Life & Mortality Quote by Jello Biafra

There is no polite way to read this: it’s a public excommunication, delivered with the blunt force of punk. Coming from Jello Biafra, the Dead Kennedys’ original frontman and chief provocateur, “utterly disgusted” isn’t just an emotion; it’s a tactic. He’s drawing a hard line between what the band meant as a political project and what its name has become in the hands of people he considers ideological and/or ethical defectors.

The phrasing matters. “Let me start by saying” signals a preamble to an indictment, the kind of courtroom cadence that turns a personal grievance into a moral charge. “Former members” is even sharper: it demotes them, rhetorically revoking their legitimacy as the band’s inheritors. He’s not arguing over musical preferences; he’s arguing over ownership of meaning.

The context is the long, ugly afterlife of famous bands: rights, reunions, touring brands, and the temptation to turn a once-dangerous cultural artifact into a nostalgia product. Biafra has famously clashed with his ex-bandmates over control of the Dead Kennedys name and the politics attached to it, including disputes that fans read as a struggle between punk-as-ethos and punk-as-merch. His disgust functions as brand protection, but for an anti-brand: authenticity, dissent, refusal.

Subtextually, it’s also a warning to the audience. If the Dead Kennedys are being sold back to you in a safer, market-friendly form, Biafra wants you to feel complicit for buying it. Punk isn’t just sound here; it’s a line in the sand.