Life & Mortality Quote by Jello Biafra

Biafra’s line lands like a sneer aimed at the neat little machine that turns dissent into merch. The Dead Kennedys weren’t just a band; they were a delivery system for anti-authoritarian panic, a punk agitprop project that treated “branding” as one more form of social control. So when he says they’re not marketing the band “in the spirit of what the band stood for,” he’s drawing a bright line between selling a catalog and selling a worldview. You can monetize the logo, license the songs, and still refuse the message the music carried: suspicion of power, ridicule of nationalism, disgust with corporate capture.

The intent is specific: it’s a rebuke of post-breakup stewardship - reunions, reissues, endorsements, whatever “Dead Kennedys” has become in the marketplace - that treats the band as an asset rather than an argument. The subtext is personal, too. Biafra has long been cast as both the mouthpiece and the problem, the guy who won’t play along. This quote reasserts moral ownership when legal ownership is contested: if you can’t control the trademark, you at least claim the ethos.

Culturally, it’s a familiar late-capitalist story. Radical art survives long enough to be sold back to the people it tried to wake up. Biafra’s sting is that “marketing” isn’t neutral; it’s a choice about which parts of history get smoothed over so the product can sit comfortably on the shelf.