Lifeless Kennedys’ Controversial Debut ‘Recent Fruit for Rotting Greens’ Licensed Gold by the RIAA
A gold or platinum document doesn’t simply occur: Even when an album, single or EP passes 500,000 (gold) or 1,000,000 (platinum) gross sales or their streaming-age equal, it have to be licensed by the Recording Business Affiliation of America, which is an entire course of that entails submissions and analysis and certification and different bureaucratic official-ness.
It’s one thing mostly related to chart-topping acts, however as years and gross sales and streams accumulate, some surprising artists and albums cross that threshold… together with an album and a bunch that had been hardly met with open arms by the document business institution once they debuted in 1979: the influential and controversial San Francisco-based punk quartet the Lifeless Kennedys and their debut album, “Recent Fruit for Rotting Greens,” which was certified gold by the RIAA on Friday, some 43-plus years after its October 1980 launch.
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Fashioned as a quintet in 1978, the group ultimately streamlined to vocalist Jello Biafra, guitarist East Bay Ray, bassist Klaus Flouride and drummer Ted (not their actual names). As a part of the West Coast wave of U.S. punk (alongside Black Flag, Circle Jerks, DOA and others), the group reached for and attained a degree of politically themed, left-wing shock worth that was practically unprecedented even in these instances: Their first single, “California Uber Alles,” portrayed the state’s then-governor Jerry Brown as a Hitler in ready; their second, “Vacation in Cambodia,” made a grim joke out of the Khmer Rouge’s genocide in Cambodia; and their 1980 debut album, “Recent Fruit for Rotting Greens,” featured such titles as “Kill the Poor,” “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” “Chemical Warfare” and “I Kill Youngsters.” Subsequent albums and singles like “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” “Too Drunk to Fuck” and “Frankenchrist” adopted; the group’s grotesque collage art work, adopted comparable themes.
The band’s music was based mostly round Biafra’s shrill and piercing voice and Ray’s snarling guitar, however clearly the subject material was what drove the controversies across the band — many document shops refused to inventory it and radio airplay unsurprisingly was just about nil. Nonetheless, the group performed to sold-out homes on tour and have become one of the crucial influential American bands of their ilk and period, significantly on politically-leaning laborious rock bands: Dave Mustaine of Megadeth sported a DKs brand on his guitar within the mid-‘80s, lengthy earlier than the fusion of punk and steel was widespread, and over time their affect may very well be heard in such far-ranging teams as Rage Towards the Machine, System of a Down, Inexperienced Day, Unhealthy Faith, Religion No Extra and lots of others.
The album was initially launched on the band’s personal Different Tentacles label however was later picked up within the U.S. by I.R.S. Data, which was based by Miles Copeland, supervisor of the Police on the time and brother of the group’s drummer Stewart Copeland. Biafra started clashing with that label nearly instantly (initially over the altered cowl) and over time clashed with them and nearly everybody, together with his erstwhile bandmates. He parted methods with the band in 1986, which has continued with Ray, Flouride and, since 2008, singer Ron “Skip” Greer.
Biafra continues to run Different Tentacles and has continued his musical legacy in attribute type — as detailed in a 2021 Variety interview — fronting a band known as the Guantanamo Faculty of Drugs, whose newest album is titled “Tea Get together Revenge Porn,” and his twitter feed is stuffed with each band messaging and left-wing activist posts very comparable in theme to his DKs days.
He has but to touch upon the gold certification — surprisingly, it’s not the group’s first, as its 1987 compilation “Give Me Comfort or Give Me Demise” was licensed gold in 2007 — however the band did on its twitter account: “It’s a Gold Album for Lifeless Kennedys! 43 years after its launch on September 2, 1980, ‘Recent Fruit for Rotting Greens’ has lastly been licensed Gold (yesterday, the fifteenth), by the RIAA!,” the put up enthused, earlier than persevering with with a doubtful declare that Black Flag and Minor Menace followers would probably dispute: “That is probably probably the most influential impartial album in American punk rock historical past.”
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