Top Ten Punk Albums of All Time: Number 6

Dead Kennedys (San Francisco, CA)
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (1980)

If The Clash injected a shot of class consciousness into punk, DK smashed it over the head with visions of class warfare. A rabid anarcho-leftist ideology informs their often apocalyptic lyrics: tenants threaten to lynch their slum lord; an amusement park, that ultimate symbol of carefree/careless American entertainment, becomes the scene of gruesome deaths; politicians harbor fascist dreams and come to wield near limitless power; the government uses nuclear weapons to eradicate the poor; a mentally unstable man uses chemical weapons to terrorize the country-club set; the working and middle classes subdue themselves with drugs both literal (speed, pot, health supplements) and metaphorical (TV, skirt chasing, bar hopping, crossword puzzles). I lent this tape to someone in 1991 and never got it back—it's that good, though the material's a bit dated. (Marc, if you're out there reading this, you can use the contact link in my sidebar.)

Representative lyric:
Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the neutron bomb.
It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done.

Away with excess enemy,
But no less value to property—
No sense in war, but perfect sense at home.
(from “Kill the Poor”)

Dead Kennedys, “Holiday in Cambodia”


Previously on the Top Ten Punk Albums of All Time:
Intro
Number 10: Suicidal Tendencies / Suicidal Tendencies
Number 9: Minor Threat / Minor Threat
Number 8: Bad Brains / Bad Brains
Number 7: The Clash / The Clash