Jello Biafra

Tonight, 8 p.m.

David Lawrence Hall Auditorium

$10 at the door

Jello… Jello Biafra

Tonight, 8 p.m.

David Lawrence Hall Auditorium

$10 at the door

Jello Biafra, a seldom-ignored figure and anticensorship advocate since the late ’70s, will encourage tonight’s audience that “we must have the courage to wage peace too,” as he told listeners on his latest release, The Big Ka-Boom.

Born Eric Boucher and prone to political rants, Jello Biafra took his name from that of the corporate brand name and that of the war-torn African nation. He went on to front the Dead Kennedys, one of the most provocative punk bands of the late ’70s in San Francisco.

After releasing the 1979 Dead Kennedys’ album, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, which included the caustic anthems “California Uber Alles” and “Holiday in Cambodia,” Biafra further irritated right-wing politicians, authorities and conservative Christians by running for mayor of San Francisco. Though his platform proposed auctioning off high-ranking city officials’ positions, banning automobiles from city limits and forcing businessmen to wear clown suits, Biafra was voted fourth out of 10 mayoral candidates.

In 1981, Biafra formed the independent label Alternative Tentacles in order to release controversial material without flack from major record labels. The Dead Kennedys and the band’s label later faced a messy, year-long obscenity trial over the art in the 1985 album Frankenchrist. The band was charged with distributing “harmful matter to minors” because the album contained H. R. Geiger’s graphic painting “Landscape #20 (Penis Landscape).” The charges were dropped as a result of a hung jury, but resulted in the band’s breakup.

Since the demise of the Dead Kennedys, Biafra has released an extensive amount of spoken-word recordings and has since toured the country lecturing at colleges and universities.

“I want to be safe from terrorism and violence too, but I get equally frightened, even terrorized, when President Bush says things like ‘you are either with us or with the terrorists,'” Biafra said to a crowd during the April 8 speech contained on The Big Ka-Boom.

Along with opposing the current war on terrorism in Afghanistan, Biafra will undoubtedly comment on the recent antics of U.S. politicians and the impending war with Iraq.

“Fighting globalization is fighting terrorism, because it’s corporations who are creating the inequality that’s starting terrorism in the first place. It’s the victims who are taking it out on us, not the corporations,” Biafra said.