.i.told.Biafra.about. Hansons.coming.here.and. to.their.credit.spending. more'n.an.hour.with.their. fans.pissing.off.their. handlers.because.they. were.only.supposed. to.spend.20.minutes .Biafra.said.he'd.always. wished.one.of.the.Osmonds. would.have.gone.punk.
As is my tradition now, ever since boycotting journalism during the transition from desert shield to desert storm, I give you these, my raw notes from seeing Jello Biafra speak in wisconsin as part of the spitfire tour.
Michael Franti wore no shoes. Biafra had some pleatherish almost nike looking shoes that had no name brand sticking out at all.
Franti did some of his own stuff, but he basically MC'd for the other three, Doughty of Soul Coughing, Howard Lyman, and our very own Jello.
He gave a plug for http://www.ideaexchange.com
He sang a lot of a capella stuff, and did some spoken word and some poetry stuff too.
"This bus that we're on gonna run this mother over."
Soul Coughing guy (I'll call doughty that) quotes a friend of an old girlfriend of his calling him that "art fag guy" and went on to "what's with your boyfriend, into all that folksinging and poetry and stuff."
Lyman explained why cheese is even worse than meat. Hard medicine here at "cheese capitol of the world", huh?
Biafra came out and did some show-and-tell along with his speech before q&a. I wore a dinner napkin over my shirt when Biafra was onstage that said :Turns out he couldn't read it. I know this because he asked me afterwards. "Was that you with the dinner napkin thingie? What the hell did it say?"----------- hr2911 + occidental? -----------
It was pretty much the same thing I'd asked in q&a so he didn't say much more than just a quick smile.
"I like to write songs about shutting down School of the Americas," I said during Q&A, "so of course my question is about censorship. At the same time Al Gore was here in Green Bay stumping, and Lieberman was railing against hollywood, Clinton was unleashing 1.3 billion for companies like Occidental in Colombia. Jello, I checked the net and you followed the money trail and actually got some woman to admit that Occidental pays like 1/3 of the PMRC's bills. Could you firm that up?"
"I don't think I said 1/3," he said, "I'd have to look it up it was a very long time, but they definitely were a major contributor. I think the main point of your question is about the billions to colombia. Let's call the drug war for what it really is. Ethnic cleansing Amerikan style."
Biafra is way better than Clinton, Gore OR Bush about the Dale Carnegie tradition of knowing a little bit about the town you're speaking in and working it into your speech.
Maybe because he really wants to know?
He railed against Vince Lombardi quite a bit as his ice breaker. He said the famous "winning isn't everything" quote is perhaps society's most damaging phrase to ever be repeated on into the future.
He ragged on the new economy, about everyone wanting to be a "predatory dot com yuppy." He discussed the booming economy and asked how many people in the audience were truly benefitting the booming economy. [predictibly deafening silence]
He listed the usual suspects, walmart, big record labels, monied parties, etc. And said "give them as little of your money as possible."
Wait, no Howard Lyman said that. But Jello implied it enough too - that if I'd left the
attribute, no one would care. But as I said,
I'm not your usual j0urnalst!
"...independant stores
He said things are no longer left versus right, it's top versus bottom. I wrote down a lot of stuff about WTO, A-16 and all the other protests including prague, but won't put it here since that's all readily available elsewhere.
"Be part of the camcorder jihad." He said his newest recording, "Become The Media," will be in stores in early November.
_____ _ _ ( _ ) (2)_ _ _ (4)_ | (_) | ___ | ,_)(_) _ _ (4) ___ | ,_) | _ | /'___)| | | |( ) ( )| |/',__)| | | | | |( (___ | |_ | || \_/ || |\__, \| |_ (_) (_)`\____)`\__)(_)`\___/'(_)(____/`\__) _____ (_ _)_ | | (_) ___ ___ __ ___ | | | |/' _ ` _ `\ /'__`\/',__) | | | || ( ) ( ) |( ___/\__, \ (_) (_)(_) (_) (_)`\____)(____/ Free2dom, slack4 and cyber4punks - - -
Asked why he didn't have CD's for sale at the Merchandise table, he just said "I forgot." The only ones for sale were Doughty and Michael Franti's.
I'm listening to the Doughty one right this moment. Anyone with enough guts to use "tchotchkis" in correct context in a song has my vote. Go man go.
Biafra called Joe Lieberman "like Tipper Gore on crack."
Franti grabbed the mic and said you have to pay a million dollars back to your label for each record these days. And you have to pay it making only about a dollar a record. (wow, that's up from 49 cents back when Bob Dylan spilled the beans at Navy Relief carnival. But almost a big enough increase to say "big friggin' whoop.")
He drew analogy there to "the plantation."
Doughty firms up Franti's musical "share cropping," pointing out that when you "make it" (as he did with Soul Coughing) you could easily these days buy 20,000 dollars worth of equipment and produce your own CD's for the rest of your life rather than paying a million to the labels each time. But not enough people want to or know they can do that. He suggested that eventually those prices will be 800 bucks and then maybe even 200 bucks. "Always make your own shit whenever you can" was his favorite phrase during that rant.
Biafra gave kudos to local punk band Boris the Sprinkler.
He talked at great length about the Holiday In Cambodia Levis commercial lawsuit, but again since that stuff's so readily available I won't burden you in here with it. I'll only say he referred to it as his former band members suing his ass off. Says it's got him six figures in debt with a very expensive appeal ahead of him. Yuck. Sucks to be him.
Oh yeah, here's where it gets way out of order. In answer to my Occidental question he also said we're supporting a completely lawless government in Colombia. Just like old times. He said the war's not on drugs, it's on people.
Franti mentioned a band called "String Cheese Incident," anyone heard of 'em?
He likes napster and other parts of the net because it can get his music and others' to places like smalltown Michigan and Wisconsin that he can't get right to without ticking off his label. He said he believes the internet really does build community.
..:][][][:.. "I don't want to deal with some jackass in a satin baseball jacket." ..:][][][:..
He likes the internet because you can get hard to find things like "Michael's 'Ban The Beatnicks' and my 'Mumia Abu Jamal' one."
Later I asked him if he could compare payola these days to payola in the 50's when my dad was a Connecticut and New York DJ.
He gave me this look that said "stop throwing me such slowpitch softballs," and said payola is omnipresent these days, back then it was a bunch of damaging and major but isolated incidents.
My first thought after the show was of Biafra mentioning that labels aren't allowing artists to sell their current CD at small shows
farmers who aren't allowed to sell produce direct to consumers through farmers markets and street corner sales.
I told Biafra about Hanson brothers coming here and to their credit spending over an hour with their fans pissing off their handlers because they were only supposed to spend 20 minutes with fans, 20 minutes playing and jump on the tourbus and go home. They stayed about 3 hours!
Biafra said he'd always wished one of the 0sm0nds would have gone punk.
There was a LOT of talk of Napster going on. Actually the most in-depth and honest discussion I've heard anywhere besides in coffee houses over hallucinogens like nicotene and caffein.
Biafra mentioned that if his ex-band does happen to win this long drawn out Levis law suit, that's going to make Napster a very good friend. At some point early on in Biafra's speech he pulled out a round red, white and blue "Tipper Rocks" sign. "Tipper doesn't rock," he said. She doesn't even
rock. She's been doing everything she can to get rid of it wherever she goes."
Jello Biafra has a slightly annoying personality that matches his stage persona so precisely that after being part of the "hang out afterwards" crowd, I'd say he's 100% WYSIWYG - (what you see is what you get)Turns out Biafra tried to go to Metro, the local used record store this afternoon but alas they're closed mondays.
He didn't want to go to my friend Tom's store because "new stuff you can get anywhere. It's the obscure old shit" he's looking for everywhere he goes.
Biafra repeated enough times "you gotta buy my new stuff then," that the good student takes heed to write it down.
muzIK!