Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

Dead Kennedys | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 24, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Manifesto
• ASIN: B00005A9YS
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #256,376 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Police Truck

2. Too Drunk to Fuck

3. California Uber Alles

4. Man With the Dogs

5. Insight

6. Life Sentence

7. Child and His Lawn Mower

8. Holiday in Cambodia

9. I Fought the Law

10. Saturday Night Holocaust

11. Pull My Strings

12. Short Songs

13. Straight A's

14. Kinky Sex (Makes the World Go Around)

15. Prey

16. Night of the Living Rednecks

17. Buzzbomb from Pasedena

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Track for track and album after album, the Dead Kennedys were the most relentlessly political and controversial stateside punk rock band to gain much public notoriety. Originally released in 1987, Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death collects 17 of the band's singles, compilation tracks, and rarities spanning the eight years they played together. This is a wide and deep collection of favorites like "California Über Alles" and "Holiday in Cambodia," but the real reason to pick up this disc is the more obscure and rare material. From 1979, "Night of the Living Rednecks" has hyperactive mouthpiece Jello Biafra relating a tale of being chased by irate rednecks while the rhythm sections jams. Their version of "I Fought the Law" rewrites it into a true-to-life murder ballad, while rippers like "Life Sentence," "Insight," "Pull My Strings" and "Straight A's" are off the map unless you were lucky enough to pick up the original singles or compilations that they're pulled from. And "Kinky Sex Makes the World Go 'Round" is Biafra at his sarcastic best, as he tells of one corporate head instructing another on the economic necessity of a new war. The DKs were a truly important and relevant band, and Give Me Convenience provides 17 livid reasons why. Boy, could we use them now. --Carl Hanni

Product Description

Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death by Dead Kennedys

This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is not the Dead Kennedys' Greatest Hits..., August 30, 2003

By 

Tony Hall "If the movie stinks, just don't go!" (the internet) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death (Audio CD)

... but there are hit's nonetheless. Don't be discouraged after seeing many familiar titles in the track listing. Any "hits" from other albums that appear on this album have been rerecorded for this album. This album is more like a collection of b-sides and rerecordings that are not available on any other album. It doesn't have the continuity of a regular album, but it is still very good.

Of course I'm not going to review every song one-by-one like some people do, but I will tell you about a few highlights. Police Truck is awesome and great musically, I Fought the Law is awesome too and in this version the law doesn't win, Kinky Sex is a prophetic spoken word/noise track about the US and UK teaming up to start a war and it's hilarious, Night of the Living Rednecks is a very funny story about Jello being chased down by some dumb rich rednecks, and finally Buzzbomb from Pasadena is musically the same as the original Buzzbomb, but this time it's about an old lady and sung in an old lady's voice for a humorous and creepy feel.

This is one of the best three DK albums, so just go ahead and buy it. Also, it has come to my attention that the ex-DK's have been suing Jello and releasing remastered versions of the albums, so if you can, try looking at the Alternative Tenticles website (Jello Biafra's label) for the album first (Alternative Tentacles is the DK's original label with the original recordings and is ran by the DK's vocalist Jello. Alternative Tentacles don't have all the DK albums available, so if they don't carry it just go ahead and buy one from anywhere like here.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The album that changed my life..., January 2, 2010

By 

Erik K. Johnson "ejpunk" (San Antonio TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death (Audio CD)

This album is ground zero for me. Prior to hearing this album, I was a weak, impressionable teenager who concerned himself with what everyone else around him was talking about: girls, and fitting in. I listened to whatever was on the small handful of radio stations I could get in my small eastern-Washington town, and accepted it as 'good' music. While so many in my generation claim Nirvana as their band, for me it was the opening riff of Police Truck that made me ditch hair bands. The music was raw and energetic and the lyrics spoke of things that I related too inside, and couldn't possibly be further from all the sex, drugs, and rock n' roll as a lifestyle songs that were considered 'heavy metal' by the radio. This album made me realize that I wasn't weird because I wasn't getting laid as often as Motley Crue and Poison claimed they were in their songs. It made me realize that it better to feel like an outsider and maintain a sense of self than to fit in and be something that I'm not. Since then, I have gone back into all of the Kennedy's material, and the entire punk genre, and continue to live my life by the philosophy I have developed from it. While I've learned many things in my 34 years, and have evolved considerably from the 16 year old kid I was back then, this album was the milestone that made everything I am today possible, and I am thankful for it.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great compilation., September 8, 2005

By 

Michael Stack (North Chelmsford, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death (Audio CD)

Before i go any further (and I made this mistake myself), "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death" is more of a Dead Kennedys rarities compilation than a career retrospective. Mind you, this isn't a bad thing, quite a bit of this material is essential-- A and B sides from early singles, some LP sides, and some live tracks all make for quite good listening, and the material is awfully good.

And since most people looking at compilations are thinking "introduction", I'll talk a bit to the band. Formed in the late '70s when vocalist Jello Biafra and bassist Klaus Flouride answered a magazine ad from guitarist East Bay Ray (eventually a drummer named Ted, later replaced by D.H. Peligro would round out the band), the band quickly fused British punk sounds with a political attack, their first single "California Uber Alles" being hte best example of this. Included on this set, the piece is a direct attack on then-California governer Jerry Brown. The band maintained a career of punk music laced with sarcasm, wit and quite a bit of groove and brilliant guitar playing. The band's career pretty much fell apart due to a decency law suit over the artwork of their last album, but by that point they'd laid down their legacy.

So this compilation is probably a reasonable introduction-- several essential pieces, "California Uber Alles", "Police Truck", the legendary titled "Too Drunk to F***", "Life Sentence", are all present, and show off the band's most well known side-- agressive, witty, and propulsive. But also of note is the band's ability to be almost minimalist as on the black "The Prey" and stunningly sarcastic and political, as in "Holiday in Cambodia" and "Kinky Sex (Makes the World Go 'Round)". These two are disturbingly relevent in the modern era, the latter in particular discusses establishing a war for corporate gain..... for that matter, there's music industry lament "Pull My Strings" (panning the Knack-- "my payola"). Again, given the news of the music industry that's emerged, it seems overly relevent now.

Another point of note-- the CD sounds fantastic-- remastered by the original engineer, the pieces are loud and in your face and all-in-all just superb. While the side effect of being a compilation is a lack of unity and not being a real intro to the albums of the band, its hard to give this five stars (I reserve that for masterpieces), but its a nice piece anyway. Recommended.