My favourite moments for the Dead Kennedys are usually while they have a rockabilly-esque groove going on, such as Police Truck and Holiday In Cambodia. The menacing groove is nicely complemented by the jangly guitars. For Holiday In Cambodia, it gets even better with the vocals, thanks to some wonderfully vivid and biting lyrics.
However, most of the other songs on this CD fall at the other end of the scale, unfortunately. While I'm normally quite receptive to a bit of immature, tongue-in-cheek punk; songs such as Life Sentence, Short Songs, Straight A's, etc just come across as a noisy, incoherent mess. I think they are going for "zany" appeal, but without any real substance to back it up. The Prey mixes things up a bit with it's experimental "lounge" style, but again it has no appeal for me.
Pull My Strings shows great potential with a catchy surf-rock riff at the start, but unfortunately soon turns into a dog's breakfast. However, the chorus is quite amusing. Similarly, I Fought The Law might have been an amusing in-joke at the time, but that time has well and truly passed...
Although quite non-sequitur for a lounge band, the immature frat-boy tale of Too Drunk To Fuck is par for the course for a punk-rock band. So while this version has great energy, in the end I much prefer the absurdity of Nouvelle Vague's cover.
To end on a positive note, I really dig the strangeness of California Uber Alles's chorus, and the degenerated prog-rock bridge. It's all very oddball, and I like it.
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