Is there a rock band performing today with similar bile and antiestablishment outrage, or do I need to search Rap genres?
Can’t say I’m familiar with one, but also lots of rap these days doesn’t seem to be particularly antiestablishment.
There’s lots of political punk bands, but in my experience they are more preachy, even compared to DK, and do not have Jello’s sarcastic wit.
Rage Against the Machine, maybe?
“But now I am jaded
You’re out of luck
I’m rolling down the stairs
Too drunk to fuck…”
LOL. Thanks for the walk down memory lane, TGSJ.
Yeah, political punk got weird in the 90s. Very self congratulatory stuff. You had your occasional Guttermouth or NOFX who were self aware enough to laugh at the whole scene, but on the whole it became very navel gazey, and then the Greenday/Blink-182 poppunk bomb pretty much destroyed things. I like to think that The Hold Steady are carrying on the flag of what hardcore would have turned into if those guys stopped being angry kids and started being angry middle aged professional musicians*…but that probably isn’t exactly what you are looking for. The Thermals got good and angry with their 2006 release The Body The Blood The Machine which is quite good, but not raw. Their early stuff is very raw, but not angry.
In the early 2000s hip hop would have had what you were looking for, but even the underground doesn’t really do that anymore.
Rage Against the Machine was *every *bit as angry and political as DK, but not as funny.
All that said, the indie rock movement has some of that going on but it’s being expressed in different ways, largely because the establishment has changed. So indie rock is super anti-establishment, but it sounds totally different because punk got mainstreamed. **Radiohead’s **(yeah, yeah, not actually indie) Hail to the Theif was every bit as angry and full of bile as DK, but it was presented in a very different format. Similarly Modest Mouse gets pretty angry but it’s tempered with self awareness. To get really weird you can check out **Frog Eyes **who are as angry as you get, but so tightly wrapped in art rock tropes that, while you feel the anger, it isn’t a gut punch the way good punk rock is. Listen to this to see what I mean. The anger is disconnected, but it’s still there.
DK was DK, they were unique. Most people can’t pull off what they did without sounding like assholes, so most of the bands that try…end up sounding like assholes.
*I refuse to accept that Fugazi is the reality of what would happen in that situation.
Butthole Surfers, mebe?
I’d thought of them, actually, and they don’t quite work the dagger in far enough because of the absence of what you call ‘funny’ if you know what I mean. When I was around 12-ish I took a bit of a spill and ended up at the bottom of a steep hill with my no skin on either of my legs (abraded it on coal gravel if you must know). My cousin, who’d witnessed the event, was sitting on a boulder laughing his ass off at me. He could tell I was on the verge of tears and he said the only wise thing I ever heard him say: “You can laugh now, or you can cry, but either way you’re still gonna be f***ed up so you may as well laugh.” There’s not an English word for it, I don’t think. It’s almost spite but, it’s more like a despairing gallows laugh that somehow provides more release. Holiday in Cambodia is ripe with it–for the horrors perpetrated under Pol Pot AND for the hipster know-it-alls who pretend to understand horror.
It can’t be that hard to capture, can it? Yeah, early Butthole Surfers had it, Insane Clown Posse had it.
A band called the Ted Kennedys put out a parody called “Too Drunk To Swim”.
There was a commentator who said that he saw Jerry Brown, the first time he was Cawifornia’s gubbernor, somewhere shortly after the release of “California Uber Alles”, ducked into a nearby record store, purchased a copy, and gave it to him. He added, “Brown’s probably the kind of guy who would take it home and play it.”
If there’s a theme to the music I enjoy most, it’s stuff with exactly this kind of ‘angry but don’t take yourself too seriously’ bent. Not all of it is punk, but it’s all “punk”, if you know what I mean.
Yeah. I do. I highly recommend The Thermals. They do good shit.
Yeah, RATM is too fucking serious, IMHO. And IMHO they write shit lyrics.
I don’t know about modern, but some might apply, searching my computer for “punk” etc. Some may be minimally applicable:
Manic Street Preachers
MDC
Refused - although in danger of being a little too serious
Million Dead
Bad Religion
NOFX
Rise Against
And well, Jello Biafra’s various solo/partnered projects
Political and way too serious:
Propagandhi
Anti-Flag
thelurkinghorror’s list is pretty good. I’m also not so good with modern punk - my collection stops in the mid-90s.
Bikini Kill is another good addition, dunno if they’re even together.
Edit : Dunno if it will generate any interest there, but I went to /r/punk and posted the question there. No replies yet, but here’s the link to the question.
I think this is troubling. There is certainly plenty to rage against, politically and socially, in the USA but where the hell are our musicians? Where is our Bob Dylan, our Kinks, and our Neil Young (one that doesn’t suck)? Politeness is a far weaker barrier these days artistically so you’d think we’d get more aggressive and shocking lyrics. Instead we get P!nk and Lady Gaga as our avante garde. And they’re good enough, but not enough.
Aw to hell with it. I’m drunk now.
The kids are angry about different shit these days. They are more disaffected and abandoned than they are full of antiestablishment bile. And older musicians are just doing more interesting things than straight ahead punk rock. Again I will point to Radiohead and The Hold Steady as uber mainstream examples.
I spent about 20 minutes trying to remember the name of The Refused after my last post. They are a good choice. Stuff like Anti-Flag is, IMO, a good example of people who try to do DK and end up sounding like assholes.
You guys are out of touch, eh. Some of y’all by more than a decade.
I’m at work right now so linking to vids would be troublesome but I encourage y’all to check out Jello’s current band, Jello Biafra & the Guantanomo School of Medicine.
And although they broke up a couple of years ago, and some people can’t handle some of the song lyrics, Gay For Johnny Depp totally fucking rocked.
I promise to link to some stuff later and to mention a few other bands.
Yeah, listen to Bo If you want Jello’s brand of Jello, why not go to the source? My favorite version was Jello w/NOMEANSNO, but that was so long ago, I might as well be offering up the Dead Kennedys. My favorite version that’s still too young to drink is Jello w/The Melvins.
Although, I do feel that even Jello has lost a little bit of his ability to be funny, because he’s still angry as hell. Or perhaps he needed his songs to be mixed in with other people’s lyrics so I don’t get fatigued by him. Or maybe I’m old, but I doubt that’s the real answer. I loved and still love LARD.
ditto… (It’s all I need right now!)
Propagandhi is a group that has some of the politics, but not really any of the wit.
They have been around since the mid-80’s, but are still active.
You could also look at Biafra’s record label Alternative Tentacles, and their lineup (former and current).