, Jon Weiss on drums, and Ralph Spight on guitar and keyboards. The sound blends everything from punk to metal to industrial. If you like The Melvins/Biafra or any of the Jourgensen/Biafra Lard stuff you’ll dig this too.

Is Jello reinventing the wheel on this? No. Is he offering me new insight or opinion? Not really. But you know sometimes we need to be reminded about the things we feel strongly about. Sometimes we need to be reminded that the same shit that pissed us off ten years ago is still going on today. And sometimes we need punk rock to do that for us. And that’s one thing you can always count on Jello for…reminding us that no matter whether we voted for Hope or not, real Patriotism means loving your country enough to criticize it at every step. And wouldn’t things look a little better pushed to the left anyway?  When Jello defiantly yells “I won’t give up” on the album closer you know he’s telling the truth.  And that’s a rare thing these days.

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