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Dead Kennedys - Holiday In Cambodia

Dead Kennedys - Holiday In Cambodia Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
Released: 1980

Holiday In Cambodia Lyrics

So, you've been to school
For a year or two
And you know you've seen it all
In daddy's car
Thinking you'll go far
Back east your type don't crawl

Playing ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five-grand stereo
Braggin' that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slum's got so much soul

It's time to taste what you most fear
Right Guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear
Brace yourself, my dear

It's a Holiday In Cambodia
It's tough, kid, but it's life
It's a holiday in Cambodia
Don't forget to pack a wife

You're a star-belly snitch
You suck like a leech
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch
So you can get rich
While your boss gets richer off you

Well, you'll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake

Now you can go where the people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son...
What you need, my son...

Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people are dressed in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack

Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot

It's a holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll do what you're told
It's a holiday in Cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul
Pol Pot

Writer/s: BOUCHER PKA BIAFRA/PEPPERELL/LYALL/
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Holiday In Cambodia

This song is about an American kid who expects to go off to college and thinks he knows everything about the ghetto ("Braggin that you know how the niggers feel cold and the slums got so much soul") and then gets drafted and sent to Vietnam. Pol Pot was the dictator of Cambodia during that time.

While playing this song live, Jello would act like a dumb American kid who suddenly ends up in Vietnam and gets shot.

This is one of the few Dead Kennedys songs that was written by the entire band - most were composed solely by Biafra. In our 2013 interview with Biafra , he said it was still his favorite song, and explained how it came together:

"The original 'Holiday in Cambodia' is more a straight punk song. We called them 'chainsaws' back then, 'chainsaw punk' after the Ramones song ('Chainsaw'). The other guys didn't like it. They didn't want to play it. I was heartbroken, I was crestfallen, they'd never done that to me before. And then Klaus (Flouride - bass player) began noodling around on what became that signature bass line. I thought, 'Hey, wait a minute. That's cool. What would happen if we swiped everything from my 'Holiday in Cambodia' song - verse, chorus, bridge - but used that as the original root rhythm?'

Actually, we had a three-chord chorus and bridge that came from the original, and then the verse we swapped out. Eventually, Ray (guitarist East Bay Ray) came up with that signature guitar part when he enters the song. It was taking a while; we didn't even play it at our first show, although we knew we had it under our belt. It was a pretty chief song for making me decide I ought to stick with these guys and it might turn into something really unusual, because I was playing around with some other people, too.

Before we played, I came back out of the bathroom and back to Ray's garage and heard that lick, and I was like, 'Yow!' And Ray told me he'd seen Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett at Winterland when he was a kid, and I took note of that. So when I was trying to get something to put on top of Klaus' riff, I kept trying to get it to fit there, and fit there, and fit there, and finally, it appeared."

The line, "You're a star-belly sneech" is a reference to a Dr. Seuss character in his story The Sneetches.

Despite this being one of the most popular Dead Kennedys songs, this actually caused a whole lot of controversy and turmoil between Jello Biafra and the other band members. In the late '90s, the Levi's clothing company asked permission to use the song in an ad for Dockers; although the other band members were OK with the song's usage, Jello refused, citing his anti-corporate stance and what he believed to be Levi's unfair work practices. This led to the rest of the band suing him for unpaid royalties, which eventually led to Jello losing all publishing rights to the DK catalog. The commercial eventually aired using a Pretenders song - it showed a guy catching a mouse and putting it in a cage when his girlfriend felt sorry for it.

Dead Kennedys - California Über Alles

Dead Kennedys - California Über Alles Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
Released: 1979

California Über Alles Lyrics

I am Governor Jerry Brown
My aura smiles
And never frowns
Soon I will be president

Carter power will soon go away
I will be FÁ¼hrer one day
I will command all of you
Your kids will meditate in school

California Á?ber Alles
Á?ber Alles California

Zen fascists will control you
A hundred percent natural
You will jog for the master race
And always wear the happy face
Close your eyes, can't happen here
Big Bro' on white horse is near
The hippies won't come back you say
Mellow out or you will pay

California Á?ber Alles
Á?ber Alles California

Now it is 1984
Knock knock at your front door
It's the suede/denim secret police
They have come for your uncool niece

Come quietly to the camp
You'd look nice as a drawstring lamp
Don't you worry, it's only a shower
For your clothes here's a pretty flowerâ?¦

Die on organic poison gas
Serpent's egg's already hatched
You will croak, you little clown
When you mess with President Brown

California Á?ber Alles
Á?ber Alles California

Writer/s: JELLO BIAFRA, JOHN GREENWAY
Publisher: BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

California Über Alles

This is about then-Governor of California Jerry Brown, and is sung from his perspective. In the song, an imaginary President Brown outlines his hippie/zen/fascist vision of America.

"Über Alles" is a German phrase meaning "above all else." It was part of the German national anthem until the end of World War II, and is closely associated with the Nazis.

In 1984, the Dead Kennedys released a sequel to this song on their album In God We Trust, Inc., which is about then-president Ronald Reagan, who preceded Brown as Governor of California. This update - which is done in jazz/lounge style for most of the song - is called "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now."

In our interview with Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra , he said: "I realized I was wrong about my conspiracy theory about Jerry Brown. Sure, I'd made it up all by myself and it turned out not to be true, so it was updated with Reagan lyrics until 'We've Got A Bigger Problem Now,' and the jazz version we goofed off with at sound check wound up becoming a staple of that record and the live show."

This was the Dead Kennedys first single. The band formed in San Francisco in 1978, but took their cue from the anarchist punk that was coming out of England. (Lead singer Jello Biafra is from Boulder, a bucolic city in Colorado that seems an unlikely place for an uprising. He claims that he somehow got his hands on an import of the Sex Pistols single "Anarchy in the U.K.," which set him on his path.)

"California Über Alles" set the provocative tone that would become the group's prime directive: upsetting the establishment. They quickly built up a following with their chaotic live shows and shocking songs like "Kill The Poor" and "Holiday In Cambodia."

The group released this song on their own independent record label, Alternative Tentacles, in 1979. Bob Last, the head of a British label called Fast Product, head the group when he was vacationing in New York City, and signed a deal with the band to distribute "California Über Alles" in the UK. The song got the attention of the influential BBC DJ John Peel, who played the song on his show, boosting the band's fortunes considerably.

The group then signed a one-year deal with a large independent label called Cherry Red Records, which issued the Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables album in 1980. After the year, the band was back on their own, using Alternative Tentacles to peddle their goods.

Jello Biafra wrote this song with his friend John Greenway; they were in a band called The Healers at the time and performed this song with that group.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger took over as Governor of California, Jello Biafra couldn't resist a new update of this song. The result was "Kali-Fornia Über Alles 21st Century," which he recorded with the Melvins and released in 2005. He told us: "How can you drop a song that has lines like 'Steroids for the master race, So you all can have my face?'"

This looks like a good place to mention somebody else who had a dark view of California: Al Kooper in Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards says, "The New York sensibility has always regarded California with suspicion. If your system is geared to New York's nonstop adrenaline rush, the relaxed California life-style can seem as if you're playing a 45 RPM record at 33(1/3). Usually, if New Yorkers follow that slow a pace, they move to Florida."

Kooper also relates the experience of staying at a friend's house which was actually a disgusting bug-ridden crash pad, and visiting another friend who, although rich, was too stoned to notice that he was eating dog food. Together, these experiences gave him an impression that California is depressing.