It's a Holiday in Cambodia

When I was a kid, my brother corrupted me, and got me into the Dead Kennedys.

By the time I got into them, in fact, they had largely ceased to be a band, following the trial about "harmful matter" and censorship that, for all intents and purposes, killed this now legendary punk band, which was probably also the most political band that I had ever heard of.

Jello Biafra, the lead singer, is an intensely political guy. He is bright, and seems to know not only more news stories than anyone else I have ever heard of, but he is able to connect the dots, making some stories that seem, on the surface, to be unrelated, into a whole, linking them and making sense out of the general trend. More often than not, it is dark and menacing in it's implications.

He might not always have gotten it right, but more or less, his diagnoses seemed to be spot on. One thing that he did do, however, was make you think. He was the first one, for example, who said that the Democrats and the Republicans believed in too much of the same things, to the point that they were basically one party, posing as a two party system, and making a big and very public fuss over the issues that they did actually supposedly disagree on. It was a shocking opinion to me at the time, as I identified as a Democrat. But over time, he was proven right.

Another opinion that seemed menacing and more or less shocking at the time was that the powers that be controlling the government were, slowly but surely, setting up a dictatorship. They slowly attacked and eroded civil liberties, taking care to be a lot more subtle about it, in hopes that nobody would notice. Then, after three or four decades of consistently attacking our democracy - voilà - you have a de facto dictatorship. Once again, Jello was proven right, as we are now so close to sliding into a dictatorship, that you would almost have to make a point of not seeing it to not have noticed. Somehow, though, tens of millions of Americans either do not see it, or pretend not to, which amounts to the same thing.

So, I listened to the Dead Kennedys (the DK, as they are often known), and they felt like a well-kept secret. A band that was actually really good, but so radical, that they would never be the most popular thing. Some kids in school surprised me once, claiming that they listened to them, but in retrospect, I very much doubt it. One of them today is a big Trump fan, and so if he was listening to them back then - a very big "if" - he was one of those people for which the lyrics probably meant little to nothing. Frankly, I doubt that he listened to them at all, really.

But I did. And apparently, many more people did than I had expected, judging by how many people still talk about them, and post things about them online. 

Probably their biggest song was "A Holiday in Cambodia." On many levels,  this is fitting.  It is specific to that time period,  when Cambodia was going through the nightmare of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.  The lyrics of the song are addressed to a random spoiled young man,  with a few years of college under his belt,  and a false sense of entitlement,  sure that he has the world largely figured out.  The lyrics fluctuate between a cynical description of the typical spoiled life of many young American men and boys back then,  to much more horrific descriptions of life in Cambodia back then. 

Vintage DK.  Vintage Jello Biafra.

There is a video of it on Youtube, with just the logo of the DK, no more interesting images than that. Yet, it generated millions of views! Apparently, they were better known and appreciated than maybe I originally thought.

So, it seemed appropriate to share some videos of that particular song, as covered by several different bands.

Enjoy!





Here is the standard version, which received some 20 millions views!

Now, here is a version of the song done by the original band that it first came out of to begin with. Yes, the Dead Kennedys performing the song, from back in 1984:

The Dead Kennedys cover this song live in France:

Jello still covers the song these days with his new band, the Guantanamo School of Medicine. Here is that version:

This is another version of the song, from about 2007. It is the Foo Fighters, with Serj Tankian singing. I remember one radio personality mentioning, after the breakup of Rage Against the Machine, that Tankian's band, System of a Down, had become the new politically active band for the rock/metal/alternative world. That seemed to ring true to some degree, at least among the popular bands, in any case, to some degree, although there were other bands who were not quite as overtly political, but who regularly addressed political issues (like Pearl Jam). As for the Foo Fighters, I have heard him talk admiringly of Jello Biafra in the past, and so it would make sense that he would cover what is likely their biggest song. In any case, though, the Dead Kennedys were nothing if not a very political band, well before Rage Against the Machine came into existence, let alone System, and that is why their music is often still remembered, and in this case honored, to this day. Here is that version:

Here is an interesting version of the song, when it was covered by Primus back in 2017. As some may recall, I really enjoyed the Claypool Lennon Delirium albums in recent years, and had seen Primus, specifically, back in the late nineties, at one of the Ozzfest shows. So, when I ran into this video of them covering it, I was intrigued. In fact, it is a pretty good version of it: