Customer Reviews

Big Ka-Boom Part One

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

95% of this material is on "Machine Gun in the Clowns Hands", which is a three disc set. It's great, and typical Jello, but why pay for this when you can get so much more?

As always Jello is great. The material is well thought out and relatively well researched. It takes on the subject of September 11th and the events since. On the other hand it clocks in at a little less than 34 minutes. If it were a longer it would be a full 5 stars.

I must say before I start I am biased. I like Biafra and his work over the years.

As always Jello Biafra provides some perspective to recent historical events (you the one I mean) and as always the accuracy of his words will be judged over time. His style is more relaxed than someone like Chomsky but his words have the same basic message. World events are just that. What we do as foreign policy and where we shop does have global repercussions and it's in all our interests to care.

I can't help thinking that most of what he says he will be a matter of preaching to the choir which is a real shame because there is a whole world of knowledge out there waiting for us.

Biafra's spoken-word material is always worth listening to. This latest effort is honest and insightful, if a bit too much an echo of the Green/anarchist party-line. When he is honestly conflicted, it isn't as fun as when he's kind of a Rush-Limbaugh-for-the-left. But what are ya gonna do? Unlike Limbaugh, Biafra has grown up a bit and takes his responsibility as a spokesperson for a certain number of people with some seriousness, humility, and care. I can't fault him for this.

I can fault him and Michael Moore and Ralph Nader and others for insisting through the 2000 election that Gore was no different than Bush. That is Limbaugh-level misinformation (harmful matter, if you will). Gore would not have been 100% perfect. But he would have been hundreds of times better than Bush. We would be living in a different world today, my friends, if we had actually sworn in a President Gore. Kioto?: for sure. International Human Rights courts?: for sure. Recession?: probably not. 401Ks looted?: no way. 9-11?: arguably not (remember, Gore is one of those boring stiffs who actually reads the memos that come accross his desk and translates them into policy decisions).

Another dissapointment of Big Ka-Boom 1 is that it says not a word about the recent insanity which has been going on between Biafra and the other former members of the Dead Kennedys. I'm sure silence is smart for legal reasons. But as a listener, I want to get his take on it. The other side's initial victory was an unbelivable win for commerce over creativity. Get the truth out there, Jello! Like Gore, you have to stand up for what is right in the public arena even when what is right happens to coincide with your own selfish interests. Perhaps on a future CD.